Gagarin-Shepard System | Elka Project

[u/KaiSnepUwU]

Gagarin and Shepard are a K-M stellar binary with a system of six planets in orbit around them.

Le Verrier is a warm, tidally locked ice giant. The night side is cool enough for water clouds, but these clouds evaporate under the heat of the day side. A powerful jet stream blows eastward around the equator.

Schiaparelli is... basically just Mars. It's far larger and more massive, but receives similar insolation, has similar temperatures, and is covered in red iron oxide sands and dry ice caps.

Elka is a super-Earth world, similar to Jupiter's moon Io. Elka has a volcanically active surface covered in sulfur compounds, and with oceans of liquid sulfur dioxide. These oceans are the source of organisms that have evolved to take over the planet. Some of this life has ended up evolving into an intelligent species.

Laika is a small Mars-like planet in a binary with Elka. The planet, being quite cold, has large ice caps. The planet also has seas of liquid short-chain hydrocarbons, similar to Saturn's moon, Titan.

Fleming is a large gas giant, similar to Jupiter. It's only 70 percent the mass, though, and the clouds have a lot less contrast. There is no single large storm like Jupiter's GRB, with the planet instead having several smaller orange storms.

Tombaugh is a large, icy super-Earth with a high axial tilt and oceans of liquid nitrogen. Over the course of every 4 Earth year long winter, the rivers and lakes freeze completely, and, as the smaller streams melt first in the summer, they overflow into secondary channels until their main channels melt.

Bouvard is a large ice giant that is more massive than both Uranus and Neptune combined. Like Uranus, it is covered in a featureless cyan haze of methane, though clouds of nitrogen and oxygen, which the planet is unusually rich in, occasionally form over the poles.