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Rotating rings on 5 Epsilon-2 Lyrae

Posted: Sun May 10, 2015 6:54 pm
by Boozeman
Hi there,

Exploring some frontier worlds and find another Metallic ring Gas Giant with some RES. The same system includes several dwarf stars with ring systems with some RES too.

I choose to jump tiny cap between inner rings. The ring system far side of the cap rotate somewhat speedy. Some newtonian experts can explain this better than me. Common sense tells me that the ringsystem parts can't rotate different speeds. Maybe just bug? :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwSRCIw7omc

The video is hidden, so please keep it in our secret :)

PS: Exploring the entire system 77561cr. Collecting some Gold, Platinum, Silver and Palladium about 20mins of mining = 78340cr

Re: Rotating rings on 5 Epsilon-2 Lyrae

Posted: Sun May 10, 2015 11:44 pm
by Gorf
Ring segments will [i]always[/i} rotate at differennt speeds. I'm no expert, but I think it's a function of distance from planet and rock mass. The closer to the planet, the higher the speed. The smaller the rock, the higher the speed.

If all rocks were the same mass, you'd get a plughole effect.

It's why you sometimes get high visual contrast from one band to another - differing speeds aren't compatible at a similar orbit so at a particular distance from the planet, the rocks tend to be the same mass - and therefore look the same. A little further out (or in) the rocks might be a different prevailing size and hence rotating at a different speed.

The speed difference in your video seems a little excessive, though...

Re: Rotating rings on 5 Epsilon-2 Lyrae

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 10:09 pm
by CMDR Navin
Really thinking about taking my little Cobra out on some short exploration mission and seeing something like that is getting more interested.

Re: Rotating rings on 5 Epsilon-2 Lyrae

Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 7:53 pm
by Roger Wilco Jr
That's pretty cool. I've never seen rotating rings like that before. I'll have to check that out, too.

You are probably thinking about a record (if you remember those) that rotates at 33 1/3 RPM or every 1.8 seconds. The outside of the record has to travel a lot faster and cover a much further distance than the inside of the record, but relative to each other they appear to be going the same speed. But with planets (or rings) they can go at different speeds for whatever reasons. For example, Mercury travels about 60% faster than Earth and its year is about 1/4 that of Earth, and Jupiter travels about 60% slower than Earth and its year is about 12 times longer. So I'd expect the outer rings to be going a bit slower than the inner rings. So if those rings were orbiting clockwise, the outer rings would be falling behind relative to the inner rings, as shown. But as Gorf said, the speed difference seems a little (lot) excessive. ;)