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Space Star Wars Prequels

Star Wars: Tatooine Was Likely Orbiting In the Same Plane As Its Twin Suns (syfy.com) 48

Posted by BeauHD from the tightly-spaced dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes: A new study of very young binary stars shows that exoplanets orbiting them (circumbinary planets) will orbit in the same plane as the stars if the two stars are relatively close together. If the stars are farther apart, the planets may have a perpendicular (polar) orbit around them. This study looked at the protoplanetary disks of dust and gas around binaries to draw this conclusion. Extrapolating to fiction, this means Tatooine in Star Wars was coplanar with its host stars.
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Star Wars: Tatooine Was Likely Orbiting In the Same Plane As Its Twin Suns More

Star Wars: Tatooine Was Likely Orbiting In the Same Plane As Its Twin Suns

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  • Tatooine tilt? (Score:3)

    by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2020 @02:46AM (#59865830)

    Someone (not me, I suck at this) could then calculate Tatooine's tilt based on sunset images from the movies?
    https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]

  • How do they know that Tatooineâ(TM)s stars were close to each other? Thereâ(TM)s shots of them both in the sky at the same time, but they could be a huge distance apart in the depth axis, and just different sizes.

    • How do they know that Tatooineâ(TM)s stars were close to each other?

      In the movie, they appear to be circular while laterally separated center-to-center by three solar diameters. If they were close to each other, they would experience enormous gravitational distortion. If both suns were the same mass and density as our sun and separated by three diameters, they would orbit each other in less than 24 hours.

      • But this separation don't need to be real. Because the orbit each other, you can see the stars from maximum separation up to one star eclipse another.

        • But this separation don't need to be real.

          Because it was a Sci Fi/Fantasy movie where things don't have to behave according to the laws of physics.

          • Because it was a Sci Fi/Fantasy movie where things don't have to behave according to the laws of physics.

            No kidding. They also never explained how a planet that is nothing but desert can sustain life. With no oceans or plants, where does the oxygen come from?

            • No kidding. They also never explained how a planet that is nothing but desert can sustain life. With no oceans or plants, where does the oxygen come from?

              Spice, natch. Where you been in livin', Reseda?

    • Very unlikely.

      A planet could orbit both stars at the same time, or just one.

      If you orbit just one of them, the proximity to the other will change as you orbit your main star. That should produce dramatic income light changes that could generate very unpleasant weather.

      To minimize that changes the far star must be too far and be too big to have the same appearance. And be a yellow Star.

      Because the close Star can't be a M star (the smallest) because they are red, and very cold, so you must be very close to th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      When well above the horizon, the stars are remarkably well matched in apparent size, brightness and color.

      On the main sequence, heavier stars are brighter and bluer, and lighter stars are dimmer and redder. The apparent sizes of the suns are equal, so the color difference between a nearer redder star and a more distant, bluer star would be quite dramatic. Now in the iconic sunset shot the lower star looks redder, but in other images from movie we get glimpses that show us stars that are matched in color.

      T

  • why talk about Tatooine (Score:4, Funny)

    by aRTeeNLCH ( 6256058 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2020 @03:20AM (#59865870)
    Why talk about Tatooine, it was such a long time ago, so far away.

    Before JJ and others ruined the whole thing, I mean...

  • Star Wars? Yuck. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Stoutlimb ( 143245 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2020 @03:21AM (#59865872)

    Give it a rest, Star Wars is dead. All the fan loyalty has been wasted.

    • Not in my universe! I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. This is the way!

      • And Im really sorry we raised you into a world of entertainment THAT shit.

        • Yeah, not like the GoodOlDays(tm), when we were regaled with such classics as "The Three Stooges in Orbit" and "Plan 9 from Outer Space!"

      • "Not in my universe! I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. This is the way!"

        That's because you are 12 years old, come puberty that will change.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Give it a rest, Star Wars is dead. All the fan loyalty has been wasted.

      Gotta love people who think they speak for everyone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      I stopped giving a fuck about the franchise after Return of the Jedi but have been dragged back to nearly every movie since then by various women. They never seem to understand why I go *meh*. Though funnily, I did rather enjoy Solo and the MMO they did a few years back was not too bad either. Would have been better as a single player game, though.

    • Yes, for all values of "you" who RTFS.

      "Extrapolating to fiction, this means Tatooine in Star Wars was coplanar with its host stars."

      "...extrapolation is a type of estimation, beyond the original observation range, the value of a variable on the basis of its relationship with another variable. It is similar to interpolation, which produces estimates between known observations, but extrapolation is subject to greater uncertainty and a higher risk of producing meaningless results."

  • This isn't news.
    This is occupational therapy for you! ;)

  • Yeah but that was a long time ago (Score:3)

    by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2020 @04:31AM (#59865950) Journal

    in a galaxy far far away and I've changed now.

