The Cardassian atmosphere and its sun type

[Nerys Ghemor]

OK...I've been trying to figure out something for the purposes of my Cardassian-based fanfic, and I thought I'd turn to the astronomers on the forum for this.

What I am trying to figure out is if Cardassia Prime orbits a G-type main sequence star like our own, or if it instead something like K-type "orange dwarf" would account for what we see on Prime.

Here are some screenshots of Prime seen from space:

http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/en/images/4/48/CardassiaPrime2375.jpg
http://images.wikia.com/startrek/images/7/7f/Cardassia_perimeter.jpg

(Which raises another question: are these screenshots above even consistent with a habitable world? Should they even be taken seriously? Granted, every description of Cardassia Prime makes it seem as though the planet does not have the most stable ecosystem, either due to pollution or some natural calamity, but is something like this even habitable to a humanoid race?)

Here are some shots (to be taken more seriously, I think) from the surface:

Partial cloud cover: http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/en/images/2/24/Cardassia.jpg

Under cloud/smoke cover: http://www.freewebz.com/usspegasus/Pics/Races/Cardassia/destruction.jpg

Sunset: http://www.mela.de/RPG/CardassianischeBotschaft/capital.jpg

Cryptic's take on Prime (non-canon). Going to assume there are some lighting effects in play, given what we know about Cardassians not liking bright light.

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/5469/screenshot2010121822074.jpg


Are the colors we see in the sky (which do not seem to favor blue as much as Earth) due to a) the star being different--such as a K-type, b) soil composition--less foliage, or c) none of the above, d) reasonable probability of either or a combination of both?

Also, are the screenshots of the planet from space consistent with what we see on the surface, or is that impossibly "dirty"?

 

[Tiberius]

I'd say it is a G type star, but Cardassia is a bit closer to its sun than earth is to Sol, thus explaining why Cardassia is a fair bit warmer. Perhaps the solar cycle is more extreme than Sol as well, leading to a greater degree of sunspots, which could have an influence of the weather systems.

 

[sojourner]

It could be closer to the star or have more green house gases or be a hotter star but still in the G range. The images from the surface appear to be near sunset for the most part. The dramatic colors of the sunsets could be from dust - maybe large portions of the planet are wind swept deserts with more soil in the air. Or the colors could be from volcanic ash, or pollution. Maybe the ecosystem relies on the plant life spreading vast amounts of pollen, enough to effect sky/sunset colors?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

According to Geoffrey Mandel's "Star Trek Star Charts", Cardassia is spectral class K0V star of absolute magnitude -1.1, with 4 inhabited class-M planets and 4 unhabited planets (2 class B, 1 class Q, and 1 class I). The combined spectral class and stated absolute magnitude place for the star it more in the giant branch than in the main sequence, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Hutet, Cardassia Minor, and Cardassia Prime (Cardassia IV, V, and VI respectively) are all class M as is Cardassia III (unnamed). Apply a liberal dose of NaCl to this information.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Asbo--I'm perfectly willing to disregard the Star Charts information, since that didn't actually come from the show--what we see on camera is all I'd try to infer from. If we were looking at the possibility of a K-type star, though, isn't a K-type with a more reasonable absolute magnitude main sequence, and not as different from a G-type star as what's in that book?

Tiberius--What effects on terrestrial weather systems would you expect from sunspots, if it's a G-type with more volatile solar "weather"?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Asbo--I'm perfectly willing to disregard the Star Charts information, since that didn't actually come from the show--what we see on camera is all I'd try to infer from. If we were looking at the possibility of a K-type star, though, isn't a K-type with a more reasonable absolute magnitude main sequence, and not as different from a G-type star as what's in that book?

I understand that Star Charts developed using information depicted in the show and also obtained from Andre Bormanis, Doug Drexler and many others closely linked with the shows, plus a large amount of imagination. A K0-class star in luminosity branch V (main sequence) should have a absolute magnitude of about 6. It would probably be similar to our Sun, albeit a bit dimmer, less massive (about 0.8 M sol), and a bit more orange coloured being cooler.

 

[Tiberius]

The wiki article on sunspots links them with global warming. One could also expect them to result in increased radiation, leading to stronger and brighter and more extensive aurora.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I understand that Star Charts developed using information depicted in the show and also obtained from Andre Bormanis, Doug Drexler and many others closely linked with the shows, plus a large amount of imagination. A K0-class star in luminosity branch V (main sequence) should have a absolute magnitude of about 6. It would probably be similar to our Sun, albeit a bit dimmer, less massive (about 0.8 M sol), and a bit more orange coloured being cooler.

