Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

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Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by NoXion »

The Institute for Cosmic Engineering presents
Image

The Daemon system
(highlights)

Discovered in 2104 when an expedition ship from the Institute for Cosmic Engineering (ICE)

Daemon A
Image

Daemon A is a red dwarf star some 445.98 light years from Sol (as determined by observations of the stellar neighbourhood). As the above image illustrates, Daemon A experiences significant flaring activity. In their naivete and lack of imagination 21st century astronomers believed that such stars could not play host to life, but we will shortly see the massive error of such a view.


Daemon B
Image

This companion star is so tiny that it almost isn't a star. It only qualifies by being barely massive enough to fuse hydrogen. This star's helioseismological readings are most unusual and appear to be indicative of something strange going on at the centre. While red dwarf stars in general can burn for trillions of years in their Main Sequence, Daemon B burns so dimly that its fuel is reckoned to last nearly a quadrillion (thousand trillion) years!


Manta
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Manta is the innermost major planetary body, possessing a system of large and small moons much like the outer planets of the Solar system.


United
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United is the one and only directly habitable moon of Manta, possessing a dense (2.1 Earth atmospheres) but breathable atmosphere with a greater fraction of carbon dioxide. The surface is much drier than Earth, but the biochemically compatible local ecosystems keep the whole planet balanced in a habitable state. The lack of large oceans slows down tectonic movement and allows geothermal energy to build up to greater levels before being released. This means that volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are much more spectacular on United than they are on Earth. The local gravity is a weighty 1.65 times that of Earth thanks to United's greater radius. It is believed that United's thick atmosphere and active geomagnetism prevents the surface from being sterilised by cosmic radiation.


Wormhole to the Solar system
Image

This is the wormhole that opened up in 2102. On the other side it orbits the Sun roughly 50 Astronomical Units away. It is clearly artificial, possessing stabilising structures on the inside that are under a great deal of tension, equivalent to the mass-energy of 9 Jupiters.
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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by NoXion »

Summary Report
on the star system of
Proxima Centauri

OVERVIEW

Image

The Proxima Centauri system is centred around a small red dwarf star 4.22 light years from Sol - a stone's throw in galactic terms, but a years-long journey even with the latest revolutionary technology. The probe confirmed that the Proxima system, like Sol, possesses an Oort Cloud of dormant cometary nuclei, although one apparently more depleted due to long-term gravitational interactions with the nearby Alpha Centauri binary system. As it turns out, being a dwarf star turns out to present no problems for planetary formation, possessing as it does no less than 17 planets, starting from the innermost:


Bester

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Bester is the innermost of a pair of planets (see below), and is the third readily-habitable world to be found outside the Solar system. It is tidally locked, so the sunlight on Bester is a constant dependant on one's position on the planet. Most of the day side is taken up by a massive perpetually sunbaked desert, while the constant night side sports a large ice cap of frozen water. Most of the planet's biomass and liquid water is concentrated along the twilight band encircling the planet.


Unterra

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Unterra is another tidally locked planet, sharing Bester's orbit in its Lagrange 3 point. Unlike Bester, Unterra's biomes are limited to single-celled life and its atmosphere is scarcely breathable, although the night-side ice cap is relatively larger providing plenty of atmospheric material for potential terraformers.

Image
Bester and Unterra's relative positions


Lif

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Lif is a small rocky planet rich in metals, with considerable paraterraforming potential due to orbital distance.


Epi

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This gas giant has a highly elliptical orbit, with the resulting temperature swings creating a violently windy atmosphere. Aside from the interesting colours created by a mixture of complex organic chemicals, Epi's atmosphere is rich in helium-3 fusion fuel.


Aresca

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This world could be considered a cousin of Mars twice removed. Although it possesses a thicker atmosphere and presents a different range of surface geology, it's small size and the nature of its formation lead it to having some very Mars-like properties internally speaking - there is evidence of recent volcanic activity in the vein of that ancient planet's emanations.


