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Trrtxonteri

Started by Taronyu, July 17, 2010, 09:13:46 PM

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Taronyu

I am thinking of sending this to Frommer, but I want to know what you guys have to say about it, in case I made any obvious mistakes first. Thanks.

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The Trrtxon Pandoran cycle, as currently given, looks something like this:

Trrtxon
trr'ong - dawn
trr'ongmaw - after dawn
rewon - morning
srekamtrr - before noon
kxamtrr - noon
kxamtrrmaw - after noon
ha'ngir - early afternoon
kaym - late afternoon
sreton'ong - before nightfall
txon'ong - nightfall
txon'ongmaw - after nightfall
txon - night
srekamtxon - before midnight
kxamtxon - midnight
kxamtxomaw - after midnight
txon - night
sresrr'ong  - before dawn

This works well for a terrestrial solar system, where the days and light cycles follow a normal, circadian rhythm. It is easily adapted to terrestrial times - which is good, as the language needs to be taken on by the le'Rrta community in order to be able to survive for long there. However, this doesn't accurately reflect the non-circadian rhythm of Pandora. Although little is known about the exact orbit of Polyphemus and her moons (indeed, it is not clear in the literature (perhaps the fault of the RDA (If we're going to be using this sort of literary device (and if we don't mind heavy recursive embedding)))), some general things can be assumed. From what we think we know, Pandora is one of around nine moons that circle a gas giant (one of three) in an essentially binary star system. Pandora, and one other planetoid moon some bit behind it on the same orbital plane, takes a reverse orbit around Polyphemus, against the cycle of the other seven moons. Pandora does not have a circular orbit, but an irregular eliptical orbit, or something of the sort - we can assume this based on the size of Polyphemus on two different nights, around a month apart, on Pandora. Polyphemus likely has an eliptical orbit around it's sun, as well, due to the gravitational interference of either Alpha Centauri B or A. The other sun is a considerable distance away, as you can see in several stills, but can still be seen as a star brighter than any in the Terran sky. It can be assumed that it would be able to shine out through the day time, as well, given it's shown brightness. (It is red in the films, which is a mistake, it not being a red giant but rather a younger sun as Sol. But perhaps I am wrong.) Alpha Centauri C doesn't appear to be visible in any shot  - but it's intensity is probably around the same as say Venus on Earth. Here's an image with polyphemus, some moons, and the other binary star clearly seen at night:

old gallery link?id=784[/img]

Now, what does all of this entail? Well, for one, it means we won't know anything about the length of the pandoran year, the pandoran month (which would be viewed somewhat differently, really, as Pandora itself is a moon), or the pandoran length of a 'normal' day. But there are some things we can assume about the light levels, especially in light of the movie.

First, here are some diagrams showing very roughly what sort of light Pandora would receive from it's sun. In these, the sun is yellow, Polyphemus blue, and Pandora green. Let's pretend, since we can't know, that they are all existing on the same horizontal plane. yellow lines show the sun's rays, while the white lines show the divide between night and dark on the planet and it's moons.

old gallery link?id=786[/img]

So, first off, here is Pandora in front of the planet. As you can see, half of it would receive sunlight, while the other half would receive night. By no means does this mean that it would be dark - reflecting light off of Polyphemus (which would most likely not be blacked out by Pandora at that distance and size) would illuminate the sky much better than our moon. So, already there we have a certain sort of txon which would be different from another sort of night.

old gallery link?id=787[/img]

Here is that night. Half of the moon would be facing the eclipsing planet - just as our moon does when there is no moon - and the other half would be facing into the blackness, without any illuminating object (except perhaps another satellite). I would call both of these states full-night, as there would be no difference in light between them - but one of them may be different, as it faces the planet, and the Na'vi may regard it differently. I would think that would only matter in the following case:

old gallery link?id=788[/img]

Here, another moon is reflecting light from the sun onto pandora. I was thinking that since Pandora is called Eywa'eveng, the Na'vi might consider the moons to be children of the planet, or of the sun. So this sort of night might be called txon 'awa 'evenghu. Or they may have another word for it.

old gallery link?id=789[/img]

Here's the most interesting, and a more common case. Part of the planet receives sun both from the sun and from the planet. Part of it doesn't see the planet at all, another part is in night with the planet giving light, and another part is having a full night with no sun or illumination. Now, from the movie, it seems that Polyphemus is often in the sky - so there may be some claim to supposing that it is locked in rotation and always shows the same face, as our moon, to the planet, but I'm not sure that this is the case. In any event, a day with the planet in the sky would be brighter than if only the sun were in the sky. So that means we have six different sorts of light that need to be taken into account:

