So, I was looking at this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_binary_star_systems

And I want to write a sci-fi story about Non-circumbinary planet in a binary system. (The “S type” shown on that wiki page.)

And although I’m not going hardcore for the “hard” sci-fi, I want to get at least a vaguely plausible idea of how day/night and year cycles might go for such a planet. If only so I can get an idea of how I need to set up my calendar, and brainstorm on how animal/plantlife might evolve differently if the day/night cycle and seasonal cycle is different enough from Earth.

Are there any tools out there where I can either find an existing binary star system out there and put a hypothetical planet around one of them and get a visual of how sunlight from the two stars might play out over the planet circling one of them, or where I can just straight-up plop stellar/planetary masses down and it’ll let me play with orbits and such?

Back in the day there wasn’t, but I feel like someone might have evolved some sort of toy that’ll let me do this when I wasn’t looking. I just don’t know where to start.

  • IonAddis@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Gah, that’s exactly what I want, I just have no budget for it atm. Going on my wishlist for sure.

    I wonder if there’s less-polished tools (FOSS) out there that can do something similar?

    Edit: Wow, I’m a dummy, I already own it, I’ve just never installed it. Ha! Thank you!

    • kakes
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      1 year ago

      Lmao a happy ending! Glad I could help!