Well, I recently started (actually restarted) some calculations of Krynn's moons as they orbit the world. Now, for those who know me, they should be rollng their eyes because I've done this three times already. once back on the newsgroup alt.fan.dragonlance, then again on the DL-mailing list, and finally again. However, this time, I decided to to it on Excel, as a spread sheet. that way anyone can plug in numbers and variables. My hope is that when this spreadsheet is done, I can put it in the public domain, and let other people build off of it.
So, here's a call out to everyone who's interested, here are my calculations for the moons orbiting Krynn. Feel free to critique it.
http://www.mindspring.com/~granakrs/incoming/KrynnAstronomy.xls
Hopefully Brimstone will see this, and really put the piece through it's paces, and expand on it.
Weldon
My only issue with this is that this will get you Earth-like answers for Krynn because of your assumptions in Chapter 1. But, Krynn is a completely different system than Earth. The planet is quite a bit smaller. It's yearly revolution is 336 days (with the new DLCS calendar). And of course the moons are going to be off some. However, we do know the diameter of Lunitari (thanks to DLE...uh...3 I think) so that can give a starting point for Lunitari's distance from Krynn, and then we can extrapolate sizes and distances for Nuitari and Solinari.
Things will be nice and neat with a 360 day year, I'm not sure how pretty a 336 day year will be. And, changing the size of Krynn and the moons to not match up with Earth...well, that could really just spiral these equations out of control and end up making very unrealistic answers (maybe).
I've only just glanced at it right now, but...what are your thoughts on making this 3e Dragonlance compatible? (or are you wanting to stick to SAGA data?)
Well, I'd have to look at the equations, but I'm sure you've done your homework.
Well, you never can tell. I might have goofed on some math or equation. As an amateur, I could have missed something. I'm still trying to figure out if eccentricity of an orbit is related in anyway to mass of the orbiting object. I assume Eccentricity is 0, and the orbits are circular when they really aren't in the real world.
My only issue with this is that this will get you Earth-like answers for Krynn because of your assumptions in Chapter 1.
That's been one of my concerns too. the earth-like assumptions in chapter 1 are to work out the validity of the equations and the math in chapters 2,3,4,5 and 6. The last "chapter" what I call "In Summary" was a spot where anyone can plug his own numbers. I've even made a place for the Gravitational constant.
and that's also why i built this thing as an excel sheet rather than a pdf, or a word .doc. I want to make this thing "plug-n-Play." But you raised a good point. I may not have made that clear in the spreadsheet.
I've only just glanced at it right now, but...what are your thoughts on making this 3e Dragonlance compatible? (or are you wanting to stick to SAGA data?)
I think it's possible. if the equations are right, i think we can just plug in the numbers, and the spreadsheet will hopefully update itself. In theory, (and i want to make this as open-source as possible) you can hopefully plug in 3e DL numbers.
Weldon