3 ms·

Very clever animation. Makes you wonder what else we're missing on like multiple moons.

• warfangle 17y ago
  What I want to know is what things would be like if we were a tidally locked moon of a gas giant, which, due to the ambient heat of the giant and proximity to the sun was still livable. There was a scifi book about this - cannot remember the author - but the satellite was close enough to the gas giant that it was extremely elongated. I'm more curious about the "what if" scenario - what if it were more spherical than spheroid (like earth); what if it was livable (at least on one hemisphere): what would the seasons be like? what would the weather be like? Given that it's tidally locked, the day would be determined by its orbital period, not its rotational period; how would this affect the length of the day, especially if it has an orbit which is not parallel to the gas giant's orbital plane? Eclipses would be much more prevalent, I'm sure. How would people on such a planet determine their calendar? Phases of the planet? Hmm.. It would be interesting to seriously calculate all of this out. Unfortunately, my experience in astronomy approaches nil asymptotically :)