The
Encyclopędia Planetę
Eta Cassiopeiae A
The Achird System
And the
primary world of San Gabriel
presented by
the Exploration Society's Institute of Planetological Natural History
San Joaquin is a Phosphorian Type world,
with a surface temperature so hot that nearly all atmospheric
clouds are absent and incapable of forming. This, despite a crushingly
thick atmosphere.
Salinas is a Vestian Subtype world, its
surface marked by ancient rifts, hinting at a dynamic geological
past. Today, however, it is a small and quiescent world, heavily cratered
and without an atmosphere.
The San Gabriel system is comprised of a
planet, two moons, and an eroding ring system. San Gabriel
itself is a GaianPelagic Subdivision world, all of its major landmasses
coalesced into a single super-
continent which stretches from the north polar to the south polar regions.
Life suffered a mass
extinction several million years ago, and today some five major groups have
expanded to fill in nearly
every available niche on land and in the sea. The ring system was likely
formed by the break-up of a
close approaching asteroid several million years ago. It has been eroding
ever since, and equatorial
meteor showers of great density and beauty are a nightly occurrence because of
this.
A detail of San Gabriel. The single
continent is lush, and though a large mountain range runs for
nearly the entire length of the landmass, only in the highest or most poalr
regions do they host snow
or glaciers. San Gabriel is a warm world, despite the local climatic
variations often caused by the ring
shadows.
A conjunction on the surface of San
Gabriel, with the moons Glendora and Valinda in the sky, along
with the ring system.
Glendora, a Cerean Type body, is likely a
captured moon. Some scientists believe that the mass
extinction, the formation of the rings, and the capturing of Glendora are all
related events.
Valinda is the outer, Selenian moon.
Valinda is mysterious in that it orbits far closer to San Gabriel
than it should, for the age of this star system. Some scientists
hypothesize that Valinda was the
body which had been captured by San Gabriel, and that Glendora was one of
possibly two or three
moons. If this is true, then the other missing moons may have either
impacted the planet's surface,
or broke up in close orbit and formed the planet's ring system.
regardless, the tidal stresses by
such a capture could have caused enough volcanism on San Gabriel to account for
the mass extinction.
Redwood, the system's only gas giant, is a
typical Jovic Type body. Its northern hemisphere great
red spot is likely hundreds of years old, as is the case with most large
cyclonic systems on Jovians.
Del Norte, the only major moon of Redwood,
is a typical LithicGelidian Subtype world. If anything,
it is more than uninteresting; there are signs of geological activity on its
surface, but these are likely
billions of years old.