Didome Orbital Dynamics

Didome is three times closer (0.33 AU) to Novus‌ than Earth is to the Sun and has two moons in orbit (Ock‌ and Ides‌). The Ock orbits once every 16 Earth hours and Ides orbits once every 5.26 Earth days. These fast orbits leads to complicated tidal dynamics‌. The planet Didome also orbits Novus once every 92.2 Earth days, and due to this proximity Novus exerts a great tidal gravitational force and has slowed down the rotation of Didome. Didome's rotational period is 61.4 Earth days. Didome is in a 3:2 resonance pattern with Novus meaning that for every three times Didome spins on its axis it orbits the sun twice. From the perspective of someone on Didome the time between consecutive sunrises would be 184.4 Earth days. Hence one day on Didome is equal to about half an Earth year. Didome Day   A day on Didome is equal to 184.4 Earth days. The 3:2 resonance pattern causes a point on Didome to remain on the day side for one full orbit and the that point remains on the night side for one complete orbit. From Didome's surface, Novus would start to lighten the sky about 5 Earth days before sunrise and then slowly rise above the horizon and take 92 Earth days to fully cross the sky. However, the stars, including Lok's Palace‌, would seem to take only about 30 Earth days to cross the sky. So on a typical day, Novus‌ would rise in the west then several Earth days later Lok's Palace‌ would rise, looking like a extremely bright star, and climb to met Novus‌ before passing Novus before setting in the east many Earth days later. Novus would continue its slow climb through the sky and in the afternoon Lok's Palace would rise again and race to catch Novus. However, Lok's Palace would still be in the afternoon sky and Novus set behind the eastern horizon. With Novus set, Lok's Palace would produce enough light to illumate the sky with a dim twilight glow (the amount of light 20 minutes after an Earth sunset). At this point only the brightest stars would be visible. During the night all the stars would rise and set about 1.5 times. Meaning that depending on the night Lok's palace would be visible for 1/3rd to 2/3rds of the night, and the stars just rising at sunset would rise again 2/3rds of the way through the night.


Cover image: by Cory Brooke-deBock

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