Celestia Forums

Hi everyone.

I'm planning on making sci-fi textures for Mu Arae System and I'm having a little trouble with possible temperatures of the planets and consequently, their appearance.
I hope some of you may help me with some questions I have about the planets:

C - No doubts, since it's clearly a very very very very hot place, with silicate and rock vapor atmosphere.

D - Here is where I get my first questions. I usually use Celestia's temperature display as a base for my textures, even knowing it's not precise enough. In Celestia, this planet's temperature is around 228 K, which would give it a cold, water cloud appearance. But I've read information from other fonts that say this planet is too hot for water clouds or even sulfurous clouds to form. Would it look more like a Cloudless Jovian?

B - This is another tricky one. Celestia displays its temperature as being around 183 K, which would render an atmosphere with possible mixture of water and ammonia clouds bringing it closer to something like a transition from water to ammonia. However, other fonts say it orbits in the HZ of Mu Arae and would rather have mostly water clouds in its atmosphere.

E - No doubts about this one too. Possible ammonia clouds with a Jupiter-like appearance.


Thanks for any help.

bdfd wrote:Hi starlight,
In fact there are some parameters to explain temperature on Earth or
another M-class planet around another stars.
1° spectral Type of star (mu Ara seems to our sun).
2° distance between star and planet (mu Ara D seem to Earth's orbit).
3° albedo (Earth's albedo = 0.30 and temperature = 260°K)
4° atmosphere with few carbon dioxide...

With these, try to put on M-class moon around Mu Ara D.

Follow this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_Arae

I hope you have helped.
Bertrand aka bdfd

Thank you so much for the information, Bertrand.
But, despite the effective temperature of the planet, given atmosphere composition and albedo, I was thinking about the temperature that only the star provides to the planet.
For example: What is the heat generated by the star that reaches D's orbit? How about B's orbit?
I'm asking this because once I figure out those values, I could use them as a base for then adding temperature caused by atmosphere composition and so on, resulting on the planet's general appearance.

Does anyone have any clue about what would those temperatures be close to?
I'm not asking for real values for I know getting them would be impossible, I'm just asking for estimate values.