Celestia Forums

I am creating a fictional planetary system around Tarazed (gamma Aquilae) of which I will post some images in a moment. These are for reference in my sci-fi novel. I have figured out the alignment of the planets so that the starship that goes there in 2797 will see them as I described them in the upcoming novel.

I am having one small problem however.

Garden:Tarazed IV and Inferno:Tarazed IVb are a mutually tidally locked system with a rotational period of 30.003h. The planet and moon therefore eclipse each other each local day. I am having some problems with alignment however since I cannot seem to figure out (by trial and error since my math skills suck) how to get the moon to eclipse the location [180W 0] on the planet at local noon, which should always happen throughout the planet's orbital period (meaning, I suppose, that the moon's orbit and the planet's rotation need both be the solar periods and not the sidereal?) Garden's orbital position is otherwise accurate.

If anyone can help me wiggle this planet and moon into their proper places I would greatly appreciate it. I will post my current code for the planets in a moment.

You're describing two objects orbiting around a common barycenter.

In an SSC file, one uses a ReferencePoint for this. An example in Celestia is Pluto and its moon Charon. Briefly, one would define a ReferencePoint with a particular orbit, then define the two planets orbiting around that ReferencePoint on opposite "sides" of it.

Does this help?

Very cool pictures! Where did you get or how did you make those textures? They're very cool!

In response to your question, you could create a reference point as Selden suggested (recommended) OR create an object with the class "invisible" and have the planets/moons orbit around it the same way as a reference point.

Seldon: thank you for your quick reply. I will give that a shot next time I work on this.

InconspicuousBarrel (nice name): I made the textures in Photoshop with a variety of "mess around until something planety squirts out" techniques. Some are from scratch, others involved brutalizing poor helpless existing Celestia planets with Photoshop filters and layering them atop each other in gruesome ways. PETT (People for the Ethical Treatment of Textures) have left severed horse heads on my doorstep by way of expressing their distaste for my callous disregard for the suffering of poor Iapetus and Dione--to say nothing of what I did to Mars.

Thanks, that seems to have done it. Eclipse-noon over 0W at noon-eclipse, every day, all across the orbit.

Here are Inferno and Garden behaving themselves:





And all the planets in the system:

Looks really good! When will it be released?

-M-

A week, I hope. I have all the planets done, just gotta throw together some moons and then go label surface features.

It'll be about 250 MB.

Stunning. Absolutely stunning. I like your version of "throw together."

-M-

I noticed you named one of the planets Iowa. I'm curious as to what it's like, as I live in southeastern Iowa (the state, not the planet).

Strangely, I named that planet in 1996 long before I had any idea I would move to Iowa (in 2001). The name is pronounced "EE-OH-AH", Spanish sort of pronunciation.

It's described as a very flat planet (hence the name) with less than a kilometer vertical relief. Atmosphere is Earthlike but with too much CO2, and the biosphere is a sort of algal monoculture resembling grass. I'll dig up more detailed info later.

As for the planets... in order: Namaskar, Dragonfire, Honshu, Garden, Iowa, Purgatory, Rockball, Castle, Cieloazul, Ashura, Aoraki, Esperanza, Yetzirah, Yesod, Eshq, Aphrodite, Ananda, Pratyahara, Wanderer.

I am done with the textures except for Garden which needs special attention. After that, I just need to name surface features for the rest of the system and I'm done. I'm looking at 99 textures totaling 152MB, 20 .ssc files, and a .stc file.

Released. See "Add-on Releases" forum.

A bit smaller than I'd expected since I converted to .jpgs.