Manticore System - From the Honor Harrington novels

[smiddy]

I just finished reading the first book in the Honor Harrington series of science fiction novels and decided to do a little research into the Manticore binary star system she comes from.

There was enough information to create my first simulation in Universe Sandbox so I thought I'd post it here for people to check out. It's based on some very rough numbers taken from the book and website and put together with what I'm sure is some terrible math. But if you a fan of the books or at all interested then take a look and maybe do a little messing around with it.

For info on the books or the Manticore system, here's a link http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Manticore_System

[Omnigeek6]

Sorry to be a wet blanket but:

According to that page, Manticore-A is a G0 star. However, it has the exact same statistics as the sun. Here you can find examples of stars with planets, and search for those of the spectral class you need. I found that a G0 should have a temperature around 5900 K, and a luminosity at least 10% greater than that of the sun.

Salamander (according to the wiki) orbits at a distance of 1.75 light-minutes. We can calculate that with: c=300,000 km/s. 300,000 X 60 X 1.75 = 31.5 million km. In your simulation, Salamander has an SMA of 50.1 M km.

According to the wiki:

Phoenix was the name of Manticore-A II, the second planet of the Manticore System's primary star.

It was a small, moonless world, about two thirds the size of Earth, which orbited its sun at a distance of about 6,6 light minutes. Its gravity was about 3,5 G. (JIR1)

You could interpret this as having a mass of .67 earths, or a diameter of .67 earths. Your Pheonix has a mass of 0.82 earths and a diameter of 0.95 earths, which is neither (Admittedly, according to the 3.5 Gs number, either way Pheonix would need to be denser than Osmium, the densest element, and therefore physically impossible).
It is also listed as 6.6 light-minutes from its star, or 118.8 M km, and you have at at 150 M km.

Sphinx and Manticore have the correct year length, but Sphinx has a mass of only 1.00 earths, and a diameter less than the 16500 km I got from the wiki, whereas for it to have the diameter and gravity (1.35 Gs published, it would have to have a mass of 2.26 earths.

Wyvern is listed as oribiting at 156.96 light-minutes. This translates to 18.83 AU. You've got it way out at 60 AU.

Eryine orbits slightly too far out for 1.05 light-minutes, as does Gorgon.

Aphrodite orbits at 100 M km when it should orbit at 65.34 M km. Damocles orbits at 142 M km when it should orbit at 111.78 M km.

Titan is listed at a mass above 695 earths, or above 2.18 Jupiters. You seem to have just left it at 1 Jupiter. It is also supposed to orbit at almost exactly 10 AU, and you've put it way out at 14.5 AU.


That's what I could find from a few minutes on the wiki, having never read the books at all.

I'm sorry, but it seems like you just threw this system together, without taking the time to (a) figure out what the official values should be, and (b) when values are not published and cannot be inferred from published values, changing them up a bit from the defaults. You might want to make a version 2.