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whirligig-girl · 1 year

Photo

Etheria’s moons to dubious scale. The second from the right, the blue & purple one, is about the same size compared to Etheria as the Moon is compared to the Earth.

Probably the first thing I noticed when I watched She-Ra and the Princesses of Power was all the damn moons. I’d seen screenshots and clips of the show taking place on a space ship, so I figured “Brightmoon” was literally the name of a moon. But nope--the Starship Darla wouldn’t make her appearance until much later. Anyway. Despite the unrealistic appearance of the moons in the show, I resolved to Figure Out How They Work Eventually. Here’s some thoughts so far.

I’m unwilling to trust most of these sizes because of perspective effects and because it’s a cartoon. I think probably they’re all smaller than it seems. Obviously the “real” spacing is completely different than in the drawing.

If this image is taken with a telescope, or even a telephoto lens from sufficiently far away, then the original image scale could correspond to the scale of the actual planets.

we only have actual depth information for ONE moon--the blue and purple one in front of Etheria, which means its actual scale relative to Etheria is probably smaller than in the image.

each other moon could be either very large and distant or very small and near to the camera, but the way it looks in some scenes moving towards Etheria suggest that the moons are depicted not much farther or closer from the camera than Etheria itself, so I think taking these as roughly to-scale can serve as a starting point for figuring the rest out.

My progress so far in figuring out how to fit 11 large moons into orbit around one Earthlike planet:

this is only five. Four ceres in a near 1:2:4:8 resonance (such that triple conjunctions are possible, but rare), with that pink moon represented as a Mars-mass world, orbiting about once per month. If I move the Mars out much more, it might not be stable accounting for solar tides. (Etheria does have a sun? right? it’s not entirely clear to me. Does it have a different sun in Despondos than in the Universe? like, Despondos has Just One Sun? Is Despondos’ cosmic background lighting up half the sky? Or did the Etherian Sun come along for the ride through the portals, off-screen? I’m making the assumption that even if there is no real Sun in Despondos, the moon system pre-dated Etheria’s stranding, so it’s still constrained by solar tides.

anyway. the five there. I think I can add more. the Mars can support subsatellites, which I think should be allowed, and I think I can fit in some smaller asteroid-sized moons in low orbits in between the resonant friend quad.

I’m not even close to understanding their geology, yet. I need to have a grasp on their basic physical properties first. But I’m guessing magic and technology are both relevant. One of the three moons of enchantment clearly had cloud banding, not impact craters. it could be terraformed--even if the first one’s tech that terraformed it is gone, perhaps it could still carry an atmosphere for the ~thousand years or so the first ones have been gone?

I wonder if the moons were early test beds for first ones to test magic/tech integration on a planetary scale. (which leads to the dark question of “was there a Heart of the Moon Project?”)

Certainly if the first ones were spacefarers they would have had some infrastructure on the moons.

#SPOP #She-Ra #Etheria #moons #read this post in Entrapta's voice #she-ra spoilers #Etheria doesnt have astronomers anymore but i figure there's still a field of study called something like Lunology--study of the moons.#(and heliophysics if there's a Sun)#(and maybe some kind of cosmology? despondos lacks other stars and planets but it's not actually empty. look at all that nebulosity!)

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