So for a K-type star to support a world as hot as what Cardassia Prime is suspected to be, this suggests it would either need to be moved closer in its orbit to the star than the Earth, or the composition of the atmosphere should be higher on greenhouse gases?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I understand that Star Charts developed using information depicted in the show and also obtained from Andre Bormanis, Doug Drexler and many others closely linked with the shows, plus a large amount of imagination. A K0-class star in luminosity branch V (main sequence) should have a absolute magnitude of about 6. It would probably be similar to our Sun, albeit a bit dimmer, less massive (about 0.8 M sol), and a bit more orange coloured being cooler.

So for a K-type star to support a world as hot as what Cardassia Prime is suspected to be, this suggests it would either need to be moved closer in its orbit to the star than the Earth, or the composition of the atmosphere should be higher on greenhouse gases?

Yes. That would work. I suspect perhaps Geoffrey Mandel couldn't make the numbers work with four Goldilocks Zone planets and so bumped up the luminosity of the star while forgetting to correct the luminosity class from V to III. Cardassia being a giant doesn't really work as there wouldn't be time for advanced life to evolve if the class-M planets had spent most of their existence as cold bodies distant from a main sequence primary before being warmed when the star entering the giant branch. As the time spent as a giant is a tiny fraction of the several billion years spent on the main sequence, it would be unlikely for life to be able to evolve significantly. I suppose intelligent life could take steps to migrate outward in the system if it hadn't quite developed the capability for interstellar flight.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Last question, then: if we're dealing with a K-type star, in comparison to Earth would it actually appear to be bigger in the sky than our sun (let's say at high noon, to minimize distortion from the atmosphere)? Or will it balance out, between the star being smaller and the planet being closer, and look to be about the same, just more orange?

(Finally, if someone has graphics software, what kind of settings could one try to simulate the effects of a K-type star? I want to try it and see if it seems to work visually or not.)

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Last question, then: if we're dealing with a K-type star, in comparison to Earth would it actually appear to be bigger in the sky than our sun (let's say at high noon, to minimize distortion from the atmosphere)? Or will it balance out, between the star being smaller and the planet being closer, and look to be about the same, just more orange?

(Finally, if someone has graphics software, what kind of settings could one try to simulate the effects of a K-type star? I want to try it and see if it seems to work visually or not.)

Let's take the K2V star Epsilon Eridani as an example. Its mass, radius, and luminosity are 0.82, 0.74, and 0.34 that of the Sun. The only real difference from Cardassia would be the metalicity, which is unlikely to make much of a difference. The habitable zone is 0.5 to 1.0 AU so let's assume Cardassia Prime is at 0.8 AU to allow room for the other inhabitable planets. That means that the apparent diameter of the star in the sky is 0.74/0.8 that of the Sun as seen from the Earth or 0.925 -- not really much different. It wouldn't look substantially different from our sun although atmospheric effects might make it look redder if the atmosphere is denser -- particularly when nearer the horizon. Those artistic depictions that I've seen to be pretty much spot on.

ETA: Another thing is that a K2V star is likely to be more magnetically active than our sun so the enhanced flare and solar wind activity could cause environmental disruption to ecosystems. The star's corona is likely to be brighter in its UV and X ray emission than the sun by a factor of 2-5 depending on the degree of variability.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

It still looked like there was some blue in the "overcast" depictions I saw, like maybe the effect of cloud cover is to block out some of the reddest hues. From what I recall from the submarine ride I took once, water seems to have a "blocking" effect against red, so that does seem to make sense.

Environmental disruption is not out of character with what we know about Cardassia from the show, BTW.

(In my stories Cardassia is also undergoing a Permian-Triassic-like extinction event. And a sentient civilization has the misfortune to be living there when it started!)

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Wow, P–Tr was the most extreme extinction event on Earth that we know about. There is a possibility that the large-scale release of methane clathrates from the ocean floor was involved although it's not know if that was cause or effect. It would seem to me that the Cardies would probably be at least partially responsible for the event as they don't appear to be that environmentally minded (sorry).

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

It was a horrible event. Whether the Cardassian one will get AS extreme, I'm not sure, but it's bad. At least in my own continuity I do not blame the Cardassians for it because it happened before they turned into the corrupt entity we see onscreen.

I decided to go with increased volcanism as the initial cause because I was actually not interested in going the "blame the people" route and doing some kind of cheap global warming parallel. I am more interested in looking at the blame games people play when it's absolutely not anybody's fault. (Which can also be very "interesting" to say the least.) They definitely could've improved their practices, but no one made the volcanoes start belching out all that CO^2.