Dis

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The planet of Dis is characterised by large oceans of hydrocarbon ooze separated by rocky highlands. Believed by planetologists to be a hotter, "drier" version of Titan.


Dat

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This small airless ball of rock and ice represents the singular natural satellite of Dis.


Lifthrasir

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Although unassuming from orbit, the planet of Lifthrasir is a world of ethereal beauty from the surface. Soft beige light bathes a landscape carved by the wind and twisted by a bubbling vulcanism powered by crustal hot-spots. While the atmosphere is oppressively dense like on Venus before terraformation, Lifthrasir's distance from its stellar primary means the greenhouse effect is correspondingly muted.


Kretus

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Kretus marks the beginning of the outer reaches of the Proxima Centauri star system, having a dynamic, windy atmosphere with many lightning storms that can be seen on the night side from orbit. Like the outer gas giants around Sol, Kretus has a number of large terrestrial moons.


Haperak

Image

The innermost moon of Kretus, Haperak is a highly volcanic world constantly squeezed and stretched by tidal interactions with its parent body. It has a deep but not dense sulphurous atmosphere, and its thin crust occasionally develops weak spots where lakes of magma collect themselves.


Asjuill

Image

This icy moon has a thick crust of ice surmounting a global ocean of liquid water, much like Europa. The similarity of bodies found to those found orbiting Sol has lead many planetologists to hypothesise universal laws of planetary formation.


Gelidian

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Sulcia

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Asimov

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Bradbury

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Skoll

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Clarke

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Hati

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Demeter

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Starlight

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Starlight's most puzzling features are the scattered lights that can be seen in the above image across the nightside. The Probe has been unable to determine if they are natural or artificial, as from orbit they contain features of both.


Fenris

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Radia

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Arctarcticus

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The outermost planet of the Proxima system, Arctarcticus is so far from it's stellar primary that it gets pretty much equal amounts of dim light from both it's orbital parent as well as the nearby Alpha Centauri system.


Lunarcticus

Image

---


Not a whole lot of detail (but I will provide more if the game needs it, say if someone colonises one of the bodies), but I hope you like the pretty pictures.
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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by NoXion »

Wolf 359

Image
An impression sent back by an artist on the Antarctic colonising expedition to the system

Tsuwa
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This habitable planet is tidally locked to its star, and features a permanent storm in the centre of the dayside. The Antarctic colonists plan to irrigate the more arid areas of the dayside using water melted using nuclear powered ice melting equipment on the night side feeding into a trans-continental pipeline system delivering the water where it is needed.


Da'ok
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This is a gas giant, quite far from the stellar primary, but nevertheless a potentially rich source of Helium-3 fusion fuel.


Shuji
Image

This is the largest moon of Da'ok, and although currently unsettled would make a good base of operations thanks its high metal content.
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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by Red Commissar »

OOC: Just got to say, I wish my space engine stuff looked nice like you have in your screenshots :lol:
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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by NoXion »

Do you mean Space Engine? I think that program is damn pretty, especially since it can simulate planetary surfaces better than the program I'm currently using, Celestia.

Celestia's free by the way, so if you can run Space Engine then you can certainly run that.
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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by Red Commissar »

NoXion wrote:Do you mean Space Engine? I think that program is damn pretty, especially since it can simulate planetary surfaces better than the program I'm currently using, Celestia.

Celestia's free by the way, so if you can run Space Engine then you can certainly run that.
Yeah, I know it's space engine. I'm just saying I wish it looked nice, I can never really quite get the settings to what people have when they take screenshots. Mine don't usually look as nice as I've seen with others, but then again I don't happen upon some of the nicer procedural planets that get generated.

