View from Zarmina

The Solar System centered on Gliese 581 (Zarmina’s Sun) is very compact. All the currently known planets almost fit inside the orbit of our Venus and four are closer together than Mercury is to the Sun. Of course Gliese 581 is much dimmer than our Sun, so even though Zarmina orbits a mere 0.146 AU from its Sun the climate is reasonably clement. So all those planets crowded together must make for a very interesting view in the sky. The inner three worlds would look roughly as large as our Moon does from each other’s location, while from there even Zarmina would show a disk. From Zarmina the inner 3 planets are all bigger than the planet Venus appears in our sky, but smaller than our Moon. All should appear as disks or crescents during their whole orbits around Gliese 581 and because Zarmina is exterior to them, they would all cluster around the Sun in the Zarminan sky.

The next planet out, dubbed the unpoetic Gl 581 d, is on a quite elliptical orbit (e=0.38) just 0.22 AU out from the Sun. Zarmina and Gl 581 d could come very close together, just 0.00961 AU, though whether they get so close at present is unknown. If they do, then Gl 581 d would appear in Zarmina’s sky more than twice the size of our Moon. Gl 581 d is bigger than Earth and potentially very bright from clouds or oceans. If it’s a true water planet, or mini-Neptune, then it will be a rather impressive sight in Zarmina’s sky, especially from the Night Side. From that vantage it would be the brightest source of light and likely to dominate the view, as the inner planets would never be visible, and the outer is barely a disk. Imagine that blue-white giant lighting up an otherwise star-light icy wasteland…

(ok so a bit of artistic license. That’s a Bonestell Classic from Fabio Femino’s online gallery)