Barnard’s Star

 

Barnard’s Star is an M4Ve type Red Dwarf Star about six light years from Earth. It has had an operation jump gate since 2069.  It is an old star at about 10 billion years and has 3 planets 1 – de Kamp, 2 – gas giant, 3 – H₃ gas giant.  The system also contains a large number of asteroids and an Ort cloud.  There is a lot of mining out there.  The planet is tidally locked with its sun. One side continually faces the sun; the other sees only a night sky of stars. A “ring” of water, roughly 2200 kilometers wide (or 1350 miles), forms an ocean around the planet’s circumference between the sunlight and the dark. The Star-Runners (Baratarians) have sailing ships that provide 80+ percent of the transport among colonies on de Kamp. (Some railroad transport also exists on the planet, together with sundry air vehicles.)

Because all the colonies are on the “sunward” side of the ocean ring and the sun never rises or sets, the concepts of north, south, east and west have little meaning here. The colonists instead use “sunward” as the equivalent of north, and “ice-ward” for south. Directions around the ring are “leftward” and “rightward” (where “up” means sunward).

Land in the sunward direction grows continually hotter. The area closest to the sun contains a perpetual hurricane some 4500 km in diameter (approx 2800 miles). Periodically, the winds die down and then switch direction from “clockwise” to “counterclockwise” or vice-versa.

NOTE: In the habitable zone, the sun hovers just above or below the horizon, depending on one’s latitude and the location of nearby mountains. While the sun does appear to roam in a small elliptical path, it never sets. Thus, the habitable areas are never truly “night” or “dark”. Instead, there is a perpetual “late afternoon or early evening” level of light.

Since there are no real days or nights, deKamp uses an Earth-style calendar with 24-hour days, 7-day weeks, months of January through December, and leap years.