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Alpha-Element — Gailis
by-nc-nd
Published: 2013-02-23 20:17:56 +0000 UTC; Views: 8812; Favourites: 100; Downloads: 597
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Description
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hello again fellow viewers. i return again with yet another planet in my alpha-element universe, gailis, previously aeron, and its the planet of wind.
i love how thisone came out and its probably the best looking one yet! i love the angle on the rings and spent alot of time on them and the lighting.
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Gailis, is a massive gas giant planet orbiting well outside of its star's habitable zone at a distance between that of jupiter's and saturn's in our system. the planet has a mass and radius roughly 4.3 and 1.6 times that of jupiter. one day on the planet lasts 13.6 earth hours. this rapid rotation stirs huge storms in the planets massive upper atmosphere along with fierce winds of 800kmh. these storms then rage on for hundreds of years or until they collide with one another and dissipate. the planet's atmosphere is also tensed with lightning that makes those seen on earth look like tiny sparks compared with a firework.
the planet has a large and extensive ring system composed of rock and large portions of ice giving it its white appearance.
the planet has two large moons:
-Ares is a moon roughly twice the size as ours and is the closest moon to the planet (moon to the lower left). it is a cold world with many fractures that formed early in its history. it is in a 5:3 resonance with the outer moon ovius, completing 5 orbits for every 3 ovius makes. it is also responsible for the sparse area near the outer edge of the ring system, as the material in this area experience orbital decay from unstable resonances with the moon. it orbits gailis every 15 days.
-Ovius ('O' - 'vye' - 'us') is a moon slightly smaller than mars and is the furthest from the planet (moon to upper right). it is world covered in rock with some ice and has an atmosphere that is 1/50 the density of earth's and has an average surface temp of -84 celsius. it is in 3:5 resonance with the moon ares, completing 3 orbits for every 5 ares makes. it orbits gailis every 25 days.
its star is aprida, a large and hot blue white star that is 1.3 times the size of ours. the planet takes roughly 19.6 earth years to orbit the star and is tilted at 17.5 degrees relative to its orbit. gailis is the only planet in the system. there is an asteroid belt within the planet's orbit and an extensive comet belt outside the orbit.
the planet actually formed closer in at the outer edge of the star's habitable zone and there once was another large jovian outside the planet's orbit. because of this, the planet formed with alot of water vapour in it's atmosphere, giving it a grey-ish appearance. however, over time, planetary migration caused gailis to migrate outward to its current position and also caused the other jovian planet to be ejected from the system.
this system is forbidden as there is a strange energy within the planet's atmosphere.
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stats:
-6000px x 3000px
-12 hours of work
-390 mb psd. file
-roughly 60 layers
programs:
-cosmic pack 3 actions and textures
-photoshop cs5
new methods:
-higher ring angle
-lighting for the rings
-better image lighting
-better shadows
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so, enjoy the image and let me now what you guys think!
and remember that comments, critiques, constructive critisim and favs are always welcome and appreciated!
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This Artwork is © 2013 Alpha-Element.
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Comments: 16
no, its sci-fi. but i through in a little science facts to help the planet seem more realistic.
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I like it enough that I downloaded a copy into my wallpaper folder. Sometimes when the lights are low you need to switch to a dark background.
A question regarding the intersection of the habitable zone (usually the residence of rocky planets) with rings of ice: Gas giants can migrate, but wouldn't the orbital ice melt in full daylight?
Not to give you grief, but rather if you've got a rationale or an example it'd make for interesting reading.
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glad you like my work.
now for an explanation:
i mostly likely worded it wrong where you may think it's actually in the habitable zone, but its not. however, even if it were in the habitable zone near the outer edge, there still would be ice. remember that mars is also near the outer edge of our star's habitable zone, but the water on it's surface is frozen. and mars still has somewhat of an atmosphere, trapping some heat on its surface.
the asteroids in the rings are in the cold vacuum of space where the temperate is much colder than that on mars. if even earth didn't have an atmosphere, all of the water on it's surface would still freeze. so an atmosphere is a major component in determining the state of water on a planet's surface as well as temperate, pressure and chemicals dissolved within it.
hope this helps.
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O.K. I hope THIS helps, as I'm not trying to trash you here.
The premise of "the cold vacuum of space" is a faulty cliche. Vacuum isn't cold or hot; vacuum insulates. If you have a Thermos bottle it retains heat -- or keeps cold -- thanks to a partial vacuum between the inner & outer walls. You may also be missing the fact that boiling and sublimation points plummet as pressure is reduced. Hard vacuum in space is virtually NO pressure, so water boils and/or sublimes away at temperatures at which it would be solid ice in standard earth air pressure.
Boiling away liquids & subliming away solids will cool a body in a vacuum by carrying away heat, but short of that transport you aren't losing thermal energy very quickly because there's simply no place for it to go. Sure, you can also radiate heat via infra-red radiation, but only very slowly. In the Earth/Mars neighborhood that heat loss is a LOT slower than the buildup in direct sunlight. This is why of the two extremes, the management of heat in a vacuum has been the greater issue for orbital missions. It's also why most satellites are coated with reflective materials to minimize heat buildup under direct sunlight.
