LazarusLong42
First Post
I can probably help you out at least a bit, Joshua. It depends, I suppose, on what specific questions you're asking.
Remember that for a fantasy world, you can fudge things a little bit even if the details are very important to you. For instance, the world I'm in the process of creating has one moon which sits at the first Lagrange point, and is thus always a full moon. Now, that never happens in reality (a small spacecraft kept in place my periodic thurster boosts could do it, but not a moon)... but the gods have their place in the game too, and Rinell, the god associated with that moon, is a pretty steady guy. And he keeps his moon in the L1 orbit.
That's a bit of fudging, like I said--but it's explained directly by a combination of deific and physical interactions.
As far as what you're discussing: You're going to have to have an extremely large gas giant, or more likely a brown dwarf, to make this work at all. Even if we postulate a planet double Jupiter's size but in Mars's orbit, I suspect you won't have enough re-radiated heat from the planet to create anything near an Earth-like climate. Consider that Io's mean surface temperature is 135 K, and Titan's--even with its thick atmopsphere--is only about 95 K. (For reference, liquid nitrogen is about 77 K in temperature, and room temperature is ~295 K). Io's of course, has its geothermal flows that dramatically increase surface temperature at some points.
Consider also that in order for the re-radiated heat to make a difference, the moon has to be very close--say within Io's range. Now consider that some 30-40% of the moon will never see sunlight, because, unfortunately, any large moon of such a large planet is going to be tide-locked, and most of the side facing the planet will be either eclipsed or in shadow most of the time.
Seasons would be unknown on this moon; its revolution period would be, presumably, on a scale of 1-2 days, after which it returns to the same point in its revolution. Axial tilt or no, there wouldn't be enough variation in temperature with that happening.
OK, now that I've told you all the problems--as I said, what specifically do you want to know?
Remember that for a fantasy world, you can fudge things a little bit even if the details are very important to you. For instance, the world I'm in the process of creating has one moon which sits at the first Lagrange point, and is thus always a full moon. Now, that never happens in reality (a small spacecraft kept in place my periodic thurster boosts could do it, but not a moon)... but the gods have their place in the game too, and Rinell, the god associated with that moon, is a pretty steady guy. And he keeps his moon in the L1 orbit.
That's a bit of fudging, like I said--but it's explained directly by a combination of deific and physical interactions.
As far as what you're discussing: You're going to have to have an extremely large gas giant, or more likely a brown dwarf, to make this work at all. Even if we postulate a planet double Jupiter's size but in Mars's orbit, I suspect you won't have enough re-radiated heat from the planet to create anything near an Earth-like climate. Consider that Io's mean surface temperature is 135 K, and Titan's--even with its thick atmopsphere--is only about 95 K. (For reference, liquid nitrogen is about 77 K in temperature, and room temperature is ~295 K). Io's of course, has its geothermal flows that dramatically increase surface temperature at some points.
Consider also that in order for the re-radiated heat to make a difference, the moon has to be very close--say within Io's range. Now consider that some 30-40% of the moon will never see sunlight, because, unfortunately, any large moon of such a large planet is going to be tide-locked, and most of the side facing the planet will be either eclipsed or in shadow most of the time.
Seasons would be unknown on this moon; its revolution period would be, presumably, on a scale of 1-2 days, after which it returns to the same point in its revolution. Axial tilt or no, there wouldn't be enough variation in temperature with that happening.
OK, now that I've told you all the problems--as I said, what specifically do you want to know?
