Celestia Forums

Hi, everyone.
This is my second post on this forum so far and I hope some of you may aprecciate it.

I've been working on a fictional planetary system for a long time now, and I'm glad that it's been finally finished. So I'll share it with you.

The Star: Verona (The star itself is fictional, because I wanted to place it next to Helix Nebula, so that I could have a beautiful background for the system)
Location: Aquarius Contellation



The system is composed of 2 terrestrial planets, 2 gas giants aaaaand... a brown dwarf. Of course, there are a lot of moons, which are the real fun in the system.
I've also worked on some 'photos' of the system, because I wanted to depict how it would really feel and look like if we were actually standing on the surface of some of the moons and planets.

Let's have a look, shall we?

The hottest and closest to the star out of the two gas giants is not hot enough for a cloudless surface, but it has ideal teperatures for developing sulfur clouds in the atmosphere. It's got some moons, most of them are captured asteroids, but one deserves some attention.


The gas giant Montague and its largest and only round shaped moon, Benvolio

Benvolio's surface is an arid and super-hot desert. As its atmosphere is a thin carbon dioxide layer, it doesn't manage to stop asteroids from bumping in, so craters are something common there.


View from the surface of Benvolio, with Montague almost eclipsing its parent star, Verona

The next planet in distance from the star, Capulet, is a big gas giant that was lucky enough to be placed in the Goldilocks Zone of Verona. It has a dynamic atmosphere made mostly of water clouds and rings that shine under Verona's sunlight.


Sampson, one of Capulet's moons


Capulet's largest and most massive moon, Tybalt

The biggest companion that orbits Capulet is somewhat interesting. Tybalt is more massive than Mars and is a violent volcanic world. Eruptions are so constant on its surface that volcanic ashes, carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid represent a good percentage of its atmosphere. The place itself is a desolated hell with various volcanoes, which can be seen from space. It's even possible to catch a view of the glowing magma streaks on the night hemisphere of the moon. But it only happens when the thick clouds open a window to the outer universe, so don't miss it!


View from the surface of Tybalt, with Capulet and the Helix Nebula in the background

The next planet is a terrestrial one, so things are going to be a little more calm. I hope.



The planet Romeo has formed much far away from the star and has a cold and strange surface. It has great amounts of chlorine in the atmosphere and oceans made of hydrochloric acid. It's possible that the chlorine is beeing maintained and replaced by biochemical process, since it's so reactive. This planet is a 'must see' if you're visiting the system.


View from the surface of Romeo during a rare sight of its two moons 'transiting' in front of Helix Nebula


The planet Romeo and its largest moon, Juliet

Between Romeo's moons, Juliet and Laurence, it is Juliet that calls our attention. Beneath its frozen surface, there may be a liquid ocean warmed by tidal forces resulting from the interaction with Romeo and Laurence. Tholin filled crackles on the surface reveal some strange processes are happening there.


View from the surface of Juliet with Romeo in the background

Well, now things are gonna get a bit weird. The last of the largest objects to orbit Verona has a huge mass. It's much more massive than Jupiter. It's so massive it shares an orbital barycenter with Verona.


Escalus and one of its tiny moons, Valentine

Escalus is a brown dwarf and is able to emit its own glow throughout the universe's endless darkness.


View from the surface of Valentine, with Escalus and Verona's sunset in the background

The largest object orbiting Escalus could be compared to a planet. Paris has a dense atmosphere made of nitrogen and methane. It's possible to observe on its surface huge lakes and maybe oceans made of liquid methane. A planet-sized analog to Saturn's Titan orbiting among Escalus disks of debris.


A glimpse from Paris surface with the distant Rosaline in the background.












That's it. If you liked the pictures and want to have a better look on the system, here are the download links:

Download Links

Verona Planetary System - includes SSC/STC files and textures.
DL: http://www.2shared.com/file/DZjvOtL5/Ve ... onal_.html

Helix Nebula - includes model, texture and STC/DSC files.
DL: http://www.2shared.com/file/15tPpwAJ/NG ... bula_.html
Note: I'm not pretty sure of it, but I think I downloaded this Helix Nebula addon from the Motherlode. As I can't remember, credits go to owner, if there is one.