I have Celestia too, but you can't get some of the weird planets on there since it's based on what's known, doesn't have the procedural stuff that space engine has (as far as I know at least).
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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by NoXion »

Red Commissar wrote:Yeah, I know it's space engine. I'm just saying I wish it looked nice, I can never really quite get the settings to what people have when they take screenshots. Mine don't usually look as nice as I've seen with others, but then again I don't happen upon some of the nicer procedural planets that get generated.
I've played around with it a bit, and I think that even if you don't see anything unusual it's still pretty cool - I don't know of any other program that allows you to stand on a planet orbiting a star in some far-away galaxy, and look down a valley and watch that star set between realistic-looking mountains.
I have Celestia too, but you can't get some of the weird planets on there since it's based on what's known, doesn't have the procedural stuff that space engine has (as far as I know at least).
Celestia doesn't use procedural generation, and objects on a planet's surface have to be defined with the appropriate files, otherwise a planet's surface is totally smooth once you zoom in beyond any bump maps. But, there are plenty of fictional/fanciful add-ons to be found.

If I could work out how to import Celestia add-ons into Space Engine, I might switch over completely. But for now, I think Space Engine would be more useful as a resource for later games.
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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by NoXion »

Nemesis

Image

Nemesis is a brown dwarf star, being too small to fuse hydrogen or helium, and being barely large enough to fuse deuterium. It is debated whether Nemesis is gravitationally involved with Sol and to what degree - some astronomers say that Nemesis is a distantly orbiting partner of the Sun, while others insist that it is too far away to be under much influence and is merely passing the Solar system by.


Diablo

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This is the innermost planet of the Nemesis system, and observations thus far indicate that this planet is analogous to Mercury in the Solar system, and like that planet Diablo is well placed to become a net exporter of energy and resources.


Mephisto

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This is a Venus-like planet which the ROSSO colonists are intending to terraform in the long term. At the moment it has boiling hot surface conditions of 200 degrees C, and a highly dense atmosphere composed largely of carbon dioxide.


Baal

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The only gas giant planet gracing this system, Baal is small enough to be considered in a class of its own, the tentatively-classified "gas dwarfs". This class of planetary body has a significant gaseous envelope, but have a diameter significantly smaller than the class planets like Neptune and Uranus belong to.
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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by NoXion »

Toliman A

Image

Toliman A is the nearest Sun-like star to the Solar system at 4.36 lightyears distance, forming one half of a gravitational binary with a slightly smaller and cooler partner with it's own planetary system yet to be fully mapped.


Episolar Belt

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Toliman A has a fairly substantial belt of asteroids closer to it than any planet. The asteroids in this belt have been subject to millions and billions of years of intense stellar radiation, which has generated unique mineralogical conditions within them which will repay closer study.


Asbolos

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This small, rocky and hot planet is somewhat akin to Mercury in structure, however it bears significant iron oxide deposits on the surface, indicating a metal-rich crust.


Hel

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Hel by name, hell by nature. This planet has significant volcanic activity leading to the formation of lakes and small seas of molten lava. The atmosphere is a poisonous brew of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and methane. It's active geology makes it rich in metamorphic rocks and various minerals.


Heimdal

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Svartalheim

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Vanaheim

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This hot desert planet shares some geophysical characteristics with Mars, possessing a relatively thick crust able to support truly massive volcanoes, which on Svartalheim are still active thanks to its larger mass.


Vanir

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Polyphonte

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Orius

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Agrios

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Nessus

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Muspelheim

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Midgard

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Yggdrasil

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Ghellhonus

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Amycos

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Eurytion

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Mnesimache

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Asgard

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Teleboas

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Jotunheim

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Thor

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Wodan

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Freya

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Pholus

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Re: Extrasolar Systems of the 22nd Century

Post by NoXion »

Toliman B

Image

Toliman B is the slightly smaller and cooler partner star of the Toliman binary pair, at 4.36 lightyears distance. It became fully mapped with the establishment of a colony by the Peoples' Republic of South America.


Sagan

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Daniken

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Nomad

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Neumann

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Baahki

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Strombolus

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Aeolus

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Darwin

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Hawking

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Newton

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Mephinos

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Prisceipi

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Ascelus

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Nessos

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Eutresca

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Pelops

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Witten

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Roddenberry

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Einstein

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Kuipers

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Ockels

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Titulaar

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[Should have done this ages ago...]
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