Questions tagged [stars]
For questions about luminous spheres of plasma held together by their own gravity, generally comprised primarily of hydrogen and helium.
131 questions
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How do seasons work in a binary system (planet orbits one star, not both)?
I have a planet orbiting one star in a binary system. When the planet is exactly between the two stars it will experience a double day; when the primary sun sets the secondary one rises, no overlap. ...
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Do different star types produce plants with different properties?
From this chart it appears that the star types closest to our own are K-type (oranger, a little cooler, and less than half as bright) and F-type (bluer, a little warmer, and much brighter). If I want ...
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Making a planet habitable for humanoids: The planet
The question:
What characteristics are necessary for a planet to be habitable for humans? What should the generic star and planet be like?
The life forms are human, so they
Need to have access to ...
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Can a planet survive a supernova?
The Sun has nowhere near enough mass to enter the branch of stellar evolution that would lead to a supernova, fortunately for us. However, there are planets that orbit stars that are destined to go ...
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How can I safely brighten my secondary star?
I have an earth-like planet orbiting one of the stars in a binary system. I have learned that, for G-class stars, if the secondary star is 100AU from the primary one, I can expect the secondary star ...
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Orbiting one star in a binary system: what are the effects of the second star on the planet?
This blog post about binary-star systems points out that, rather having the stars be close together, they could be far apart and a planet might orbit just one of them. It gives the example of the ...
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How close must a supernova be to severely harm the Earth?
I did a little looking and it appears stars outside of 10 parsec/33 ly will have very little effect on the Earth.
What it did say was that inside that range the gamma rays would affect our ozone ...
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Is there a way to create a bomb to destroy a star?
I want to create a sci-fi story, and since galactic warfare is on a larger scale, nukes wouldn't do much damage (or I wouldn't think so anyway). I would like ideas about an ultimate deterrent that ...
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Can a gas giant have its own habitable zone?
Gas giants can generate heat via the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism. It's oft-repeated that Jupiter actually generates more heat internally via this method than it receives from the Sun. Scale this ...
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What could make a star green?
Stars are never green.
When a star's spectra "peaks" in the green range, it also releases a significant number of waves of the adjacent colors - so "green" stars appear yellow or ...
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Making a planet habitable for humanoids: The star
The question:
What characteristics are necessary for a planet to be habitable for humans? What should the generic star and planet be like?
The life forms are human, so they
Need to have access to ...
- 102k
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What is the theoretical maximum number of habitable planets in one solar system?
In the DC comic book universe, the Vega System is a solar system around the star Vega (Alpha Lyrae), which is depicted as having dozens of habitable planets. While it seems to be an implausibly large ...
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Is it safe to orbit HDE 226868?
I'm considering a story where an exploration is devised to explore a binary system containing a black hole; the choice is Cygnus X-1, with its companion supergiant star HDE 226868. It would likely be ...
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Can my spaceship figure out its position using Cepheid Variables?
In my story, reasonably far in the future, an intrepid group of explorers are on the first manned mission to the Andromeda galaxy, travelling close to the speed of light. They slumbered in suspended ...
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Could animal life develop on the TRAPPIST-1 planets?
Recent news reported the discovery of three "earth-like" planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. This is interesting because the star is a small, cool red dwarf about the size of Jupiter. The three ...
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By what mechanism could a planet be locked into permanent solar eclipse?
I've got an image in my head of a world where it's just normal that the star is black with a golden halo around it - in other words, where the planet is in a state of perpetual solar eclipse.
Are ...
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Impacts of a stellar Jupiter
In the book 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke, Jupiter is turned into a star. Presumably this is done by making it more dense, so if Jupiter were to reach that density and become a star, what ...
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Can a fission satellite duplicate the radiance frequencies of a star?
I sometimes think about the arrogant dwarf starsmiths in the question.
How to blow up a star by accident?
I pose the question in the voice of the dwarf, probably because I am hungry for down votes.
...
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Sky color of an alien world
I'm asking for a world I'm making, which orbits a red star.
According to this image, there is a star that would make the sky white.
What would the sky look like during sunrise and sunset on a planet ...
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A more alien world: Flora
In the (relatively new) Star Trek movie Into Darkness, we see Dr. Bones and Captain Kirk in a world composed mainly of red plants. Obviously these are just eye candy with no real basis behind it, but ...
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Is it possible for coronal mass ejections or perhaps a gamma ray burst to cause firestorms on an earth-like planet?
Ideally this would be some sort of sun or star-related natural disaster that would affect the entire planet and make life outside of protected/shielded areas extremely dangerous. This is a human-...
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Can stars that are not powered by nuclear fusion exist?
Stars generate their energy by fusing lighter elements into heavier elements. The most common reaction in Sun-like stars is the conversion of hydrogen to helium via the proton-proton chain, but ...
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Do different star systems experience time differently?
Somewhat in relation to this question - What could restrain post-singularity societies from spreading across the Galaxy?
I'm assuming not all star systems move at the same velocity in relation to the ...
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Creating a realistic world(s) map - Stars
This Query is part of the Worldbuilding Resources Article.
This question is a sort of follow-up to Samuel's previous world map question, Creating a realistic world(s) map - planetary systems.
Lots ...
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Is there any feasible way to inhabit the sun?
Is there any feasible way to create a long-term sustainable habitat on the sun?
