Celestia Forums

Wasn't quite sure where to put this question... maybe purgatory is where it belongs anyway...



Is it possible?

I have been trying different things with the new barycenter code, such as double gas giants, and yesterday it occurred to me a double ring system. I've put a little thought on it, and came up with the planet you see in the image. The rings texture are not the same; in fact, they are the opposite, so the individual ringlets don't actually touch each other.
I have both scientific and coding questions:

Scientific: Is it possible to rings to form that way? Perhaps a highly eccentric moon could break up and form the rings in such a inclinated plane? And could there be two competing ring systems, or they would/will eventually merge into a single one?

Coding: The unusual pattern in the planet's surface was a suprise to me. There are actually two planets being rendered in that image, and they have the same orbital data, except for the obliquity, which has been reversed, as follows:



The problem: It is completely bugged. If you move the planet around, one of the rings might disappear behind the planet, or become fuzzy and patched. I've tried coding the second planet as a moon, and several other combinations, but the bugs become even worse. This is the most "stable" code. Is there a way to display multiple rings over a single planet?

I think such rings are difficult to exist.
If two inclined moons are destroied at the same time, they can become two inclined fragments belts. But they should have more spread shape.I think fragments will later get together above the equator of the planet and become sharper ring but I have no confidence in my expecsion.

The planets in Celestia are not a perfect sphere. It seems a polyhedron. If you rewrite the radius of one of the planets, the surfaces of the planets will not overlap and the pattern will disappear, I think.

Have you tried making the innermost planet smaller, to avoid the weird texture effects?

Yes, I've tried, but if I do that, one of the rings always seems to be behind the planets. Overlapping the surfaces was the only way I found to make the rings seem 'nearly' normal.