Science Truth can be wierder than Fantasy...

[Michael Morris]

Having a technical basis for the system with a predictor should prove very useful. You didn't mention if the two stars had the same spectral output. We had another thread not so long back for what happens with creatures who can see outside of human visible spectrum. This might add more flavor into the mix when certain creatures come out or hibernate depending on which star is out.

Interesting idea, but no - my model is Alpha Centauri and both Centauri I and II output most of their light in the visible spectrum. Proxima Centauri (Centauri III) is mostly infrared, but to a planet in orbit around either of the main stars it would appear only as a mere magnitude 2 star and dimmer than Sirius or even our sun despite both being light years away.

We also had another thread talking about eclipses too. With a binary and two asteroids you must have them frequently. Perhaps with an 80yr orbit those eclipses could last longer than ours and a 10hr asteroid might have quite sudden light dropping eclipse effects lasting mere seconds...

An eclipse requires the occulting object to have a visible disk, which neither asteroid has, and that that disk have an apparent size equal to or greater than the blocked star. Carthasana's primary moon, Balcra, has this property like our own moon - it is exactly 40 times smaller than the sun, but 40 times closer. The cold sun can also be eclipsed as it just barely has a discernable disk to the unaided eye about 1/40th to 1/20th the size of the sun.

If the seconds star at mag -20 is out by itself then presumably you would be able to see that asteroid as a dark shape going across the sky.

No. BTW, my reference on both the asteroids is the fact I've observed both with an unaided eye and with a telescope our own International Space Station. The magnitude given is brightest possible, a good deal of the time the station is much dimmer. The asteroids are a bit further off though and unlike the ISS they orbit out far enough to escape being eclipsed themselves at least on some nights, though they do wink out at night as they get eclipsed. However, when the cold sun is out when this happens they just fade away, lost in the scattered blue light created by the cold sun.

[Redrobes]

If the nearest asteroid has a period of 10hrs then that makes it about 20,000 km away. If your asteroid was 175km long then it would have the same diameter as our moon at about 30 arc minutes. So if you think the asteroid is too small to eclipse stuff then fair enough but I was thinking of something pretty big. Even if this asteroid was say 10km across then it would still have 1/15th the moon diameter which is still a discernible blob shape in the sky. Hope my math is right here I have seen the ISS plenty of times and its bright but pretty point like without a scope. Well its just my wild imagination making the asteroid vast enough to be worthy of a trip from Bruce Willis I guess.

This pic is our asteroid sizes compared to our moon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:M...ds_1_to_10.svg

so given that our moon is 20x farther than your asteroid orbit then odds on that any of these would be pretty blobby.

[Michael Morris]

If the nearest asteroid has a period of 10hrs then that makes it about 20,000 km away. If your asteroid was 175km long then it would have the same diameter as our moon at about 30 arc minutes. So if you think the asteroid is too small to eclipse stuff then fair enough but I was thinking of something pretty big. Even if this asteroid was say 10km across then it would still have 1/15th the moon diameter which is still a discernible blob shape in the sky. Hope my math is right here I have seen the ISS plenty of times and its bright but pretty point like without a scope. Well its just my wild imagination making the asteroid vast enough to be worthy of a trip from Bruce Willis I guess.

This pic is our asteroid sizes compared to our moon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:M...ds_1_to_10.svg

so given that our moon is 20x farther than your asteroid orbit then odds on that any of these would be pretty blobby.

Thing is, the larger the asteroids the more gravitation they exert on the system. Their presence is pragmatic - our own world has 5 visible companions in the sky in astrology, yet Carthasana has only 2 sister planets. Planets beyond her own orbit aren't possible because of the gravitational interaction between the two suns. It might be fun to put a "hot" Jupiter around the cold sun so that it would be visible as following star that follows it's sun and never moves too far away as observed from Carthasana. How bright a Jovian sized planet in orbit around a star would be in the Carthasanan sky is hard to tell - if I had to guess around magnitude 2, but how far away would it be (again I'd guess no more than twice the width of the moon as seen in the night sky).

Anyway the asteroids are mainly there to make astrology interesting. For that role they do not need to exceed a kilometer or so in size.