Hello,
I am not a physicist or a physics student. I am an author, and I am trying to see if a Trinary star system I've dreamed up could work, and if so, what are the details as applies to my book. I hope someone can take the time to help me with this.
The situation is this: I have imagined a star system with a yellow (sun-like) star and a small red dwarf (perhaps 1/4 mass of the yellow star) orbiting each other closely, and a single earth-like planet in the habitable zone around these two. So far so good. The complication is another star (which for my story is a small, hot blue, but I know that's really not likely - perhaps it was captured?) which orbits the 'binary and planet' arrangement in a very elliptical orbit. The idea is that the star only approaches close to the main system for a very short period of time, and only rarely. I am working with the idea of a 500 year orbit for the tertiary star, but that number is flexible.
I have several specific questions about this arrangement, but any data, even hard math, would be useful. Primarily, though, these are my questions:
1) Is a 500 year orbital period possible? Too short?
2) What is the shortest period of time the tertiary sun would be close to the planet? I want it to effect the planet - something in the story called 'The Burning' - but I don't want life destroyed. Could it be as short as a single year that it effects the planet? A handful of years, some getting hotter, then cooling off?
3) Is there any way you can suggest that I can understand what this would look like from the planet's surface? I need to be able to describe the blue sun as it moves through it's orbit.
Thank you so much in advance for any help with this!
Matt
I am not a physicist or a physics student. I am an author, and I am trying to see if a Trinary star system I've dreamed up could work, and if so, what are the details as applies to my book. I hope someone can take the time to help me with this.
The situation is this: I have imagined a star system with a yellow (sun-like) star and a small red dwarf (perhaps 1/4 mass of the yellow star) orbiting each other closely, and a single earth-like planet in the habitable zone around these two. So far so good. The complication is another star (which for my story is a small, hot blue, but I know that's really not likely - perhaps it was captured?) which orbits the 'binary and planet' arrangement in a very elliptical orbit. The idea is that the star only approaches close to the main system for a very short period of time, and only rarely. I am working with the idea of a 500 year orbit for the tertiary star, but that number is flexible.
I have several specific questions about this arrangement, but any data, even hard math, would be useful. Primarily, though, these are my questions:
1) Is a 500 year orbital period possible? Too short?
2) What is the shortest period of time the tertiary sun would be close to the planet? I want it to effect the planet - something in the story called 'The Burning' - but I don't want life destroyed. Could it be as short as a single year that it effects the planet? A handful of years, some getting hotter, then cooling off?
3) Is there any way you can suggest that I can understand what this would look like from the planet's surface? I need to be able to describe the blue sun as it moves through it's orbit.
Thank you so much in advance for any help with this!
Matt