The Encyclopædia Planetæ                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Barnard's Star
The Barnard System
And the primary world of Cicero
presented by the Exploration Society's Institute of Planetological Natural History

The orbital paths of the inner solar system at Barnard's Star is dominated by the Barnard asteroid belt.

deKamp is a dingy world, broiling under the heat of Barnard's Star, and tidally stretched by that sun
and the further inner worlds.  It is a Hephaestian world, and though it is not the largest of the three
rocky worlds, it is the most dense and possesses the most amount of heavy metals; indeed, it is the
center of all heavy materials in this very old and metal-poor system.

Cicero is a JaniLithic world, its surface quite warm and marked by sporadic volcanic activity.  While
there is no surface water, even in the form of nightside ice, vast reservoirs are present beneath the surface
in liquid and frozen form.  Because of this, Cicero is the most habitable world in the system, even
though the atmosphere is predominantly carbon dioxide, and in possession of temperatures in excess
of 200 degrees Fahrenheit on the dayside.

Gatewood is a Cytherean world, with a surface temperature above 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and an
atmospheric pressure nearly two hundred times Standard.  However, because it orbits such a dim red
dwarf, it has cooler upper atmosphere temperatures.  Methane, replenished by surface volcanic activity,
is found in abundance in the upper atmosphere, and provides the coloration of the clouds.

this is the same view of Gatewood, but with the clouds removed.  The surface is crater-free, and marked
by successive lava flows.

Barnard's World, the largest of the inner system, is a frozen Helian world enveloped by a shroud of
nitrogen and methane, a fossil atmosphere formed when the world was young and heated by a flaring
sun and massive impacts.  Very rarely the surface outgases as internal heat breaks through the thick
ice crust, bolstering the atmosphere which is slowly but constantly being eroded by Barnard's Star's
feeble stellar wind.

The heavy atmosphere of Barnard's World removed, revealing the frozen and cracked crust.  Most of
these rifts have long since been filled in by granite-hard frozen water deposits, though a few continue
to remain active on a scale of tens of thousands of years.