Let's test this with the moon. No atmosphere and direct sunlight just as you'd have in Earth orbit or an Earth with no atmosphere. The moon has no surface water, no surface ice: it's dessicated. The only sites on the moon targeted for water exploration are in the ground in deep polar craters that never see direct sunlight. So no, there'd be no exposed ice on a rotating Earth without an atmosphere -- daylight would drive it off into the vacuum. Only if the Earth had no atmosphere and was tidally locked with the sun would that be possible, and only on the side of perpetual night. Direct sunlight and hard vacuum equals no exposed ice at all.
Let's move on to Mars. Mars only has surface ice at the pole where it receives rays on the slant. That reduces radiation per given surface area relative to the equator. The atmosphere you mentioned also comes into play but only slightly, as those rays pass through more of it -- also thanks to the slant. In the "winter" the cap grows somewhat because of the increase in said slant just as the north pole grows during the winter on Earth. The angle of sunlight on the Martian pole provides LESS heat than full direct sunlight or there would be no exposed ice.
The proper comparison for Mars orbit is thus to the equator: direct sunlight. No exposed water or ice there. The atmosphere regulates the temperature somewhat, so the highs of direct sunlight and the lows of night on the hard surface are moderated, but only slightly. The atmosphere scatters some small amount of the light, so the intensity of the direct sunlight is a bit less. The atmosphere also provides some small amount of pressure that raises the boiling and sublimation points relative to a vacuum. So in orbit, you get more heat from the sun during the day: hotter. In orbit, the boiling and sublimation points are lower: less heat needed to convert to water to a gas. Both of those conditions mean that exposed water or ice in orbit above Mars would be even shorter lived than on the equator -- where there's no exposed surface water or ice. No exposed water in Mars orbit and no exposed ice in Mars orbit.
In your own words "Gailis, is a massive gas giant planet orbiting at the outer boundary of its star's habitable zone." The habitable zone is dictated by the amount of radiation a planet receives from it's star. The zone in our neighborhood isn't out toward Saturn, which has ice rings, so it's inside that. Jupiter has rings, but they are not ice because ice can't survive in an orbital vacuum there -- they are primarily dust. The highest estimate for the habitable zone in the Sol system is somewhere around 3AU. Jupiter is at 5.2AU, well outside that, nowhere near the outer boundary. So if your planet is on the boundary or just outside it, it's getting more energy from its star than Jupiter is from the sun. At best it's going to have Jupiter styled rings with no ice, not Saturn styled rings with ice in them.
Finally, just to be thorough, "extensive ring system composed of rock and large portions of ice giving it its white appearance." White appearance means exposed ice that is reflecting light -- which in orbit is full sunlight under a hard vacuum. Not gonna happen anywhere near the habitable zone or even just outside it.
I don't mean to trash you over this: the art is pretty good and the problem with your explanation was basically just one bad assumption, not your reasoning. Drop the erroneous cliche of "the cold vacuum of space" and add the lowering of boiling and sublimation points at low pressure and you'd have gotten it right.
More importantly, it's a quick fix. Just change "at the outer boundary of its star's habitable zone" to "well outside the water-ice line" and you're in the clear.
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ok, from a scientific stand point, you win by a landslide.
but the planet is sci-fi and so going slightly out of line of what science says is normal.
but i will make the change you stated so thanks!
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Hey, glad to help and glad you took it as intended.
I initially asked because if you DID actually figure out how to plausibly get ice rings near the habitable zone it would be AWESOME. The closest believable scheme I've seen so far for life with ice rings is a moon with life in volcanic vents, along the lines of Europa in 2010 Odyssey II but orbiting a Saturnian or Neptunian planet rather than a Jovian one.
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it may be vaguely possible, to get ice rings near the hz, if the planet had a low tilt as to reduce the area of the rings affected by stellar radiation, or to have a lot of antifreezing compounds within the rings to lower the boiling and melting point of the water. but by then, the rings would probably not be mainly water ice anymore. even after adding in these factors, the ice in the rings would still most likely be vapourized into space.
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Anti-freeze in orbiting ice?
That's an interesting proposition.
I don't THINK that would improve the survivability of ice in the Earth/Mars/Jupiter region because easier to melt (anti-freeze) means water and liquids don't usually last in a vacuum. Anti-freeze is also actually anti-boil: it elevates the boiling point, so the liquid might last a bit longer than otherwise. However, for ice rings, we need it to STAY ice.
On the other hand, anti-freeze COULD push the Habitable Zone further out than usual... imagine tiny chunks of ice around a planet akin to Saturn that are slushy liquid inside.
Anti-freeze is usually composed of organic molecules, too(!). I'm not sure if that's even possible, but there do seem to be better biological anti-freezes discovered fairly frequently these days.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
This has been fun. Looking forward to your next planet(s)!
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oh crap, did i say anti-freeze!? i really am an idiot! anti-freeze means that it won't freeze! i was really trying to say compounds that increase the m and b points of the water and that also reduce the effect of the vacuum on it.
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Hey, we're essentially batting around thermodynamics so cut yourself some slack. Besides, anti-freeze in RING ice is something I've never thought of nor seen proposed in theory or fiction and that's a bonus.
Dissolved material in water will usually lower the freezing point and elevate the boiling point. Anti-freeze is exceptionally good at doing both repeatedly without breaking down or salting out.
Moving the melting point of a solid crystalline lattice UP is a trickier subject.
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i guess we've reached the limit of our explanations. we should probably stop before we end up continuing this forever.
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Unless one of us suddenly figures out a valid way to cheat ring ice that close to the conventional HZ, I'd call this one spent.
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