Tellurus: a worldbuilding project

What color scheme should Tellurus use?


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Latest update. I felt like the south pole was a little empty so i was like, boom, microcontinent/volcanic hotspot. There is still an issue with plate boundaries at the south pole that i cant figure out how to wrap up, I might post it in the morning if someone could help me with it. Also the ugly continental shelf-colored dots are where i might put islands.
phys_newtellurus.png
 
There is still an issue with plate boundaries at the south pole that i cant figure out how to wrap up, I might post it in the morning if someone could help me with it.

If it's like "hey, the plates all converge here and it's too weird to be real", consider the Coronas of Venus. They seem like they're either spreading or converging in all directions...
 
You know, the sheer amount of effort you are putting in makes me want to do a full climate work up for Tellurus simply to support this. It's a work of art, truly.
 
If it's like "hey, the plates all converge here and it's too weird to be real", consider the Coronas of Venus. They seem like they're either spreading or converging in all directions...
My idea was to throw subduction zones and transform faults at it, but its difficult to find a solution that satisfies me.
You know, the sheer amount of effort you are putting in makes me want to do a full climate work up for Tellurus simply to support this. It's a work of art, truly.
If you think you can do it then I support you. Im totally lost when it comes to climate. And thanks for the kind words.

Unrelated, I heard Molleweide projection conserved area over shape, so i used paint.net selects tool to highlight whole continents (which i color coded) and determine their size. Would anyone be interested in seeing the (possibly horribly inaccurate) results?
 
The area of Tellurus map results
Well, here are the results anyways. XD
This doesnt include the new antarctic lands.

Molleweide projection map results
area map 2.png

Tellurus 1,546,000 pixels 197,000,000 sq mi

Total sq mi ÷ total pixels =127.43 (multiply this number with pixels to get sq mi)

All oceans combined 977,808 pixels 124,602,073 sq mi

Serica 81,944 pixels 10,442,124 sq mi (4th)

Hatar 40,313 pixels 5,137,086 sq mi (6th)

Rhodin 44,156 pixels 5,626,799 sq mi (5th)

The previous 3 combined 166,413 pixels 21,206,009,sq mi

Talamor 110,194 pixels 14,042,021 sq mi (2nd)

Ozara 127,566 pixels 16,255,735 sq mi (1st)

The previous 2 combined 237,760 pixels 30,297,757 sq mi

Equatoria 69,010 pixels 8,793,944 sq mi (5th)

Capricornia 93,713 pixels 11,941,842 sq mi (3rd)

Southeast Ocean islands 1,087 pixels 138,516 sq mi (7th)

Grand total 196,980,141 sq mi


Something noteworthy in my opinion is that Tellurus has about 70 million square miles of land, meaning Tellurus is only 63% covered in water compared to Earth's 71%. I have no idea what this would do to the climate.
 
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Something noteworthy in my opinion is that Tellurus has about 70 million square miles of land, meaning Tellurus is only 63% covered in water compared to Earth's 71%. I have no idea what this would do to the climate.

Shouldn't be a big issue. The land is more evenly distributed between continents than on Earth, so the high and low pressure areas will be smaller than the one over Asia, for example, though there will be more large ones. There's still enough ocean to ensure efficient equator-to-pole heat transfer, so that's not a problem either.

Honestly, one of the weirdest things is the mountain range on Ozara and Talamor stretches North-South from something like 80N to 50S, almost the entire distance pole to pole, and it's as high as the Andes through all of that, it seems. That's going to do some really weird things to the climate on a local scale, AFAICT.

EDIT: Also, that basin trapped between two mountain ranges in Ozara is going to be weird as heck. It's on the equator, so pressure alone should dictate it as a tropical rainforest or at least savannah, but its also really isolated and surrounded by mountains. It's entirely possible you've going to have a small area of relatively fertile and verdant land surrounded by upland deserts.
 
Is there any program that can measure the pixels in a given selection? I have always wanted to know how big my continents/countries are but have always avoided counting them by hand. Please tell me there is an easier way!

By the way, while I can't speak much for the effect on the climate itself, I've heard somewhere before that to sustain life, Earth only needs some ridiculously low percentage of the water that currently exists. Like, below a third, I think! And that, if anything, Earth is oversaturated.

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I used Paint.net and used the magic wand select tool to highlight an entire color, and it tells me how many pixels are highlighted.
((EDIT - OH MY GOD! I can't believe I've never seen the little box saying how many pixels are selected! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING. I am amazed I have never seen it before, and I've always wanted it!!!))
 
Is there any program that can measure the pixels in a given selection? I have always wanted to know how big my continents/countries are but have always avoided counting them by hand. Please tell me there is an easier way!

By the way, while I can't speak much for the effect on the climate itself, I've heard somewhere before that to sustain life, Earth only needs some ridiculously low percentage of the water that currently exists. Like, below a third, I think! And that, if anything, Earth is oversaturated.
I used Paint.net and used the magic wand select tool to highlight an entire color, and it tells me how many pixels are highlighted.
 
Interesting, what of the inland sea between Hatar and Rhodin?

I know you made it as a Mediterranean-analogue, but the problem with that is that it's on the wrong side of the continent (assuming this planet spins the same direction as Earth) for a Mediterranean climate to develop, and the enormous mountain range to the west complicates things further. It might end up as a more mild southern Japan on east-central China instead. I couldn't say more without actually doing the whole thing.
 