Night with no illumination (facing away)
Night with only moon illumination, not planet
Night with planet illumination
Day with only moon illumination
Day with planet illumination
Day with no secondary illumination (only sun)

These six types of light would almost certainly be unpredictable and yet distinctly noticeable by the Na'vi. There are, however, a few more things to take into account. First off, the seasons. We know nothing of the axial status of Pandora or Polyphemus. However, we do know something of the binary start system. Since, for once, it is surprisingly clear, I am going to quote Wikipedia:

QuoteAn observer on the hypothetical planet would notice a change in orientation to VLBI reference points commensurate with the binary orbit periodicity plus or minus any local effects such as precession or nutation. Assuming this hypothetical planet had a low orbital inclination with respect to the mutual orbit of Alpha Centauri A and B, then the secondary star would start beside the primary at 'stellar' conjunction. Half the period later, at 'stellar' opposition, both stars would be opposite each other in the sky. Then, for about half the planetary year the appearance of the night sky would be a darker blue — similar to the sky during totality at any total solar eclipse. Humans could easily walk around and clearly see the surrounding terrain. Also reading a book would be quite possible without any artificial light.[84] After another half period in the stellar orbit, the stars would complete their orbital cycle and return to the next stellar conjunction, and the familiar Earth-like day and night cycle would return.

And since that is hard to swallow, here's a picture:

old gallery link?id=785[/img]

So, we'd see more light in summer, especially at night (not a seasonal summer, but a light summer). This needs to be taken into account, but probably only by two lexical items describing summer and winter light, as the other six light patterns, and the patterns of Pandora's normal, rotation-based day would not change overmuch by this. But this means that the night with no illumination wouldn't occur in the summer, as the other star would be in the sky lighting the way - likewise, day would be a bit brighter in winter due to two star-like objects in the sky, although the night would be darker. This is also slightly backed up by one of the few relevant quotes from the ASG: "And here's a quote from the ASG: "Complete darkness is rare on Pandora. The large moon orbits a gas giant planet that in turn orbits a star with a stellar companion. Because of this unusual arrangement, most of Pandora's nights have some illumination; fully dark nights are few and far between."

Another thing that I think is of interesting, and probably should be taken into account as it comes from the Na'vi universe (even if it wasn't entirely present in the movie), is this paragraph by Leri Greer at Weta:

QuoteI actually wrote about how it causes a particular sky coloration across the visible spectrum at moments of pure dusk. And the Na'vi, depending on what elevation they live at (sea level versus higher altitudes), perceive a distinct color in narrow band at the horizon at that moment. They identify themselves, and signify in their markings, with this color. Which helps other Na'vi quickly discern at a distance what/where they are from, or what they are likely to be like (fishermen, high plains, skyriders, etc.). That pure dusk "color," combined with their other predominant color markings lets you also know how they relate to Eywa as a "religion" versus Eywa as a physical reality. And during ceremonial gatherings you can "read" a Na'vi by how they mark themselves with dyes, muds, and paints. And the environment and day/night cycle is directly responsible for the development of this social expression behaviour. Again, this was an internal idea to help us design things at Weta Workshop, it's hard to say how much filtered upward to the larger production.

This visible spectrum would probably be similar to the 'green flash' phenomenon that happens on Earth. This light heliophysically makes some sense - not necessarily the actual phenomenon, but the way that elevation would change it, because the curvature of Pandora would be much more visible than on Earth, and this would result in different light levels to different areas of Pandora - probably not noticeable at any time but at evening, however. But this does result in another phenomenon: planetary bodies that breach the horizon line would appear to be smaller near the horizon than when high in the sky. Our moon actually does the same thing, although it is not visible enough to make most people stop and think about it. The refraction of the atmosphere, combined with the distance of one Pandoran radius, would result in other moons or planets appearing to grow as they get higher in the sky. Now, you may be wondering where I am taking you with this. First off, I want to say that there ought to be a word, with so many moons, for when an eclipse of the planet of a moon occurs, but more importantly for the rare occasions when an eclipse of the planet is extended by the dual eclipse of another body. This would be way too cool a phenomenon not to be noticed and labelled as something interesting. Perhaps a reason for a ftozä?

