Quote from: Nostromo on Sep 17, 2016, 05:41:37 PM
Quote from: Xenomrph on Sep 17, 2016, 03:54:10 PM
Quote from: Nostromo on Sep 17, 2016, 03:33:13 AM
Quote from: Xenomrph on Sep 17, 2016, 03:28:13 AM
Quote from: Nostromo on Sep 17, 2016, 03:15:35 AM
One last thought, that website that says Calpamos is 117,000km in diameter, is that canon/confirmed...accurate whatever it's called. The diameter of Calpamos was never mentioned in the CMFM or WYR? I should buy these 2 books already...
As SM mentioned, Calpamos' size is pointed out in the USCM Tech Manual (the book refers to it as "Zeta 2 IV", the 4th planet in the Zeta 2 Reticuli system), but I don't remember the exact number off the top of my head. I can check it in a little bit, though.
Seriously? The diameter is in there? Please find it. Thx Gold for the link I will check too if I can find it.
Sorry for the delay.
Page 137 of the CMTM says Calpamos is "a Jovian supergiant - a brown dwarf protostar - notable for its relatively low albedo and a well developed ring system. Zeta 2 IV has a mass of 1.899 x 10^25 metric tons (approx. 10 Jovian masses) and an equatorial diameter of 306,400 km".
Awesome. Whoever wrote or gave him that info for the CMTM back in 1996 did a great job! They really did their research.
Exactly what I found in my research too. That really is a Jovian Super Giant - borderline brown dwarf protostar with a 306,400km diameter or approx. 2.2x the diameter of Jupiter. Not sure about the Mass, I'm just talking about the size.
Thx for the info this clears a whole lot and a 12100km sized moon or moons make much more sense now. Great stuff.
It could be because the CMTM was written in I think 1997. In September of 1996 a discovery was made of a hot jupiter type planet around ζ2 due to observed radial velocity shifts of the star, (The purported planet had a mass of .27 Jupiter, and a 18.9 day orbit, and was 0.14 - 0.55 au from the star, which would mean human perceptible day and night cycle with very bright daylight.) But the discovery was quickly retracted as the signal was shown to be caused by pulsations of the star itself.
Now we know that ζ2 (which is pretty much identical to our sun (99% of the mass, 90% of the size)) has a debris field around it, but it's asymmetric in shape and we know ζ2 isn't what's making it asymmetric. It is probably a planet. So if they want to be accurate, canon writers should take that into account. The perturbing planet can have a mass no greater than twice that of Jupiter and is orbiting with a periastron (clostest distance to ζ2) around 150−250 AU from the star (250 times the distance between our sun and Earth). That means it's 3-5 times further away than Pluto is from our sun.
Pluto at the surface has as much light at noon as we have on Earth just after sunset. This hypothetical planets' available light would range from night/starlit to pitch black. The fact that we are talking about a hypothetical S/2039 (HD20807 IV) 2 or moon of the planet would mean it's just a tiny bit brighter as the planet itself would reflect light onto the moon (albeit with a low albedo like the CMTM stated way back in the 90's)
Whoever's writing the canon for these movies should take that into account (if they want to be that accurate). But the fact that the ACMTM got it so close is amazing and speaks volumes of the knowledge or researching ability of whoever wrote it. To realise a jovian gasgiant so far out of ζ2, calling out the low albedo, etc. It's surprisingly accurate research.
OT: It reminds me of the depths of Dan Aykroyd's research in 1982 before he wrote Ghostbusters with all that equipment and technobabble. esp that genuine article: "On the quantum mechanics of anomalous phenomena" he based it all on.