I'm trying to come up with names of places in my world, this is what i have so far. Let me know if anyone would like to have anything name after them, or share if you have any help with naming stuff if you can. Thank so much for all the support guys. WARNING: largish image
 

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The island chain connecting Ozara and Rhodin could be called the Wehili Islands(pronounced "weh-hee-lee", with an emphasis on "hee"). I derived the name by combining "Sahel" and "Swahili", regions/cultures that have historically served as waypoints between the Arab world and Sub-Saharan Africa, as the aforementioned island chain would act as a waypoint between the likely North-Africa-esque Rhodin and Sub-Saharan-Africa-esque Ozara.
 
A quick comparison map between the Earth and Tellurus, with lat/long lines to help visualize the locations of continents and help work out their climates.
comparison.png

tellurusblank.png Regular blank Tellurus map too. :)
 
I had an idea for the rest of the solar system to have a lot more of a chance for life and for it to be different than our own solar system. I wanted to draw this but i have no idea how. :( Also, does anyone have ideas for the names of the rest of the planets?


The sun should stay pretty much the same as IRL

A planet similar to the Vulcan once thought to exist in the 1800s, completely molten.

Semreh, a giant, lifeless, cratered rock like Mercury IRL

Aerehtyc (pronounced heretic without the H) A living Venus, it is a barely habitable, but poisonous world more like earth on the inner edge of the goldilocks zone

Tellurus

"Mars" is now a double planet system, one ice covered and the other like mars IRL. both might have life

Asteroid belt

A "Jupiter" with a few planet sized moons, maybe a few with oceans under icy crusts possibly holding life

A "Saturn" maybe with an actually inhabited Titan like moon?

An ice giant, not one with a silly name or sideways.

A planet similar to Pluto or Triton, only slightly bigger and warmer. Is methane based life possible?

More dwarf planets?

"Planet X" a Gas giant far from the last large planet, has a large, tidally locked moon with (cryo?)volcanism


That's all i got so far.
 
Tellurus Solar System
First iteration of Solar system planet names, as well as their sizes for comparison. I plan on adding moons to the gas giants at a later point. Edit: Gas/Ice giant moons named.

Planets and moons over 60mi in diameter listed here:

PHLOGIS

SEMREH

AEREHTYC
eunomis

TELLURUS
eos
ersa

THRAX +ADRESTIA

THEMIS
I
II
III
IV
auxa
carpo
thallo
eirene
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI

CAELUS
I
II
III
IV
lactanius
trivia
hyginus
cicero
nocturnus
varro
olympion

HEMERA
morheus
phebetor
phantassos
momus
apate
pontus
thal
suruna
aiga
oizys
rehtea

CETUS
cepheus

HECATE+HYPNOS

EREBUS
atropos
lachesis
clotho
naru
ananke
aion
hesiod
geras
khaos

Version 0.3
solarsystem.png
 
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I had an idea for the rest of the solar system to have a lot more of a chance for life and for it to be different than our own solar system. I wanted to draw this but i have no idea how. :( Also, does anyone have ideas for the names of the rest of the planets?


The sun should stay pretty much the same as IRL

A planet similar to the Vulcan once thought to exist in the 1800s, completely molten.

Semreh, a giant, lifeless, cratered rock like Mercury IRL

Aerehtyc (pronounced heretic without the H) A living Venus, it is a barely habitable, but poisonous world more like earth on the inner edge of the goldilocks zone

Tellurus

"Mars" is now a double planet system, one ice covered and the other like mars IRL. both might have life

Asteroid belt

A "Jupiter" with a few planet sized moons, maybe a few with oceans under icy crusts possibly holding life

A "Saturn" maybe with an actually inhabited Titan like moon?

An ice giant, not one with a silly name or sideways.

A planet similar to Pluto or Triton, only slightly bigger and warmer. Is methane based life possible?

More dwarf planets?

"Planet X" a Gas giant far from the last large planet, has a large, tidally locked moon with (cryo?)volcanism


That's all i got so far.

Methane based life is possible, though I think you'd need soemthing warmer than pluto.

Maybe make Semreh a tidally locked world with liquid iron?

Aerehtyc is like a slightly (in space terms) less habitable world than Earth, but better than Mars maybe? That is, the jungle/warm ocean world we used to think Venus was?

Also, if you're gonna have 2 moons I syggest having the lighter one on the inner orbit, and having a first-order orbital resonance like 3:4, 2:3, or 1:2 (light moon orbits:heavy moon orbits) so that the two moons are stable together.

I suggest making Thrax-Adrestia marginally habitable, with the lighter one warm enough to match Tellurus' temperate areas in spring (summer for (lighter one)) and the heavier one icy.

Maybe add a watery or even truly earthlike moon to Themis/Caelus/Hemera.

An important note: It seems that planets and spherical moons tend to exist in pairs by either size or mass. This is prominent in the solar system, Saturn's moon system, Uranus' moon system, and Jupiter's moon system. Venus and Earth, Uranus and Neptune, Ganymede and Callisto, Europa and Io, Rhea and Iapetus, Dione and Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas, Titania and Oberon, Ariel and Umbriel.
 
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