Feel free to suggest some links that I should use. I would be very happy to include them in this thread.
Star Information
(http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5034.0;attach=11079;image)
Generate Stars (http://web.archive.org/web/20030218125318/www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/8611/mseqstar.htm) | Star Table Concerning Life (http://web.archive.org/web/20080213185317/http://curriculum.calstatela.edu/courses/builders/lessons/less/les1/StarTables.html) | Star Classification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification) | Stars for dummies (http://web.archive.org/web/20000619122946/http://www.sartar.demon.co.uk/tutorial/stars.html)
Planetary Mapping/ Modeling
(http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5034.0;attach=11135;image)
Tons Of Prehistoric Earth Maps (http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4233.0;attach=11134) [Source (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/rect_globe.html)] | donjon (http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/world/) | Planet Gen (http://www.gharat.net/pages/planetgen.html) | FiahOwl's Textures (http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php/topic,5252)
Generating Planets
(http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5034.0;attach=11652;image)
Planet/Moon Generator (http://www.transhuman.talktalk.net/iw/Geosync.htm) | A nice tutorial (http://www.squidoo.com/starsystem), best used with the Planet/Moon Generator (http://www.transhuman.talktalk.net/iw/Geosync.htm)
Planet Classification
(http://universesandbox.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5034.0;attach=11653;image)
Planet Classification (http://arcbuilder.home.bresnan.net/PCLMaster.html) | Star Trek Classification System (http://www.sttff.net/planetaryclass.html)
Inspiration
Extrasolar Planet Catalog (http://exoplanet.eu/) | Artificial Gravity Calculator (http://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/SpinCalc.htm) | Natural Gravity Calculator (http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/animations/renaissance/gravcalc.html) |
Wormhole Travel (http://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/TraversableLorenzianWormholes-Overview.pdf) | Brains and Computers (http://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/Brains2.pdf) | Find out the sky color of your world (http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-page&page=gen_skyonalienworlds) | Must read. (http://www.trisen.com/sol/static/wg/wg.html) | Glossary of Astrophysics. (http://ie.lbl.gov/education/glossary/glossaryfa.htm) | General Chemistry Glossary (http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/glossary.shtml)
Spaceflight
Advanced Propulsion for the 21st Century (http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/40612/1/03-1854.pdf) | Antimatter Space Propulsion (http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/introduction.html) | Mars - Terraforming (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/haynes.htm)
Calculations
Calculate the life of a star
10^10*<star mass>/<star luminosity>
So a 1.17 Star mass star would have the following:
10^10*1.17/1.62
Which equals 6.5 Billion years on the main sequence.
[Found somewhere on the internet]
A worldbuilder's Guide to Banks Orbitals
Size of a Banks Orbital Ring:
A ring designed to produce a 24 hour day and 1 gravity on its inner surface has a radius of 1.89 X 106 kilometres. Given that
g = the acceleration on the inner surface
t = the time the Orbital takes for a complete turn
r = the radius of the orbital,
then
r ∝ g (r is proportional to g)
r ∝ t2
Required ring-wall height:
Minimum for good containment of a 1 bar atmosphere at 1 gravity is 100 kilometres, where:
h = height of the rimwalls
g = gravity
p = pressure
then
h ∝ 1/g
h ∝ p
Twice-yearly eclipses:
The amount of time for a total eclipse of the sun by the far side of the ring is given by:
t = ω/(2rΩsinθ)
where:
ω = the width of the Orbital
r = the radius of the Orbital
Ω = angular velocity of the Orbital about the star
θ = the tilt of the Orbital
Or to put it another way, given a "standard" orbital (Earth-normed) with a width of 1000 kilometres moving about a sun just like ours and at 1 a.u., the time of the eclipse is 21.8 minutes. To vary that,
t ∝ ω
t ∝ 1/r
t ∝ 1/Ω or t ∝ year length
t ∝ 1/sinθ
Calculating the orbital's year given its distance from the star and the mass of the star is done in the same way as for a planet.
Apparent width of the Ring-arch in the sky at the zenith, for a 'one standard gee' Orbital 1000 km broad from rim to rim is 0.9 minutes of arc (by comparison Sol or Luna covers 30 minutes, or half a degree, as seen from Old Earth).