Secondly, I want to reanalyse the words we have. You've probably thinking - this is all well and great, but those are the words you've been given Taronyu, why don't you just live with them? Well, I think that they are still good - if you rethink the way the Na'vi would think about time and light. Instead of having set portions for the day, what they would have is variable ideas as to what day and night are. So, just as the planet would seem to grow in the sky (which reminds me - names for wandering stars, aka other planets?), so would they think of light as growing or lessening, waxing or waning (other words needed.) And in this, perhaps kxamtrr would not mean middle of the day, but rather mid-day, in the middle, the centre, of the concept of day. The centre could be the place which is most something - the centre of the night is most night, just as the pelagic open is most ocean. And so when the Na'vi see the centre of a day coming, they would think it is srekamtrr. When they rise early to grab what light they can in what may be an unpredictable day, they would say after noon that the two watches of the daylight left are dependant entirely not upon the same length as the morning, but on dividing up the waning light from the kxamtrr until the trr'ong (and the flash, which would need a lexical item). The words we have are completely fine, if kxam has this alternate definition. What's more, it would be distinctly in line not only with what we think we know about Pandora, but also with how the Na'vi think differently from modern, time-based, empirical-data based humans. I think that's awesome.

So, here, again, is a list (hopefully complete) of words which would be useful to elucidate this system.

Night with no illumination (facing away)
Night with only moon illumination, not planet
Night with planet illumination
Day with only moon illumination
Day with planet illumination
Day with no secondary illumination (only sun)

Evening-flash
Planet eclipse
Moon eclipse
Wax
Wane
The other Sun
The third Centauri sun, or day-star
Summer-light (Note: these are not necessarily seasonal as on earth, but rather light-driven seasons.)
Winter-light
Winter-dark night
Summer-light night
Winter-two-sunned day
Summer-one-sunned day
Other moons

And I think that's pretty much as much as can be said about the Pandoran Trrtxon.

Nìwotxkrr Tìyawn

I read about 3/4 way before my head asploded. This seems very intriguing and there was definitely a lot of thought put into it. I say you should send it, at the very least so it doesn't go to waste.   :)

One thing I'd like to say though is that there is some hint to the orbit of the moons around Polyphemus.


^from new trailer

No way to be sure but I would assume that it's Polyphemus and its moons, or some of them at least. It's by no means a perfect setup but its probably better than nothing.
Naruto Shippuden Episode 166: Confession
                                    Watch it, Love it, Live it

Ftiafpi

I totally agree, we should send it to Frommer, at the very least I found it an interesting read.

I found no mistakes and it was very clear and well written.

Tirea Aean

Quote from: Ftiafpi on July 17, 2010, 10:58:50 PM
I totally agree, we should send it to Frommer, at the very least I found it an interesting read.

I found no mistakes and it was very clear and well written.

Mllte nìwotx.

Taronyu

Just realised something which I should add:

Of course, it is possibly that Polyphemus has very odd characteristics. For instance, it's possible that it's rotational axis could be pointed towards the sun like our Uranus, resulting in Pandora rotating around the planet at a perpendicular angle to the sun, so that it always receives light. There are probably some other possibilites I haven't thought of. But I think, importantly, the light system wouldn't change much, and we'd still find the phenomena I have pointed out to be the ones which would desire explaining. So let's pretend that Polyphemus is, for lack of a better word, normal.

Payä Tìrol

#5
Also, a good assumption for satellite only slightly smaller than Earth is that it is the result of Polyphemus's circumplanetary accretion disk, when the Centauri AB system was forming.
Most large satellites are the result of this, and tend to have orbits that are very close their their host planet's equatorial plane. (Luna is an exception and not likely the result of Earth's accretion disk) Smaller satellites are often captured asteroids, and thus have very irregular orbits.

Due to this, If Polyphemus has a very high tilt, then Pandora's orbit would be very tilted against ACA's ecleptic, resulting in either
1) The Northern or Southern hemispheres receiving almost all of the light Pandora gets from ACA, all the time.
or
2) A complete loss of the complex Pandoran day-night cycle. It would be pretty similar to Earth's if Polyphemus's tilt was high compared to ACA, and Pandora's tilt was once again high compared to Polyphemus's equatorial plane. I doubt this is even possible, but I put it here as a hypothetical.
I think it's safe to say that Polyphemus's tilt is relatively low.

Also, ignoring any eclipse effects from Polyphemus, I agree that for half of the Pandoran "year," night would be shortened significantly, due to the pretty significant amount of light the planet would get from ACB when the two are on opposite does of Pandora from each other. I think that bright red object in your image from Gathering the Na'vi Clans may be ACC?

