Saturday, July 27, 2013

The Oasis System

In Chapter 4 Ensign Eris Dantora reports to Captain Dayson what she finds in the Oasis system as the Seventh Fleet drops out of FTL and approaches the newly discovered star.

Oasis is a K4 orange dwarf, with two inner terrestrials, two large gas giants, a thin asteroid belt, and three more smaller gas giants.  Two "snowballs" (large Kuiper belt objects) orbit farthest out.

So it looks like this:

(_)  Oasis
.    Oasis I
.    Oasis II
O    Oasis III (named Ember by the crew)
O    Oasis IV
:::::::  Asteroid Field
o    Oasis V
o    Oasis VI
o    Oasis VII
.     Oasis VIII  (dwarf planet)
.     Oasis IX  (dwarf planet)

The gas giant Ember winds up having four moons larger than Earth, as Ember itself is 11 times the mass of Jupiter.  My reasoning for this is simple.  The sun, when it ignites, blows the volatile gasses out into the outer solar system.  Since a K4 has a weaker solar wind than a G2 (like our sun), I think the first gas giant will form closer in toward the star.  Not only that, I think since the volatiles will have less outward pressure, that first gas giant will be a doozy.  The second might really be large as well.  The next planet I don't think could form because of the two massive gas giants constantly disturbing that orbit, preventing real accretion.

The next three planets are basically Uranus and Neptune types, cold, distant, made of the leftovers from III and IV.  VIII and IX are just Kuiper Belt objects, just as Pluto, Charon, Xena, Sedna, etc.

Planet IV will have a massive ring system, although that really doesn't come to play in my first book.  It might in later books. 

V, VI, and VII are really not of much interest.  I'll plan on them having moons, maybe some use will come of those at some point.  Gas giants tend to like their moons if our solar system is any example. 

So that is my thinking on the Oasis System.  Any thoughts?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please feel free to leave your critiques or constructive comments.