Starting this up again

[Joe]

I was very keen on this when we attempted to restart the MAS before, and it's a shame that it's fallen back into activity. So if nobody disagrees, I'd like to assume leadership of the MAS and get back to working on our Solar System!

[Joe]

I've realised that a lot of the data that was calculated for Micras' orbit (that I'm taking from the wiki) and such will have to be thrown out.

For Micras to be in an orbit with a semi-major axis of 236 million km (approx. 1.6 AU), and to have an orbital period of 555.9996 days, the star would have to be 1.245 Solar masses, which would give it a lifetime of just 5.7 billion years. Micras would only be in the habitable zone for somewhere in the region of 3.5 billion years (the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and humans are very recent).

I think a more plausible answer would be to have Atos be 1.1 Solar masses, which gives a year of 603 Micran days, where the day is equivalent to 28.06 hours on Earth (as per the wiki). If we scale the Micran day to 24 hours, then the year becomes even longer at around 700 days. Alternatively, we could just use the data of Earth (but where's the fun in that? ), and make the year be 365.25 days (or exactly 312 Micran days if we revise the day length to be 28.1 Earth hours), the semi-major axis be 1 AU, and have a star identical to the Sun.

Another option would be to have a smaller star than the Sun. At around 0.8 Solar masses, we would get a year of 182.5 days (slightly over double the orbit of Mercury, but around a much cooler star), or half an Earth year (which would explain why the FMF World Cup is held biennially ), if Micras was placed at a distance of 0.68 AU from Atos. This would give us a much larger time within the habitable zone, approaching nearly 20 billion years.

Does anybody have any thoughts?

[Ryker]

Wow...

[Yastreb]

I have occasionally trawled through MAS data trying to rustle up an Atocentric form of astrology (where I'm from, there are a lot of superstitious hippies who will descend into rioting if Eos goes retrograde). I once stuck some alchemical attributes to objects in the Atos system as follows:

Atos, whose metal is gold and is concerned with the heart
Tarsica, whose metal is silver and is concerned with the brain
Eos, whose metal is copper and is concerned with the kidneys
Pyros, whose metal is iron and is concerned with the gall bladder
Indigo, whose metal is mercury and is concerned with the lungs
Chrysos, whose metal is tin and is concerned with the liver
Thalassa, whose metal is zinc and is concerned with the thyroid
Nephele, whose metal is lead and is concerned with the spleen

(I left out the three outer planets, as they're probably invisible to the naked eye. I don't even know if the list I worked from is still the official MAS selection of planets)

I also had a stab at making some constellations from the star map, but I didn't get very far. I did settle on extracting the stars of the upper 1/16th fraction of magnitude for the purpose, which was a trial in itself.

I don't expect any of this woo to become official as the MAS is a strictly scientific body, but the point is that your data is still relevant to such projects and I welcome any efforts to improve on it. I guess the main thing I need is the inclination of Micras' celestial equator from the Atos ecliptic (if any) so I can use the annual path of the latter through the stars to identify which constellations to use for a zodiac.

[Orion]

I'd love to see this get going again too, but there never seems to be that much interest.

Also, if you extend the ellipse of Micras' orbit where the elongation is extended, you can also achieve both a longer year and greater periods of climate cooling.

[Joe]

It's not the eccentricity of the orbit that's the problem, it's that Micras would move out of the habitable zone while multicellular life was still in a very basic stage.

[pawelabrams]

You were faster than me – I've been thinking about reactivation since November

Your last option on our system seems worth elaborating. We have only one planet closer to Atos, which would definitely fit inside Micras orbit... I'll be happy to help with this stuff!

[Orion]

It's not the eccentricity of the orbit that's the problem, it's that Micras would move out of the habitable zone while multicellular life was still in a very basic stage.

Yes, that's true. But then we're not strictly adhering to reality here are we?
As close as possible to reality would be nice, but it may throw a lot of things off if it's retconned too much.

However, as Pawel said, your last option with making the sun smaller seems the most viable option. This will, however, completely screw up numerous calendars, which will then have to be retooled.

[Joe]

I don't know of any micronations that actually use the Micran 556-day year for their calendars. I'm trying to retcon things as little as possible, luckily, we only have the orbital info for Micras on the wiki, so it will only affect one of the planets!

[Senya]

I don't know of any micronations that actually use the Micran 556-day year for their calendars

I assumed we only used real dates or ASC (whatever the hell that means)

[Orion]

ASC = Apollo Standard Calendar


In regards to constellations, Bill created a Celestia mod that had all the constellations mapped out. I believe Spangle translated these into PNG files at one point. I'll have to search and see if I can find them.

[Benkern]

I thought ASC stood for ab sectora condita.

[Orion]

Oh? I remember it by what we first called it. Probably it was changed at some point to fancy Latin.

[Ryker]

I thought ASC stood for ab sectora condita.

That's what I learned.

[Rasmus]

I thought it stood for A Shiretit Counts.