Guide to finding the "poles" on a planet
Guide to finding the "poles" on a planet
Not the geomagnetic poles, the geographic ones!
Poles are nice for base-building. They have perpetual twilight, so you're always enjoying nice sunset/sunrise lighting. The polar region is defined by the sun never lowering beneath the horizon, which gives you quite a large area to tune your desired lighting, for example darker or brighter noon or midnight.
First up, we want to narrow our search for the fine tuning method I'll share later.
The easiest way is to fly out into space in such a way that you can get the system's star(s) into view of the planet. Drawing a straight line from the star to the day/night boundary on the planet so that they're roughly perpendicular will tell you where the equator is. Then you want to point your ship to the top or bottom of the planet and fly down.
Now we can do the fine tuning method. You want to be close enough to the planet that you have time of day in your camera controls. Set the time to noon and start flying in the direction of the shadows (i.e. away from the sun). There are two cues that tell you you're in the polar region: either the sun is visible at midnight, or the shadows will move dramatically whenever you sample your position with the camera method. The main cue telling you you're getting closer to the pole is that the sun is lower to the ground at noon.
The final layer of fine tuning is determining how bright you want your nights to be. Set the time to midnight and fly away from the sun for darker nights and brighter days. If you want more balance, hop on the Pilgrim and start following the sun until it's around midnight and the sun is at the height you want.
Happy base building!
....I had no idea planets even had poles. I assumed some generic night day cycle was going on regardless where I landed.
This is really cool, thanks for sharing!
Yeah, I only learned this by chance because of a builder in my Civ!
Planets actually have two kinds of pole. The magnetic poles at ±90 latitude on your scanner, and the geographic poles with short to no nights, which have to be found through trial and error.
There's also a method using trigonometry that I'm going to have to sit down and learn.
The reason this works is because planets have no rotation about their axis. The time of day is completely determined by their orbit about the sun. That way the sun is always shining on the equator and you can make a more educated guess about where the poles are.