Climate on Pandora

[skrippi]

Oel ngati kameie Aysmukan!

Pandora (Avatar) changed my whole life! I even don't need light to brush my teeth, distances i drive with the bus i now walk. Everything just for my little Neytiri!

But now since one week i wonder that on Pandora they don't need: pillows in beds or jeans or shirts. No they only have leather on their legs, hips and breasts. Like real animals, but:
Animals have a coat which holds their warm body temperature, the Na'Vi havn't got that.


So now my question:
Is there on pandora no winter? Do they have every time summer? How much degrees do they have?

i would need at min. 30°C (86 °F) to walk day AND night that naked...

- skrippi

[ftxey Keye'ung]

Apparently....although I'm not entirely sure if it was stated in cannon...but the northern and southern latitudes of Pandora have colder climates....although we didn't see any snow at the poles (none that I saw anyway)...and no snow peaked mountains...but we barely got to see outside the jungle forests the entire time of the movie, except the plains, and the floating mountains.

Earth interestingly enough owes much of it's colder climates and seasonal changes to the axis tilt...without the moon to balance the waxing and waning tilt wobble out, Earth could simply flit and flip any which way turning Antarctica into a balmy wetland and the Sahara Desert into a all year round blizzard or icy sand dunes....Pandora orbiting a Gas Giant seems not to have that seasonal tilt and surprisingly enough doesn't seem to be tidally locked given that it has night time and day times.

[skrippi]

the gas-fact is a nice aspect. i think this gould be the reason.
but wouldn't it be nice to have 30 degrees (86°F) every day and night. i mean you really can walk nearly naked and free :D

[Wanderlust]

Apparently....although I'm not entirely sure if it was stated in cannon...but the northern and southern latitudes of Pandora have colder climates....although we didn't see any snow at the poles (none that I saw anyway)...and no snow peaked mountains...but we barely got to see outside the jungle forests the entire time of the movie, except the plains, and the floating mountains.

Earth interestingly enough owes much of it's colder climates and seasonal changes to the axis tilt...without the moon to balance the waxing and waning tilt wobble out, Earth could simply flit and flip any which way turning Antarctica into a balmy wetland and the Sahara Desert into a all year round blizzard or icy sand dunes....Pandora orbiting a Gas Giant seems not to have that seasonal tilt and surprisingly enough doesn't seem to be tidally locked given that it has night time and day times.

Pandora is tidally locked, so is the moon. Tidally locked objects around otehr planets experience a day/night cycle the same as thier orbit around thier home planet. The (our)moon has an orbit of 28 days, so the far side of the moon ("the dark side") has 14 earthdays of light and 14 earthdays of night. Pandora has something of and orbit around polyphemus of 1.4 earth days, so it experiences a similar earth/night cycle to ours.

If the earth or pandora had no tilt then there would be no seasons, the northern areas would always experience one season, winter.

The night and day cycle on a tidally locked moon is the same as its orbit.

[ftxey Keye'ung]

Yes that makes sense....The moon does have days and nights....when I was younger I always assumed the Dark Side of the Moon was...well: dark! but it's just a figure of speech as it's dark to us, not to the sun.

If it is tidally locked then Pandora must have a day or a few days where it passes behind Polyphemus and experiences utter darkness all over right??

[Wanderlust]

Yes that makes sense....The moon does have days and nights....when I was younger I always assumed the Dark Side of the Moon was...well: dark! but it's just a figure of speech as it's dark to us, not to the sun.

If it is tidally locked then Pandora must have a day or a few days where it passes behind Polyphemus and experiences utter darkness all over right??

Its only a few hours (perhaps 1) of eclipse. It would experience an eclipse every day due to its proximity to its huge mother planet, but only like an hour of that day. So the side facing polyphemus(gas giant) experiences a full day with an hour of darkness at noon. If you are on the other side of the planet you would experience a full day with no gas giant in the sky or an hour of darkness at noon.

Yes, the dark side of the moon has a more accurate term, its the far side!! the far side is fantastic for astronomy though.

[Xiraxis]

Pandora day is long 1,4 earth day? from where you know this please

[Neytiri te Tskaha]

33,6 hours... I will sleep twice (?)

[Txen]

It's more complicated that that. Remember that the Centauri system has two bright stars. Even when Pandora is in eclipse behind Polymephus, there could still be light from beta Centauri. Alpha Centauri is about 1.5 times the brightness of our sun and Beta Centauri is on about half as bright as our sun. They orbit each other with a 80 year period so the contribution of light on Pandora changes over that time period.

[ftxey Keye'ung]

It's more complicated that that. Remember that the Centauri system has two bright stars. Even when Pandora is in eclipse behind Polymephus, there could still be light from beta Centauri. Alpha Centauri is about 1.5 times the brightness of our sun and Beta Centauri is on about half as bright as our sun. They orbit each other with a 80 year period so the contribution of light on Pandora changes over that time period.

I think if Alpha Cen (a was to set into a planetary night...Alpha cen (b depending on where it was at the time would cast some sunlight onto the planet something not too dissimilar to twighlight or what happens on earth in late evening when the sun is beginning to set and the sky is red and moody