Navigating Strange Worlds

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

Here on Earth, the concept of using the sun, stars, and various other objects in the sky to navigate is a common idea. On other similar planets and worlds, the same concepts and skills can still be used. The sky simply looks different on those worlds because you have a different point of reference. However, as I was doing some prep work for a campaign I will be running, it dawned on me that what I had in mind for the setting I was creating might make navigational skills and concepts, ones which I take for granted to be simple, might be more difficult.

What I had in mind was that the game's world would actually be a habitable moon which orbits a large planet. At first, I gave that little thought. I simply wanted the sky of my fantasy setting to look different, and I wanted to try something radically different than what I had used before. Upon further thought, I questioned whether or not night time navigation would be more difficult due to the proximity and/or size of the planet. I have seen pictures of what the Earth looks like from the moon, and I do not imagine any extra difficulty in that situation.

But does having something larger, such as Jupiter or Saturn (or perhaps even bigger), dominating the sky upon which you're looking add any difficulty to navigating? My gut feeling is "not really," but I wanted to check my thoughts against a community which often has a better understanding of celestial mechanics and concepts than I do.

For the first team the best way might be simply to do a a ball of yarn orbit sowing off beacon drones until you are done, then making the landing. Once that is done, local astronomy can be perceived.

Though in any event you probably have computers by now, capable of refining known astronomical bodies to the perspective of the landing party in any event.

[Curmudgeon]

Large planets, on the order of Jupiter and Saturn for size, may well have multiple moons, both large and small. Depending on the local ability to model celestial motion, it ought to be possible to navigate using the various moons as marker objects (and, as on Earth, having a good chronograph to compare when you saw it in position vs. when you would have seen it if you were back home).