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The original was posted on /r/outerwilds by /u/unic0de000 on 2023-10-05 19:09:07.


Thought I was gonna say quantum, didn’tcha? Well that’s weird too, but also, the STRANGER’s home moon is weird. Ever notice that the planet in the sky has visible rings? Well it’s not so weird for a planet to have rings, but what’s very weird is that you can see them so clearly!

A planet’s rings always form along the orbital plane perpendicular to the planet’s axis of rotation, around the planet’s equator… and its moons usually orbit along the same plane. For a normal ringed planet with moons, you would only ever see the rings looking straight along their edge, so they’d look like a straight line bisecting the planet in the sky. Since you can see the rings as an ellipse shape, the moon must be in a quite tilted orbit. I wonder how long their lunar day is, and what kinds of odd tidal forces the moon and planet must experience.