I want to make a planet with no tilt and also a ring, I know that no tilt would make the equator always warm, but would having a ring make a shadow at the equator that would make it cooler? Or would it reflect the light and make around the equator warmer?
5
-
2$\begingroup$ Accepting the only answer you got 9 minutes after posting your question is not the best way to achieve your goal. Upvote the answers that you find helpful and wait at least 24 hours before accepting the one you think helps you best. In this way you will get more answers and more choices. $\endgroup$L.Dutch– L.Dutch ♦2026-03-19 06:15:57 +00:00Commented Mar 19 at 6:15
-
$\begingroup$ Related: What would the sky look like from the surface of a planet with rings? $\endgroup$Wyck– Wyck2026-03-19 14:28:30 +00:00Commented Mar 19 at 14:28
-
$\begingroup$ As an alternative idea, what if your ring was a couple kilometers thick and really opaque instead of like Saturn's (see the other answers). I assume this would need to engineered someway instead of being natural. I agree with @wyck above the temperature probably wouldn't be that different. However, it could cause some very interesting weather patterns (like permanent convection winds) which could make living/settling close to the equator somewhat of a challenge (might be great for wind turbines). $\endgroup$tmjac2– tmjac22026-03-19 23:05:48 +00:00Commented Mar 19 at 23:05
-
$\begingroup$ Oh how would it make convection winds? $\endgroup$doodle doodle– doodle doodle2026-03-20 02:14:31 +00:00Commented Mar 20 at 2:14
-
1$\begingroup$ @doodledoodle a permanently shadowed area will stay slightly cooler than surrounding areas that are in direct sunlight. Hot air rises and cool air sinks. The cool air above the shadow will sink and spread outward at the surface, then be warmed in direct sunlight, rise high into the atmosphere where it will be pushed into the shadowed area at its top where it cools and sinks to the surface again. The "spreading outward at the surface" is experienced as wind. It's called a Hadley Cell and its scale affects the formation of trade winds. The ring-shadow could create a micro-Hadley cell. $\endgroup$Wyck– Wyck2026-03-20 13:50:07 +00:00Commented Mar 20 at 13:50
Add a comment
|
3 Answers
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
4
First things first: it would be infinitesimally cooler under the shadow of the rings, certainly not warmer, but not significantly so.
Here's an image of the shadow that Saturn's rings cast on the planet's upper cloud layer during its equinox (Cassini - August 11, 2009).
This is probably about as close to true equinox as your world would be close to having ostensibly "no tilt". The image shown is taken within hours of equinox but not the precise moment of minimum shadow. So it's probably still a good visual reference for how much shadow there could be.
In my opinion, winds would do a good job of equalizing temperature over such a small area. The ring likely isn't thick enough to cover the disk of the sun from an observer on the planet, so although it reduces the amount of energy slightly it's likely not going to be dark like night in the shadow of the ring. Or even as dark as a total eclipse. (If you've never seen one, I highly recommend it!) I suspect it would be like it being a little cloudy.
I'll also point out that even a slight tilt would be enough to equalize the amount of sun you get in a day everywhere because your planet likely still rotates (has a "day"). So in practice there wouldn't likely be a point on the surface that was permanently in ring-shadow all day every day.
The rings wouldn't affect climate to any noticeable degree. The shadow isn't very large and isn't very dense. Wind (convection) would be a great equalizer creating uniform temperatures in the equatorial region, whether in ring-shadow or not. But it would be fun to look at -- probably a good tourist attraction!
Bottom line: Rings would have little to no effect on temperature.
-
8$\begingroup$ And Saturn is very very far from the Sun and for this reason the Sun has a very very small angular size as seen from Saturn. Seen from Earth the Sun has an angular size of about half an arc-minute, and for this reason an object one kilometer across orbiting at 100 km altitude will cast no shadow whatsoever. An object orbiting at a reasonable 2,000 km altitude would have to be tens of kilometers across to cast a shadow. $\endgroup$AlexP– AlexP2026-03-19 15:01:03 +00:00Commented Mar 19 at 15:01
-
1$\begingroup$ @AlexP Half a degree, or 30 arc-minutes. $\endgroup$Kvík– Kvík2026-03-19 19:02:32 +00:00Commented Mar 19 at 19:02
-
2$\begingroup$ @Kvík Half a degree is that angular size of the Sun as seen from Earth, not Saturn. It's 10 times less from Saturn. $\endgroup$jcaron– jcaron2026-03-20 09:10:11 +00:00Commented Mar 20 at 9:10
-
$\begingroup$ @jcaron Yes, but that's not what is written above. From Saturn it should indeed be 3 arcmin or so – and indeed all shadows appear much sharper than here on Earth. $\endgroup$Kvík– Kvík2026-03-21 18:20:58 +00:00Commented Mar 21 at 18:20
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
Taking Saturn as a reference, its rings have a thickness estimated between 10 and 250 meters.
When aligned in the plane of the ecliptic, we can safely say that they cast no appreciable shadow on the planet, and as such they would not reduce in a sensible way the amount of light reaching the equator.
They would work better as parasol if they were tilted.
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
Sure, it depends on the composition and density of the ring. Of the rings we know about Saturns is the only highly reflective one since it's made of ice. Jupiters is dust & Uranuses rings are made from dark rocky material which doesn't reflect much. We also know rings flatten over time, so at one point your planets ring could have been relatively wide and dense enough to cast a meaningful shadow cooling the equator somewhat.
Just by changing the time frame the ring can be anything from a cloud of dust and rocks from an impact or torn apart moonlet to a thin ring. So an observer today on the equator during the day might be in a pleasant shade, while one 100 million years later might be getting bad sunburn, and one 100 million years prior be in perpetual twilight.
Rings are dynamic, we happen to live at a time when Saturns rings are very visible, but they're thought to have formed only a few hundred million years ago, and it's believed they will no longer exist 100 million years or so from now.
