Oolite Bulletins

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ce-kepler/

Just the idea of a gas giant that is mostly coal black and glows a dim red sorta begs for a story or an OXP or something.

Someone make a texture like that for the nest version of System Redux please. That looks really cool.

Yeh, but for a planet that doesn't reflect much light, I'm curious why the side facing away from the sun is clearly glowing... (the artist didn't read the article)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Yeh, but for a planet that doesn't reflect much light, I'm curious why the side facing away from the sun is clearly glowing... (the artist didn't read the article)

I had to read the article properly now. Good point, but even if it does not reflect much light, it would reflect more sun-side. Probably the whole planet in the drawing is to light compared to the description.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Yeh, but for a planet that doesn't reflect much light, I'm curious why the side facing away from the sun is clearly glowing... (the artist didn't read the article)

because a truly black planet would be a giant schwarzschild object. it absorbs radiation and heats up in the progress, until it becomes so hot that it radiates the absorbed energy, and does so in wavelengths representing it's temp.

Wyvern wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Yeh, but for a planet that doesn't reflect much light, I'm curious why the side facing away from the sun is clearly glowing... (the artist didn't read the article)

because a truly black planet would be a giant schwarzschild object. it absorbs radiation and heats up in the progress, until it becomes so hot that it radiates the absorbed energy, and does so in wavelengths representing it's temp.

True, but it definitely wouldn't look like the artist's impression...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

True, but it definitely wouldn't look like the artist's impression...

well, that the general colour should be darker (probably) aside, it's fairly how i would imagine it.
matter heats up on the sunny side and still glows as it turns to the night side. depending on how much radiation it recieves and how fast it passes through the night side (higher and lower cloud layers, and their different speeds), there would be brighter and dimmer spots, representing weather patterns.

When the astronomers discover the bit of black smut on the lens of the telescope, they are going to be sooo embarrassed...

Holly wrote:

Grit. Five specks of grit on the scanner-scope. See, the thing about grit is, it's black, and the thing about scanner-scope...

Selezen wrote:

Holly wrote:

Grit. Five specks of grit on the scanner-scope. See, the thing about grit is, it's black, and the thing about scanner-scope...

I love that show...