Celestial Confusion · 4:04am Oct 9th, 2012
First off, I'd like to apologize for how long it's taking me to push out the second chapter of Priori Aevum. You see, i can't seem to get my 'creative' on and my dear protagonist seems to be frozen in an awkward situation in Twilight's living room.
Secondly, I've been trying and failing to figure out, let alone explain, how the solar system I'm setting up is going to work. Obviously Equestria is the central celestial body, but I've also been trying to add a few other planets (Including a planet occupied mostly by sea ponies, along with some other aquatic life forms. more on that later) however I've run into a slight... problem... considering that the star of such a system would reside on the outer edge i need to solve the problem of Equestria being the furthest from the sun, despite it's mostly temperate conditions. I'd hate to have to fall on the explanation of 'magic' that most other stories seem to.
The first issue i need to solve is Equestria's climate, being the furthest from the sun, it would obviously be incredible cold and uninhabitable. I thought at first to increase the mass of the sun in question, but that would clearly incinerate all the other planets. This made me think of altering the orbital trajectories of the other planets to an irregular pace, in theory, that could work.
The second issue is the day/night cycles of the planets. with the sun on the outer edge, the length of day and night on the other planets would be erratic and constantly changing. I could put Celestia in charge of moving the planets, but performing such a feat would require constant concentration and it's often thought that Celestia raises and lowers the sun at the beginning of dawn and the end of dusk. I could have her explain it away as simply 'nudging' the solar system to operate as it does but i don't think many of you would be content with that.
The third issue is Luna's role in all of this, it's said that she crafts the constellations that can be seen in the skies of Equestria as well as being the regent of the moon. The other planets would undoubtedly have moons of their own and having Luna move them isn't difficult in itself. so this really isn't much of an issue.
My last and very ridiculous solution to all of these problems would be to give each planet their own 'micro sun' all of which Celestia would be in charge of. The problem with this is conflicting sources of light for other planets, and right now, the proper movements required to make 'that' work is far beyond my brains ability to calculate or comprehend without a manipulative model to work from.
Of course, i could just scrap the idea entirely and confine all the minor story lines I'm developing to a single planet and it's multiple habitable moons.
No matter what i think of, I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Don't make things more complicated than they need to be. Go with the simple solution. If the story would work on a single planet and multiple habitable moons, go with that.
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I think i will. Still gonna make a moon full of sea ponies though...