Engineers Have anyone seen an Engineer base in a daylight?
- Thread starter Chris Simon
- Start date
I've only been to 4 engineers so far, and they were all dark, or very poorly lit.
Tod McQuinn's base is on a 31.8 day rotation moon.
Farseer's base is 2.1 day rotation.
Martuuk's base 18.8 day rotation.
The Dweller's base is 28.3 day rotation.
So some of them will be dark for a week or 2, but Farseer's base should be light every other day, if I understand it correctly.
Tod McQuinn's base is on a 31.8 day rotation moon.
Farseer's base is 2.1 day rotation.
Martuuk's base 18.8 day rotation.
The Dweller's base is 28.3 day rotation.
So some of them will be dark for a week or 2, but Farseer's base should be light every other day, if I understand it correctly.
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It's dawn at Black Hide.
The moon of Tod McQuinn's base is tidally locked to its planet, which again is tidally locked to the only sun Wolf 397.
So, if I do not understand anything completely wrong, then Tod 'The Blaster' will never get a sunburn in his workshop.
So, if I do not understand anything completely wrong, then Tod 'The Blaster' will never get a sunburn in his workshop.
You do understand it wrong.
The planet always faces one side to the sun, so the other side is perpetually dark.
The moon always faces one side to the planet, so the other side is perpetually out of sight from the planet's surface.
But that moon still orbits around the planet - so it can and most likely does have a day/night cycle. If its orbit is in the same plane as that of the planet, its day will last exactly the same length as the time it takes to orbit the planet.
Thank you for clarifying this!
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I'm glad to hear things are changing. 
I can't wait to go back there, tonight. (Which, I fear, will be night, again. )
I can't wait to go back there, tonight. (Which, I fear, will be night, again.
)
This raises an interesting point, if the moon is in an orbit at 90% to the reference plane of the system and the parent planet is tidally locked, wouldn't that mean that one hemisphere of the moon would never get exposed to the star's light?
[alien]
Exactly. And you would see an unchanging half-moon from the planet's surface
That's a tricky one. I'm pretty sure the orientation of the moon's orbit would be fixed relative to the planet's centre of gravity, so it would vary relative to the star as the planet orbited. I'm finding it hard to put into words without illustrating it, and I suck at illustrations.
Yup. The moon's axis of rotation would stay in alignment with the galaxy as a whole as the planet went around the star - the star would appear directly over one pole at one point in the planets orbit, before spiralling down towards the equator and back up to the other pole as the planet reached the other side of its orbit. This is essentially what you would see from Uranus, except that the axial tilt isn't exactly 90°, meaning that the Sun is never directly over the poles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Axial_tilt
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Yes but I was referring to the situation if the planet was tidally locked therefore as it moved round it's orbit the orientation with respect to the star would be constant. Of course the moon would have to be in a circumpolar orbit I suppose and I don't know how possible this combination might be, my maths isn't up to it these days (if it ever was!) but I suspect gravitationally it wouldn't work. Naturally the moon wouldn't be tidally locked I suppose but that wasn't what I was referring to.
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