First Pictures of Earth Mark-I and Orpheus

[Don. Edwards]

Well I desided to post a few pictures of the textures I am working on for the NASA educational project. So here is Earth Mark I or Earth pre collision and Orpheus in the background on its way.


I have completely cleared my gallery and I am setting it up to show off some the work I am doing. I have a few other pictures in the gallery and at higher resolutions. So if you want to see a little more detail you can take a look there.
Here is another shot.

These texture are still development so some details are likely to change.
Don.

[Darkmiss]

I don't know this story.
I take it that this orpheus hits Earth and then becomes the moon ?

Please excuse my ignorance, as i have little space knowledge.
So I am useing Celestia to expand it.


Also when i was looking around the Gallerys
Franks has some great primative earth and moon textures


and here is his gallery http://www.shatters.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album05

[Don. Edwards]

I am working with Frank on this project and basically my textures are going to replace the ones you see in his gallery.
Now the jist of the story is that early in the solar systems history there was another planet about the size of Mars, we now seem to call it Orpheus.
Orpheus orbited probably very nearly the same orbit as the early Earth or just outside Earth's orbit. But Orpheus' orbit was not stable and as time went on it got closer and closer to Earth and then one day it hit Earth in a sideswipe motion. Orpheus in striking the Earth imparted most of its material to Earth but the ejected material went into orbit and in time reformed into the moon we now have. So the moon was the offspring of these two planets union. There is a great deal of debate as to what the Earth was like at this time. One of the theories is that it was almost entirely covered in water. After the collision all that water had been lost and Earth created new water from volcanic eruptions and from comet collisions.
The main reason they are leaning toward the collision theory for the moons creation is because the moons makeup is not like the Earth's and the other terrestrial planets. It has a very small iron core and is mainly made up of material similar to Earth's mantel. It doesn't appear to have had really any volcanic activity in its past so there probably wasn't much of a molten core either. So as things go the idea that the moon formed from the same cloud the Earth did doesn't really fit. If it formed the same way the Earth did it should have the same materials the Earth does but in scaled proportions and it doesn't. So the theory goes. Also no other terrestrial planets have moons like Earth does. So why did Earth get a moon and not Venus or Mars. (you can’t count Phobos or Deimos because they were probably captured asteroids.)
Its also believed something fairly large hit Venus in the past. It had to be pretty big because it tipped Venus over upside down. That’s why Venus rotates retrograde and it spins so much lower than many of the planets. Of course we can’t see any sign of this collision on Venus do to the fact that like the Earth, Venus resurfaces itself quite regularly. Also an Earth sized object is believed to have hit Uranus. That’s why Uranus sits on its side and many of its moons look broken. I saw in a documentary many years ago that showed an animation of what they think happened. It was an incredible site. Uranus gets hit and rolls onto its side. In the process many of its moons collide into one another and are smashed and have to reform. I wish I could remember the name of the show but it was just too long ago and I only saw it once. But it left a very big impression.
I hope this helps answer some of your questions.

Don.

[ElPelado]

What I read once is that the collition between Earth and Orpheus produced a ring system around earthm like the rings of the gas gigants. then with the time, this small pices of the ring join toghter because of the gravity force and then they formed the moon.

[JackHiggins-no logon]

Don,

Are you going to actually show the collision in detail for the activities, or just show them approaching, and come back again when the moon is starting to form...?

I would have thought it'd be pretty hard to model a collision like that in celestia without thousands of ssc's...

[me again]

Sorry should have also said- those first pictures look really cool!!

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Wow. Those are REALLY nifty textures. Fantastic work, Don!

[billybob884]

Magnificant, just impeccable! Yet another reason were all glad to have you back.

[t00fri]

Don,

very nice textures! I am curious what were the design criteria? What are these interesting olive/rose colours supposed to represent? Are the colours essentially supposed to be interesting/beautiful or are there specific ideas entering about the earths/orpheus' state before the collision? If so, where do we know this from?

Bye Fridger

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

I'd guess the olive colours would be bacteria in the water. Though at that stage in Earth's history, I'm not sure what they'd represent on land. If we're speaking realistically, it also looks like there aren't anywhere near as many craters as there should be on either body, and I'm not sure if the atmospheres should be so transparent at that stage... I pictured them to be more like Venus - totally cloud covered.

I think there's also way too much landmass there. AFAIK, the continents got built up by island arc collisions, and those took time to form. My guess is that the early earth would be largely water covered.

[Darkmiss]

Don, Thank you for a great explanation
told me what i wanted to know and more, thanks

[Phule]

What I read once is that the collition between Earth and Orpheus produced a ring system around earthm like the rings of the gas gigants. then with the time, this small pices of the ring join toghter because of the gravity force and then they formed the moon.