My target region for habitation is the temperature minimum at the bottom of the solar atmosphere. Metals would have to ...
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What is the largest possible appearance of a celestial body in the sky?
In SciFi Art we often see planets/moons/stars fill enormous amounts of the visible sky. I'm wondering what the theoretical limit for this is realistically, since there are maxima for the possible size ...
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How can I make a black dwarf star?
In response to a question about an asteroid filled with degenerate matter, Ender Look suggested that using matter from a black dwarf would be better than using matter from a white dwarf since black ...
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How would a planetary nebula affect a planet?
Let's say I have a binary star system. The planet is orbiting the smallest star similar to the Sun at 1 AU, the same Earth-Sun distance.
The other star is located at around 50-100 AU from the Sun ...
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What sets of stellar models are freely available for reference when worldbuilding?
Often, when I'm building a world, I want to start out by determining some of its key properties. Maybe I'm trying to calculate a habitable zone, or figure out how long a year would be on a particular ...
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What is the habitable zone around my star?
I have built a star that is loosely based on a real-world star. It has the following properties:
Spectral class G
Mass: 1.03 M$_\odot$
Radius: 1.02 r$_\odot$
Luminosity: 1.05 L$_\odot$
Surface ...
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A planet ringed by stars
Suppose there was a ternary system where the stars are effectively identical in mass, luminosity, radius, etc. These three stars circle a central point rather than two orbiting a larger third. At this ...
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About how many planets are plausible for this binary-star system?
I have a binary system in which my world orbits one of the stars, not the pair, in the habitable zone. The stars are relatively close together (because I want the secondary one to shed significant ...
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I can't seem to find correct starbuilding equations that work together anywhere and am generally confused. Which ones do you use?
So far I've been using Artifexian's How To Build A Star YouTube video. The problem with this video is that it's quite old and thus outdated. The things I've noticed to be particularly weird are the ...
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What minimal magic is needed to maintain a huge torus planet?
I'm creating a fantasy world (dragons, giants, generally medieval, generally rare magic, potential inter planar travel), and I would like the world shaped like a donut. Obviously I could just say "...
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Would this simplex ternary system be stable?
I'm trying to make a trinary star system but I'm not sure how it would work. The primary star is an M0Ve star (red dwarf flare star). The orbits of the other two stars are slightly more complicated. ...
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Central planet in binary star system?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_binary_star_systems
The wikipedia article describes P-type and S-type orbits for planets in binary star systems. There are possibly some other ...
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Exoplanetary Review: Acid Rain
I've come up with a couple of exoplanets for a story, and have reached the limits of my knowledge. I've googled around, and I had a space enthusiast friend look at them, but he freely admits that he's ...
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How would people living in eternal day learn that stars exist?
In a world I am building, the day lasts longer than the year, 9 times longer in fact. The native people of this world have been forced to migrate around the world, both avoiding the scorching desert ...
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Killing a star safely
A messenger from the stars just arrived in peace but has brought horrible news.
A vast swarm of planet devouring phototropic insects are approaching from deep space and our only hope is to obscure or ...
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How do you non-catastrophically reduce the mass of the Sun by half?
In my previous question, I asked how much mass the Sun would have to lose in order for Saturn's orbital velocity to be its escape velocity.
The answer proved to be somewhat unexpected - when the Sun ...
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Encasing a star in a perfect insulator
Suppose that I have come into possession of a substance, technology, or spell that functions as a perfect insulator and reflector. No energy can pass through it, and is instead reflected back the way ...
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A continuous water "planet" ring around a star
It is impossible to have a continuous mostly liquid water ring around a star?
Probably such a configuration would be unstable under normal planetary forming condition. I am looking for a good ...
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How can we extinguish a supernova?
Assuming in a galaxy far far away there is a Type 2 civilization (currently on the verge of making the transition to Type 3).
Their scientists predicted that the star (red giant) they are orbiting is ...
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Alternative absorption spectra for plants
Chlorophyll-a (the primary one), chlorophyll-b, and(?) beta-carotene (plus other accessory pigments / carotenoids) dictate which portions of the EM spectrum are used as energy by plants.
Plants only ...
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Could two stars of equivalent mass/size form a binary system and be different colors?
I have an idea for a planet that orbits two stars. These starsslowly orbit each other, have equivalent masses/sizes, and while one is slightly red, the other is slightly blue. When I talk about the ...
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How to estimate a star's heliopause?
Is it possible to calculate/estimate the size of a star's heliosphere? If so, how?
I am working on a semi-near future, sci-fi novel. As part of the technology base, humans are able to travel between ...
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How can a Type II civilization influence accretion rates from a debris disk to a passing star?
This is supposed to be a test of the hard-science tag. All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Speculative or ...
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How much does my secondary star heat the planet orbiting my primary star?
In this question I asked about the lighting patterns from this system:
A really helpful answer there explained when the planet is getting how much illumination.
This question is about heat. On ...
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A Habitable Zone Within a Habitable Zone--Would that Make any Difference?
Presented here is a quaternary solar system consisting of two binary orbits. One consists of two red giants, each one 100 times as wide, one-third as massive and 100 times as bright as our sun. Both ...
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A self-eclipsing orbital ring
A common, matter-efficient science-fiction habitat is a hollow cylinder or ring in space that is spun to simulate the pull of gravity on its interior surface. These habitats have been imagined as ...
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