But knowing that for the entire foreseeable future of their race (given how many millions of years events like that take), their world will be suffering in this horrible way has got to affect their mindset.

(You know the other irony about picking the P-T extinction? I have classified my Cardassians as therapsids. Most beings biologically comparable to them on Earth died in that very event.)

 

[T'Girl]

Are we assuming that Cardassia is one of those wonderful Star Trek worlds with just the one climate? You know, pole to pole. Or, are the portions of Cardassia that we've been seeing the local version of the Australian outback and the Peru desert?

 

[Finn]

^When was it implied that the planetary scenes we saw represents entire planets, instead of a region of a given planet?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Are we assuming that Cardassia is one of those wonderful Star Trek worlds with just the one climate? You know, pole to pole. Or, are the portions of Cardassia that we've been seeing the local version of the Australian outback and the Peru desert?

I'd bet that depends on how the planet sits on its axis.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

You know the other irony about picking the P-T extinction? I have classified my Cardassians as therapsids. Most beings biologically comparable to them on Earth died in that very event.

Ah, that explains why Cardassian teeth look so similar to our's.
Mammals descend from a group of therapsids that weren't wiped out -- as I'm sure you know.

I decided to go with increased volcanism as the initial cause because I was actually not interested in going the "blame the people" route and doing some kind of cheap global warming parallel. I am more interested in looking at the blame games people play when it's absolutely not anybody's fault. (Which can also be very "interesting" to say the least.) They definitely could've improved their practices, but no one made the volcanoes start belching out all that CO^2.

In the case of the Earth, it was probably the Siberian Traps igneous province eruption to blame as there's little evidence for a large impact event (ETA: other than the proposed Wilkes Land crater perhaps, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkes_Land_crater). The large release of methane from permafrost or undersea clathrate deposits is still somewhat debatable.

Regarding the apparent monoclimate, the only map that I've seen of Cardassia Prime depicts two main continents straddling the equator and a bunch of large islands near the north pole.

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Cardassia

However, the axial tilt is not stated.

The web site states that the Cardassian sun is either M2V or K2V depending on whether you trust the DS9 Narrator's Toolkit or the Star Charts. An M2V sun would likely be a bit redder (cooler) and more magnetically unstable.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Ah, that explains why Cardassian teeth look so similar to our's.
Mammals descend from a group of therapsids that weren't wiped out -- as I'm sure you know.

Indeed. It made it plausible, though, for a being to evolve with scales but still apparently be compatible enough with mammalian species to have children with them. I've seen some people claim that a combination of hair, scales, and...well, boobs...isn't plausible. But beings descended from therapsids that ended up with a different combination of characteristics (which we have seen in our own fossil record) could easily arise, and bear live young and nurse them. (That said, I'm not sure breasts are as sexualized among the Cardassians. Whole other discussion there. )

I also thought that the Cardassian vole looked like a really ugly bastard cousin of Earth's cynodonts.

As to what allows such extreme compatibility, I did have to engage in some Treknobabble for that, but I have an essay off-site that gives a general idea of how, in my fanfic, to guess who is and is not able to have children together.

In the case of the Earth, it was probably the Siberian Traps igneous province eruption to blame as there's little evidence for a large impact event (ETA: other than the proposed Wilkes Land crater perhaps, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilkes_Land_crater). The large release of methane from permafrost or undersea clathrate deposits is still somewhat debatable.

As for the Siberian Traps eruption, what I am reading makes it seem like that would be enough to trigger an anoxic event in the ocean and land extinctions both, or at least play a big part of it.

The web site states that the Cardassian sun is either M2V or K2V depending on whether you trust the DS9 Narrator's Toolkit or the Star Charts. An M2V sun would likely be a bit redder (cooler) and more magnetically unstable.

I would say K makes more sense, but then again I'm not an expert, which is why I asked here.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It made it plausible, though, for a being to evolve with scales but still apparently be compatible enough with mammalian species to have children with them. I've seen some people claim that a combination of hair, scales, and...well, boobs...isn't plausible. But beings descended from therapsids that ended up with a different combination of characteristics (which we have seen in our own fossil record) could easily arise, and bear live young and nurse them. (That said, I'm not sure breasts are as sexualized among the Cardassians. Whole other discussion there.

Hair, scales, feathers, teeth, dermal denticles, sweat and mammary glands are all structures generated from basal skin cells by a limited number of genetic factors. So I don't see any problem with a combination of scales, hair, and lactation glands.
I'm thinking of the Pangolins and Armadillos as an example, but I'm sure there are others. This creature, in particular, looks very "Cardassian" although it is really from Argentina:

Pink Fairy Armadillo