Re: CONCULTURE: First thoughts on Ayeri calendar system

Hey!

Still without computer (I'm having it repaired ATM), so I can't take the
advantages of having an email program to handle the mails from the list. I
hope I'll get my comp back tomorrow or on Wednesday -- I need it urgently
for school!

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 19:16:57 -0500, Erich Kummerfeld <elk03@...>
wrote:

>Quoting Carsten Becker <naranoieati@...>:
>
>Having two moons instead of one will do very, very strange things to the tides
>of your planet, if it has water.  When the moons align there will be
>incredibly severe high and low tides which would likely be cataclysmic, so
>some sort of interesting ecological system would no doubt evolve at the
>shorelines to take advantage of this.  The two moons would also do strange
>things to the currents in the oceans.  If you want to develop a realistic
>world then you should calculate not only the moons distances and their
>periods, but also their masses and the effect each individually would have on
>the oceans.
Oh my, I'm not that good at biology et al. I think one moon would really be
easier to handle!

>As far as eclipses are concerned, again, it's your world so whatever you
>think's reasonably _is_ reasonable, but keep in mind that the moons to not
>orbit on a flat plane.
Of course they do not orbit on a flat plane! Even the planets don't do that
AFAIK.

>Sorry about the loose format of the message and run-on sentences.
Never mind, I'm German, so I'm supposed to be used to that :P



On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 01:45:52 +0000, Simon Richard Clarkstone
<s.r.clarkstone@...> wrote:

>3-body systems are chaotic and hence (in the general case) not stable.
>Generally, the smallest of the three bodies ends up either hitting
>something or getting flung away.  One _can_ have a reasonably stable
>system if either:
>* There is one huge body with much smaller bodies orbiting it. (e.g. the
>solar system)  Both  moons would be too small to be easily seen.
>* two bodies orbit each other closely with one much further away. (e.g.
>the sun-moon-earth system)  Either one moon would be too small/far away
>to be easily seen, or the moons would form a pair, and hence stay close
>to one another in the sky (interesting but not what you are describing).
OK, so *one* moon is really more easily to handle.

>I can see a problem brewing here, though there is nothing _per se_ wrong
>with the above.  In general, make sure you know whether you are
>measuring positions/angles relative to the fixed stars, or relative to
>some existing line (e.g. planet-sun).  Find an astronomer to help with
>all the difficult bits, being at university helps. (but I don't even
>know if you're 8 or 80)
I don't know any astronomer. A Physics teacher might help, but it sounds
like a hell of much Physics, so ... I'm not that good at Maths and Physics,
you know. As for my 'occupation', I'm in the second-to-last year on the
local grammar school (class 12 of 13), so I have no access to anything that
has to do with universities. Anyway, as it looks like at the moment, I'm not
going to study anyway, but rather have a vocational training. I'm 18 at the
moment.

>> That would mean there'd be a lunar and/or solar eclipse
>> every quarter year?
>No.  That would only happen if the orbits of everything were exactly on
>a plane.  In practice, the planes of all the orbits are slightly
>different, so thing come (apparently) close to each other, but do not
>eclipse.
No. That was what I meant with "big circle". The moons would be in the same
position where they have started each 24/60 days.

OK, I have decided! I only want to have one moon, since Maths and Physics
seem to be easier then and I'm not that good at both subjects.

Thank you for helping!
Carsten

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