Cosmology

Cosmology

Overview

The solar system of the Eternal Campaign has a binary star, Perc-Mead. The stars are quite close together; it is a very rare thing to see them separate. Usually they look like two globes with thick, bright, and apparently continuous star stuff between them. The two suns are of equal mass. Each is smaller than Earth's sun. They rotate in the plane of the all the planets (the ecliptic). A few people claim that they see a difference in color between the two, but most (on both planets) say they look the same.

Back on Teth, the year is 500 days long,and the day is 24 Teth hours. There is one moon. Axial tilt is 23.5 degrees. The distance of Teth from the Suns is very similar to Earth's distance from Sol. The planet's climate is slightly colder than Earth's.

There are 5 known planets in this solar system. From closest to suns out; Styx [no moons], Lothar [1 moon], 1st Asteroid Shell, Teth [1 moon], 2nd Asteriod Shell, IV [3 moons] and V [7 moons].

Teth

Since the suns rotate in the plane of the ecliptic, light flux from the suns occurs when one sun passes directly in front of the other. When one sun directly obscures the other, only 40 percent of the usual level of light reaches the surface. This cycle takes exactly one Teth Hour (also called a Universal Hour), which consists of 50 minutes of constant sunslight, five minutes of waning transition, and five minutes of waxing transition. The waning transition is called the Dim and the waxing, the Enlightening. Tethians have a great sense of time, and clocks are uncommon.

There are 5 known planets in this solar system. From closest to suns out; Styx [no moons], Lothar [1 moon], 1st Asteroid Shell, Teth [1 moon], 2nd Asteriod Shell, IV [3 moons] and V [7 moons].

Lothar

Forget about the Time Bubble for the moment.

Lothar's day is 30 Universal Hours long. It has a 195 day year. Its moon, Arcadia, travels around the planet every three days. The axial tilt of Lothar is only 5.5 degrees.

Now introduce the Time Bubble which surrounds only Lothar and does not speed up its travel around the suns.

The Bubble speeds the rotation of the planet by 10 (and compensates for the extra cetrifugal forces).

What does someone on Arcadia perceive down on Lothar? The Lotharian day appears to be 3 hours long.

What does someone on Lothar see in the Heavens Above?

A year that appears to be 1,950 Lotharian days long. It sounds like much but with no real seasons it does not matter.

The period of binary sun rotation is up to to 600 minutes. That means 500 minutes of constant sunslight, 50 minutes of the Dim, and 50 minutes of the Enlightening. Since they are closer, the suns look bigger and brighter from Lothar than from Teth.

The moon appears to revolve about every 30 days.

The climate is very much the same all about the planet. No large formations of ice naturally exist on the world. With only two states of water, things mild. The weather is very even and predictable. Though at the either poles it is temperate and is said to snow occasionally, snow does not last for long.

But in one exception, Lothar does experience severe monsoons from time to time, especially in the great ocean that separates the continent of the Old Empire from the new continent. During monsoon weather, travel over ocean is quite risky. This weather is not controlled by forces like those on Earth or Teth. Eternal Druids do not feel that these monsoons are exactly "natural."

The amount of energy that strikes Lothar's Temporal Bubble as sunslight is not equal to the the amount of energy that reaches the planet's surface. The discrepancy can be accounted for by the action of the Bubble. This also explains the uniform climate, the absence of ice caps, and the perception that the suns are the same color on both Lothar and Teth.

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