  • Tomato3s and Celery Stalks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by buravirgil ( 137856 ) <buravirgil@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 24, 2020 @06:02AM (#59866068)
    Despite their discovery a century and a score ago, binary stars weren't prominent in film and TV that I recall. In 1977, the choice was one of a thousand details to follow Jaws in 1975 that ampliflied the expectations of a summer film. The term "blockbuster" comes from those two films, I thought. Their combined success was another of the cycle of "disruption" to the steady-state Aether of the studio system. That's the film studies dogma, anyways.

    Lucas' indulgence of attribution is a boys' club camaraderie that emerges years later. For example the opening crawl was not simply inspiration from the cinema of his childhood, but according to De Palma (I think it is), Lucas' acceptance of criticism the opening was too confusing for too long and some framing was necessary. Lucas extended this claim of inspiration from serial Saturday movie houses to why he had conceived 9 Chapters.

    To blow up another death star in Chapter 6.

    So, yeah, he lies a lot. He's a filmmaker. Know any successful ones? They lie a lot. Their success resonates and everyone wants explanation when film is one of the most collaborative enterprises known to man except war, or so Cecile B. DeMille said. A simple answer is preferred over the details of actuality. Marcia Lucas' deference to Lucas' authorship is a humility approaching the privilege of Lucas' father's generation.

    All Lucas knew for sure was the reveal of a hero and villain being the dutch word for father obscured by a Germanic-sounding title-- the commonly exercised examination of how power is generational, a twist on redemption as ancient as the opening crawl plainly states. It's the same all over?

    As a kid, the binary stars...I simply hadn't seen on the big screen and their anomaly evoked awe and Astronomy went from block drawings of Galileo and Newton and a diminishing memory of Moon landings to...Sagan, with Spock somewhere between. It made Astronomy as cool as sports.

    When I read much later how filmmakers echo one another (the Kurosawa and Hashimoto connection), of how cross-cultural art is whether it's music (Beatles & Beach Boys) and painters...well, copying each other is expected to even join their conversations.

    I liked the articles. I liked the science standing on the shoulders of previous observations. Most overnight posters are like, I dunno, throwing tomato3s and celery stalks at Melies adaptation of Verne's story and howling about production values.

    • As a kid, the binary stars...I simply hadn't seen on the big screen and their anomaly evoked awe and Astronomy went from block drawings of Galileo and Newton and a diminishing memory of Moon landings to...Sagan, with Spock somewhere between. It made Astronomy as cool as sports.

      When I read much later how filmmakers echo one another

      Actually, astronomers have known for a long time that most brighter star systems are binary [csiro.au]. Their appearance in science fiction movies isn't because filmmakers are copying eac

      • Their appearance in science fiction movies isn't because filmmakers are copying each other. It's because someone involved with making the film wanted to make their science fiction a little more founded in science fact, and had an astronomer review the script.

        I'm curious - where did you learn that having an astronomer review the script of scifi movies was common?

      • Their appearance in science fiction movies isn't because filmmakers are copying each other. It's because someone involved with making the film wanted to make their science fiction a little more founded in science fact, and had an astronomer review the script.

        ~Solandri

        I wrote what I did without drafting, and you are correct to point out "isn't because filmakers copy each other". Filmmakers frequently acknowledge artistry from colleagues in other nations/cultures and even "echo back" within and across genre. I'm not studied in film, only a cinephile, but the information is out there: ___ film influences ___ film. American versions of Japanese and back again...French, Italian, Swedish, and Russian...largely between early 60s thru 90s when (conveniently ignoring Bollywood)

        • pigment(ation) sources? I meant "pigment sources"

          Anyway, the two suns on Tatooine? After reading about Lucas' purposeful referencing of Kurosawa, acknowledging its inspiration, and his central theme of fathers and sons and the histories of conquest, or invasion (vader/father), the two suns were metaphor for his sensibility of dualities separating and inexorably uniting humanity's search for meaning within the constraints of violence.
  • https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/exo... [nasa.gov]

    Nasa has an app that lets you visit (visualize) all of the confirmed exoplanet systems.

  • 1970's matte painter isn't an astrophysicists? Star Wars is totally ruined for me now.

  • I'm no cosmologist but it seems to me that if you had twin suns that close together gravitational forces would warp them both into ellipsoids, am I right?
  • I find the concept that planets in binary star systems orbit along the same plane interesting. I don't understand the need to apply speculation to Star Wars. I would have found the article more interesting without the Star Wars (wait for it)....spin...on the science.
  • Star Wars wasn't even science fiction before Lucas took a dump all over his legacy with the dreadful "prequels". It was a space opera fantasy, so the science could not matter less. I am really sort of embarrassed for any adult who still cares about this.

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