{"id":248,"date":"2003-06-01T17:59:24","date_gmt":"2003-06-02T00:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/?p=248"},"modified":"2003-06-01T17:59:24","modified_gmt":"2003-06-02T00:59:24","slug":"alaalu-is-a-very-large-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2003\/06\/01\/alaalu-is-a-very-large-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaalu is a very large planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very<\/em> large. I suspect I had some memory of Vance’s “Big Planet” in the back of my mind (waaaay in the back: it must be twenty-five or thirty years since I read it).<\/p>\n

I wanted a big, low-metal world. I did the “rough” calculations first and then sat down with the Planet Designer at http:\/\/www.cix.co.uk\/~vicarage\/planets\/<\/a> to check my math (which is dodgy at the best of times) and make sure the world was possible. The trick is to keep the gravity roughly the same while still keeping an atmosphere on the thing. The interesting part, from Nita’s and Kit’s point of view, is the 120-hour day. (The year is 1421 days and change; axial tilt is 1.6 degrees.)<\/p>\n

Alaalu’s radius is almost exactly 34,000 km. This makes the equatorial diameter 64,000 km (polar is less: the planet is moderately oblate), and the circumference (by pi times D) a little over 201,000 km. (Yes, the “four times the size of Earth” line will need correcting: I think that may have survived from an earlier draft. Thanks for catching it.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very large. I suspect I had some memory of Vance’s “Big Planet” in the back of my mind (waaaay in the back: it must be twenty-five or thirty years since…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAlaalu is a very large planet - Out of Ambit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dianeduane.com\/outofambit\/2003\/06\/01\/alaalu-is-a-very-large-planet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alaalu is a very large planet - Out of Ambit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Very large. 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