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Notes on the creation of the system

1. Since we don't have any good images of brown dwarves, it's very hard to imagine how could such a thing look like. I tried to make an intermediate between gas giants and stars, which is what they are.
2. Because Celestia can only display two different-motion layers of texture (surface texture and cloud texture) it can be a challenge to make gas giants look realistic and with ever changing atmospheres. I tried to make them look the more dynamic they could.

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Thanks for visiting and come back.






.

Thanks!

Very impressive! What did you use to create the surface scenes?

I absolutely must congratulate you on presenting something that looks like an original work! Extra points for not simply recolouring textures for Venus and Ganymede.

Reiko wrote:Very impressive! What did you use to create the surface scenes?

Thank you!
I used Photoshop CS3. An old version but it's like part of me already, kkk.

Hungry4info wrote:I absolutely must congratulate you on presenting something that looks like an original work! Extra points for not simply recolouring textures for Venus and Ganymede.

Thank you so much!
I never really liked stuff made of recoloured and mixed parts of Solar System textures, so I decided to make my own.

Superb images Starlight... stunning.

Thank you!

Absolutely, jaw-dropping beautiful! Time well spent. And to quote a little Shakespeare, "Fair Verona, where we lay our scene..."

Spectacular! For the surface shots, what did you use?

-M-

Beautiful work
Refreshing change of pace also!
I also really like your textures.

Tim

Thanks everyone!

For the surface scenes I used Photoshop CS3. Reiko already asked that, as mentioned by J.T.K.

The Heelix Nebula doesn't render for me for some reason. All I see is a big white square thing...

Also, is it alright if I use your textures in add-ons I'm making? I have a surplus of textures to use for rocky and volcanic planets but I have a shortage for ones to use for Mars-like, icy, and gaseous planets (Earth-like I can make on my own).

J.T.K. wrote:Try to change your video mode by ctrl V.
Perhaps its' a problem with opengl 2.0

I tried that before posting the problem.

omega13a,

What type of computer are you using? (operating system version, graphics hardware, graphics driver version, etc)

A white object indicates that Celestia can't load the surface texture image file, perhaps because it can't find it.

One problem is that the name of the texture image file in the Addon has incorrect capitalization. The 3DS model requires Helix.png but the image file itself is named helix.png ("h" isn't capitalized). This will cause the problem you describe on non-Windows computers. Windows ignores capitalization in file names. Other operating systems require it to be correct.

Try renaming the image file to be Helix.png

That worked.

omega13a wrote:The Heelix Nebula doesn't render for me for some reason. All I see is a big white square thing...

Also, is it alright if I use your textures in add-ons I'm making? I have a surplus of textures to use for rocky and volcanic planets but I have a shortage for ones to use for Mars-like, icy, and gaseous planets (Earth-like I can make on my own).

Sure you can. These texture are free to use.
Other members are already helping you with your nebula rendering problem. I'd say your computer is not recognizing the texture for some reason.

Thanks for visiting and see ya!

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Not sure why Escalus is pink. I'd imagine a brown dwarf to be dark red or orange.

W0RLDBUILDER wrote:Not sure why Escalus is pink. I'd imagine a brown dwarf to be dark red or orange.

Do you see it pink in your screen? Because I coloured it purple in mine. Maybe a difference in saturation settings.

Also, I read somewhere that methane-rich brown dwarfs could have a purplish color. I admit I exagerated a little, but as I stated in the beginning of the post, even though trying to make feasible worlds, I added some fantasy to them. Otherwise I would have a complete Solar System analog.

StarLight wrote:

W0RLDBUILDER wrote:Not sure why Escalus is pink. I'd imagine a brown dwarf to be dark red or orange.

Do you see it pink in your screen? Because I coloured it purple in mine. Maybe a difference in saturation settings.

Also, I read somewhere that methane-rich brown dwarfs could have a purplish color. I admit I exagerated a little, but as I stated in the beginning of the post, even though trying to make feasible worlds, I added some fantasy to them. Otherwise I would have a complete Solar System analog.

That and nobody has actually seen what a brown dwarf or any extrasolar object actually looks like upclose.

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