Template:Descent section/calima/en

In Descent (2258)

Calima is the destination of the Pioneers mission: a satellite tidally locked to the metal-rich rocky planet Rubra Fulgur I, which is in turn locked to the red dwarf Rubra Fulgur. It is named after the permanent fog that covers the lower layer of its atmosphere, a word for a kind of sea haze from the region of the Asturian astrophysicist who discovered it.

Description

Discovered nearly 5000 cycles before the book, Calima stood out as an excellent candidate: gravity only 4% higher than Earth's, a narrow temperature range of 10 to 25 degrees, and water over almost all of its surface. Its atmosphere is breathable in the lower layers, but only for a few hours, because of its argon and neon; the crew will need lung gene therapy. As the ship approaches, cyclical changes in its CO2 suggest life.

In the story

Spoilers for Descent

On the ground the fog starts to blur everything at 20 metres and is impenetrable at 50; it is white below and reddish towards the sky, darker at night, and thins where wood is burnt. A planetary cycle, one day and night, lasts about 10.11 hours, and a full turn around the star 103 planetary cycles. The land where the survivors come down is karstic and fractured, with cliffs, caves, streams and hot springs, a light subtropical forest and its own animals, among them the Kutsanp, the Gecko, the Karmabog and the Vaghadata.

Quotes

However, since it had been discovered nearly 5000 cycles ago, Calima had stood out as an excellent candidate for a perfectly habitable planet: a satellite tidally locked to the metal-rich rocky planet Rubra Fulgur I, in turn tidally locked to the red dwarf Rubra Fulgur, all of them in a stable configuration for hundreds of billions of cycles.

It was due to that fog that the celestial body had received its name: a meteorological term in Latin or Greek, Kurt did not remember exactly, which designated a kind of sea haze common in the region of the Asturian astrophysicist who discovered the satellite.

At just 20 meters it started to blur everything, transforming itself into an impenetrable layer at barely 50 meters.

Included by Calima. Generated from the book.