I do not remember the name of this phenomina, but it basically states that there is a critical distance that must be obtained so something can be formed. This phenomina explains why we have a moon, and why the other planets with rings, have rings.

ie.. our moon was ejected from the Earth just beyond the critical distance needed, and therefore will not be re-absorbed into the Earth. While the rings of the planets will be re-absorbed in due time.

P.S.
Just found it.. It is called the Roche Limit. It is the closest a fluid body can orbit to its primary without being pulled apart by tidal forces. A solid body may survive within the Roche limit if the tidal forces do not exceed its structural strength. The Roche limit is calculated with the equation. And now a diagram



P.S.S.
Found this equation as well.
[/img]

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Everyone,
Well I did say this was just an early atempt. The Earth texture is only 50% finshed while the Orpheus texture is 90% done.
Fridger I am still adjusting the water color. It will most likely end up fairly gray. It took on the Olive color because the water layer is semi-transparent so some of the under texture has come through along with some of the texture paterns. I am also going to take the saturation levles down some. We also need to consider this is for an educational project so the most of the users are going to be just a little less conserned about certain aspects of the textures then the rest of would be.
So now I am going to give everyone a closer look at Orpheus. In the picture above you couldn't see any real detail but I think these pictures will show just how detailed I have taken it.


And yes thoughs are open lava fields on the texture. Frank wanted it to look very menacing. You should see it from the night side.

Don.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

That certainly does look like a protoplanet to me

[billybob884]

i don't think there should be clouds of that kind, they should probably be a bit more dusty and grey

[JackHiggins]

i don't think there should be clouds of that kind, they should probably be a bit more dusty and grey

That looks strangely like the standard earth cloud texture to me...

See those weird dots in the right of the second pic? They look exactly the same...

[ElPelado]

This is what I found some time ago about the Moon formation. Hope it helps:
(rememeber that is a top-view)


There is something that i dont understand: it says that the impact formed the Earth's equator, and the moon's orbit plane. but moon's orbit plane is not aligned with earth equator....right?

[Don. Edwards]

Your right. Someone somewhere I think maybe has that wrong? The equator isn't a real physical thing anyway. It’s just a line we draw on the map. Now the moons ten degree tilted orbit could be caused by the direction of the impact object (Orpheus). Also if you look and read through the all the material you find that the Earth was actually hit several times. The first impact which was a side swipe. It sent a big portion of Orpheus back into a short orbit which than hit the earth again and that sent up most of the debris that went into orbit. If you look close they are also showing another large ejected mass that fell back to Earth and made a third impact. That may have been our second moon. But it was to close to the Earth and didn't have much of an orbit so it went right back. These impacts would have basically shattered what there was of an Earth at that time. The Earth really had to totally reform from scratch. It makes you wonder about the impact that hit Venus and turned her over on her north pole. That had to be almost just as bad as what happened to Earth.

And Jack, you are right! Those are the low-res Earth clouds that come with Celestia. I just haven't created the cloud textures as of yet. I just wanted something there to give just a little bit of an impression. I am planning on making special cloud textures for both planets. Although if I really want to be accurate they probably should just look like Venus. The real clouds back then were probably very think and covered most if not all the surface.
But I don't think Frank wants to see fussy, cloudy balls. I don't think it would be very interesting to kids of school age. So I have to take a little creative license here. If you could see a little more of the Orpheus texture you would find it has a few Olympus Mons sized volcanoes on it. Again these are for school kids. I am not really sure if the planets had been around long enough for a volcano that big to form. But than again who knows. Its not like we can go back in time to see.
I am just having some fun and seeing just what I can and can’t do and what looks good and what doesn’t. BTW that Orpheus texture is version 13. I went through 13 different textures before Frank was finally happy with one. The one he chose actually was very green looking but it had some lavender coloring here and there and he wanted me to loose it. In the end Orpheus ended up with that mustard yellow color with allot of rust, brown ,black and allot less green. I did save all the previous versions and I may release then as an texture package for moons for other worlds. Some of them are really very striking.
Maybe I will load then up into Celestia and take some screen caps and let everyone pick and choose which ones I should add to the package. Well I think that covers everything for now. I have had a busy day working on computers at the shop so I am going to turn in early. Night all.

Don.

[t00fri]

...

Night all.

Don.

If I'd go to bed now, I would miss a most beautiful sunny day ;-)

It's 8:30 MEST around here...

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Well I am still up. We had a rather hot day today, about 95* F. For Oregon that is hot. So its just to warm to sleep yet, no A/C in the place just a window fan. But tomorrow its only supposed to reach 87* F.