Actually, from that very same image, you can clearly see that Polyphemus's tilt is fairly low. If the tilt was high, we would start seeing concentric circle of cloud bands where ACA shines against one pole, as those are formed from the planet's rotation, and will be parallel to the planet's equatorial plane.
Oeyä atanìl mì sìvawm, mipa tìreyä tìsìlpeyur yat terìng

Muzer

I'm not sure whether we DO need all of those words - for example, we have nights with a moon and nights without a moon, but we either don't have words for them; or if we do, they're used so infrequently that I have forgotten them ;) - other than, of course, bright night, dark night, etc..
[21:42:56] <@Muzer> Apple products used to be good, if expensive
[21:42:59] <@Muzer> now they are just expensive

Carborundum

Quote from: Taronyu on July 17, 2010, 09:13:46 PM
old gallery link?id=787[/img]
Here is that night. Half of the moon would be facing the eclipsing planet - just as our moon does when there is no moon - and the other half would be facing into the blackness, without any illuminating object (except perhaps another satellite). I would call both of these states full-night, as there would be no difference in light between them - but one of them may be different, as it faces the planet, and the Na'vi may regard it differently. I would think that would only matter in the following case:
There would be a noticeable difference between facing the planet versus facing away from it.
Firstly, Polyphemus' silhouette would be clearly outlined against the sky, as particles in its upper atmosphere would catch and refract light from the sun.
Secondly, gas giants have an energy production of their own, mostly due to radioactive isotopes in their atmosphere decaying. While the resulting output of heat is insignificant compared to that of a relatively nearby star, it would likely make the side of Pandora facing Polyphemus noticeably warmer.
Quote from: Muzer on July 18, 2010, 08:09:46 AM
I'm not sure whether we DO need all of those words - for example, we have nights with a moon and nights without a moon, but we either don't have words for them; or if we do, they're used so infrequently that I have forgotten them ;) - other than, of course, bright night, dark night, etc..
I agree that we don't necessarily need every word on the above list, but since Pandora's day-night cycle is most likely far more irregular than Earth's, there should be something to reflect that in the language.
We learn from our mistakes only if we are made aware of them.
If I make a mistake, please bring it to my attention for karma.

Taronyu

Good point!

Muzer, we don't need them. But then again, we don't need Na'vi, either.

Payä Tìrol

#9
Oh, on that note, I think there's a pretty high likelihood that Pandora is tidally locked to Polyphemus. Pandora is definitely massive enough, and probably close enough to Polyphemus as well. I wonder if Polyphemus appears in *every* scene where the sky is shown, sitting on the Horizon.
If this is true, and if every scene showing Polyphemus shows it roughly on the Horizon, then the cycle would simplify to the following where the Omatikaya live:
Midnight (Kelutral area facing directly away from ACA, receiving Polyphemus reflected light)
After-Midnight (Kelutral area still facing away from ACA, but now Pandora is also being eclipsed by Polyphemus, total darkness)
Morning (Pandora leaves Polyphemus's shadow, Kelutral area now receiving ACA light)
Noon (Directly facing ACA)
Afternoon
Dusk (Sunset, but still receiving reflected light).
Oeyä atanìl mì sìvawm, mipa tìreyä tìsìlpeyur yat terìng

Taronyu

That's why I don'y think it's tidally locked. Because there was no darkness at noon. I think it has a more erratic schedule than that, something we can't really predict.

Payä Tìrol

#11
Sorry, I edited that part>_>
If the Kelutral area shows Polyphemus always on the Horizon, part of that total darkness eclipse may occur shortly after sunset, somewhat like that scene where Jake meets that pack of viperwolves.

Edit: Nope, nevermind. I found a scene where Polyphemus is clearly hanging almost nearly overhead, and I remember many others where it's on the horizon.
Oeyä atanìl mì sìvawm, mipa tìreyä tìsìlpeyur yat terìng

Taronyu

Quote from: Payä Tìrol on July 18, 2010, 11:11:49 AM
Sorry, I edited that part>_>
If the Kelutral area shows Polyphemus always on the Horizon, part of that total darkness eclipse may occur shortly after sunset, somewhat like that scene where Jake meets that pack of viperwolves.

Edit: Nope, nevermind. I found a scene where Polyphemus is clearly hanging almost nearly overhead, and I remember many others where it's on the horizon.

As I said. Erratic. So I'm not sure we can say more than I've already stated.

Taronyu

Double Post!

I've sent it. Thanks for the input, guys. Hopefully we'll hear something cool.