In this scenario, an Earthlike planet is situated in a quaternary solar system clumped into two binaries--a Parent, in which the planet orbits, and a Grandparent, in which the Parent binary orbits.
For now, let's simply call the two Parent stars "Mom" and "Dad". "Mom" is a G-type star 6,000 degrees Kelvin, whereas "Dad" is an F-type star 7,300 degrees Kelvin. Similarly, we will call the two Grandparent stars "Grandma" and "Grandpa". "Grandma" is a B-type star 30,000 degrees Kelvin and "Grandpa" is an O-type star 40,000 degrees Kelvin.
This Earthlike planet orbits the Parent binary at a point where the habitable zones of both binaries overlap. If this were literally Earth, it would be too irradiated to support life at all. But this one has some defense mechanisms. One is an ozone layer one inch thick (which is actually eight times thicker than our own). Two is a magnetic field that measures 12 gauss (approximately 18 times higher than our own). Three, the atmospheric thickness is higher than Earth's. The bets vary between 6.0 and 3.2 Earths. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is as high as Earth's was during the Cambrian, and oxygen levels are as high as Earth's was during the Carboniferous.
Now that we've got the concern out of the way, let's discuss a bit about the planet's seasons, in that it has both hemispherical and orbital seasons due to its extreme ellipsis. How extreme? Let's take a look at the list:
- Axial tilt: 19.7°
- Rotation: 48 hours
- Revolution: 1,043 days, or 2,086 Earth days, or almost six Earth years
- Orbital spring: 134 days, or 268 Earth days, or almost three-quarters of one Earth year
- Orbital summer: 88 days, or 176 Earth days, or almost one-half of one Earth year
- Orbital autumn: 134 days, or 268 Earth days, or almost three-quarters of one Earth year
- Orbital winter: 687 days, or 1,374 Earth days, or nearly four Earth years
Since this planet orbits a binary that orbits another binary, orbital winter is treated more like our summer, in which the Grandparent binary shares the "night" sky with the moon and the Parent binary is so far away that "daylight" is basically 48 hours of twilight. But in the orbital summer, all four stars are in the daytime sky, and the moon has the night sky all to itself.
Speaking of which, the moon has a crust made not of rock, but aluminum, a metal that reflects 95 percent of light, making nights on this orbital season seven to eight times brighter than a night on Earth.
Put all those things together, and it boils down to one simple question: What color would the sky be as a result of all of these?
