Celestia Forums

Alpha Centauri star system
Gliese 581
Tau Ceti
Betelgeuse



d.m.f.

I'm inclined (heh) to say that planetary orbits within a binary/multiple-star system would be no different from that of moons around a gas giant of a given stellar system- After all, it's best to treat the secondary star as just a bigger planet, whose gravitational interaction with the primary (the ...

You might want to make Betelgeuse more like your HIP 94706, although even more pronounced-- Betelgeuse, being the first exosolar star ever to be directly imaged with distinct stellar features, has FRIGGIN' 'UGE convection currents, enough that parts of the star appear very dim and parts very bright,...

But note it's only for SOME of the minor moon entries, notably for the four gas giants. Also noted for some of the "minor planets" like 2003 EL61.

d.m.f.
(PPC iMac 700MHz, 256MB RAM, MacOSX 10.4.11)

Yeah, I reverted back to the files that came with 1.5.0 off the main download page, except the extrasolar files, which I needed.

Apologies for the mess.

d.m.f.

After about a year and a half (and a switch from a Windows laptop to an older PPC Mac of the same power back in Jan '07), I decided to instal and update Celestia, including making sure I had the latest versions of the /data and /extras files by downloading and adding them manually, I noticed somethi...

We're quite blessed with the view we do have. :) It's actually a relatively recent concept we have now about the true depth of this field of stars we look to on every clear night- It used to be thought of as just a shell in the sky, because, at their true distance, the difference between our eyes is...

(Yeah, been a long time since I posted/replied to anything here...) A big reason why this is so is that constellations are not necessarily in relatively flat planes or in clusters; they just happen to be in positions that we discern from our vantage point as such groups. It's very easy to have stars...

Less sunlight (because Mars is almost twice as far from the Sun as the Earth is) means less heat. A thicker atmosphere compensates some for this by having more of an atmosphere to retainn heat- Basically, you need a greenhouse effect to warm up Mars for terraforming.

d.m.f.

To compensate for a third less sunlight.

d.m.f.

Don.,

Looks just about right to me.

d.m.f.

Not really, since UTC and GMT, even though they mark the same time zone, are considered separate, since UTC does not change for summertime, unlike GMT becoming BST, which you now are in.

d.m.f.
(Aren't time zones fun?? )

Since California is entirely in the Pacific Time zone (UTC -8 ), DST would make it UTC-7. I should know, since I'm in Eureka, CA, just about as far removed from S.F. or L.A. and STILL be in California.... Remember, since we're in west longitude, it's negative UTC/GMT hours, so if you move an hour ah...

The estimate I've heard for Earth is 500 million years, and the Earth will be too warm to support life in its current form.

Better make your tickets to Mars now.......

d.m.f.

FWIW, great pics. My only quibble really is, with the height of Olympus and the Tharsis range, they're above what would be the natural cloud layer, and thus above the snow line.... Particularly since Olympus' escarpment (at its base) is up to 4 miles high. (At present, Olympus and the Tharsis range ...

Oh, you mean the "Green Sun" theory?

d.m.f.

Oooh, when's the next flight to Mars? I hear there's some mighty fine fishin' to be had down in the Chryse delta- Nothing like Olympus bass flying out of the water 50 feet above you!

d.m.f.
(Nice job- Keep it up! )

Reminds me of some of the best "terraformed Mars" pics I've seen online: http://webolutionary.com/3d/images/terraformed_mars-1.jpg http://webolutionary.com/3d/images/terraformed_mars-2.jpg http://webolutionary.com/3d/images/terraformed_mars-3.jpg http://www.webolutionary.com/truespace/gallery/seanr/...

I think I see the problem here, as the L4 and L5 points are being misinterpreted as orbiting around a point- Because they're not. Why? Think for a moment- The Moon's orbit around the Earth is elliptical, not circular, but the L4/L5 points are always 60deg. either side of the Moon, providing that the...

I've contemplated something similar to this "Bonsai Earth" posted here- Namely terraformed asteroids and artificial "mini-Earths" in which the surface is geodesic in nature, where each "face" is relatively flat, or approximately the same curvature as the Earth itself, with various geologic features,...