[Dragaera] Dragaera and Moons **Minor Vallista Spoiler, nothing plot related**

[Christopher Turkel]

On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 11:19 PM Jon via Dragaera <
dragaera at lists.dragaera.info> wrote:

> Spoiler Space
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> So, in a Flashback in Chapter 6 of /Vallista/ we learn that Dragaera has
> (or at least at one point had) two moons. Bigmoon and Littlemoon.
>
> This is noteworthy since other than the inferred existence of such a
> body based on the presence of tides, this is the first direct evidence
> of the number and characteristics of Dragaeran moons in any of the stories.
>
> Based on what we see in the story, Bigmoon seems to be much like the one
> we are used to here on Earth.
>
> Littlemoon, however, has the characteristic of not rising and falling
> every day--indeed, we are told it will be at least nine days before it
> will rise again.
>
> A basic understanding of orbital mechanics reveals a few interesting
> things about this circumstance. Firstly, this means that the orbital
> period of this moon above the planet must be in fairly close proximity
> to the rotational period of the planet itself. Effectively, it means
> this moon must orbit at a point close to (but not exactly at) the
> natural altitude for a fully geosynchronous orbit. It cannot diverge
> from this orbital period by more than about 2 hours per day (given
> Dragaera's 30-hour day), however, or else it would always take fewer
> than nine days to appear again in the sky at any particular point on the
> surface of the planet.
>
> Assuming that Dragaera is roughly the same mass as Earth, where the
> altitude for such an orbit is just a bit less than 36,000 miles, this
> must also mean that Littlemoon is a much smaller size (like a
> medium-sized asteroid) than our moon; it's small apparent size isn't
> just a matter of it being farther away from the planet than Bigmoon is.
>
> Majikjon
>

For some reason I always assumed the planet was about Venus sized, I think
someone figured this out once but it hardly matters since the two planets
are nearly the same in mass and size.

I would assume the moons still exist though when Vlad is in the East he
doesn't mention any, maybe because of the same reason we don't in our
everyday lives: I mean, why bother, unless it's an eclipse, its there.

The tides are nicely explained by moons. Bryan Newell  calculated the orbit
to be 289 days and assuming the Furnace is very much like our own Sun, the
distance wouldn't change the tides more significantly than our own sun does.