Required Materials for a typical 1000 km wide orbital:
1.6 X 1022 kilograms magnanotube fibres (a layer less than a few micrometers thick)
8.9 X 1020 kilograms nickel-iron (kamacite & taenite) 10 metres thick
3.2 X 1022 kilograms foamed diamondoid 2 kilometres thick
3.2 X 1022 kilograms corundumoid plus silicates & other minerals 0.5 kilometres thick
1.2 X 1021 kg water 100 m thick
Total costs: energy for creation of 16 exatonnes of magmatter, mass of 1 large rocky & carbonaceous moon, mass of 1 midsized icy moon
[Source (http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4845ef5c4ca7c)]
Bode's Law
Determining the orbital distance of planets from their star depends on a fairly intricate mechanism known as Bode's Law. According to Bode's Law, planetary orbits follow a recognizable mathematical pattern of development; this system replicates it. Roll 1d6 (http://www.brockjones.com/dieroller/dice.htm) to create a “seed†number. (The Sol system’s seed number
is 3.) Beginning with 0 and then the seed, run a series of doublings out for as many planets as your system has. (For the Sol system, that series is 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, and so on.) Now roll the die again, and add that constant to the seed series. (The Sol Bode's constant is 4, which gives 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, and so on.) Now divide the new series by 10, and that’s your planetary
orbit pattern in AU. (Again for the Sol system, we get 0.4, Mercury; 0.7, Venus; 1, Earth; 1.6, Mars; 2.8, the
asteroid belt; 5.2, Jupiter, and so on.) Even the Sol system pattern breaks down with Neptune, so you can
vary the Bode's result if you like.
[From a book]
At some point, I plan to make a comprehensive tutorial for randomly generating planetary systems, but for now have this:
How to generate some VERY BASIC parameters for a planet using dice: Note: D% gives a result of 0.00-0.99 inclusive.
Semi-major axis: 10^(4D%-2) AU. This will generate distances from 0.01 AU (near the roche limit of most stars) to 100 AU. This formula works for binary companions as well as planets. However, for very distance binaries (and a few planets) you may want to add an extra 2D%. About half of the planets generated by this method will be within 1 AU and half will be beyond 1 AU. If you want, you can multiply the result by the square root of the star's luminosity to get a similar proportion of "hot" and "cold" planets.
Planet type:
D100:
1= Gas Dwarf:
2-30= Rock Dwarf:
31-60= Ice Dwarf:
61-80= Ice Giant:
81-99= Gas Giant:
100= Rock Giant:
This may not reflect the actual frequencies of planets. Note that this is not based on distance. However, it seems to be more common to find icy and gaseous planets inside the frost line than rocky planets outside the frost line. Also note that extremely hot ice or gas planets may lose their outer layers and end up as cthonian planets. The lighter and less dense the planet, the more vulnerable it is to this happening.
Planet mass:
Gas Dwarf: M= 10^(1D%) Earths.
Rock or Ice dwarf: M= 10^(3D% -2) Earths.
Ice Giant: M= 10^(1D% + 1) Earths, upper limit 50 earths.
Gas Giant: M= 10^(3D%+1) Earths, lower limit 25 earths, upper limit 4000 earths.
For gas dwarfs, this will generate mass between 1 and 10 earths. I'm not sure smaller gas planets would be able to hold themselves together in the inner regions of the system (and ones further out would probably grow).
Rock or ice dwarfs go from about the mass of the moon to large "super-earths". Ice and gas giants range from neptune-sized to the deuterium fusion limit.
Your planets density will be dependent on its composition (rock is more dense than gas), its mass (gravity compresses most substances, which means that a 0.05 earth mass planet will be less dense than a 5 earth mass planet of the same composition), and temperature (see "puffy planets." to a lesser extent ice dwarfs may get hot enough to boil and puff up). For superjovians you typically want to generate a diameter (between 130,000 and 140,000 km) instead of a density. For puffy planets generate a bigger radius.
Orbital inclination and eccentricity can be based on many factors, including tides and orbital resonances. It's good to think carefully about how a large planet's gravity will affect the rest of the system.
Fiah's historical systems
These are some of the first systems I've ever made.
The Ares System
A Binary System With 2 Planets. Very old, and one of my first systems ever.
The HD 821344342 System
A Binary System With 2 Stars and Several Planets.
Ahera
Home System of the Therosans.
Halius
An Ice planet with 4 moons.