Rosa's Children

 

You may want to view the above image at full-size! Blogger compression takes a lot out of it.

I had a blast with this painting of the three inhabited worlds in the Rosa system. Only pr'Sefone had previously been depicted from space, so I figured I'd take a step back and try to render the other two in this more familiar sci-fi lens. The sizes were just eyeballed, but are intended to be pretty representative. The direction of Roselight indicates the relative ordering of the planets as well. A quick breakdown:

pr'Sefone, the small, innermost world, is tidally-locked and so resembles what many have termed a "hot eyeball planet." The Roselit side is a scorched desert, while a narrow band of temperate climate exists right along the day-night terminator. Deeper in shadow, a mysterious tundra wasteland looms in the eternal darkness. I've depicted a bit more surface water than previously envisioned; I think we've got some rivers and perhaps dammed artificial lakes now, in addition to more ancient dried rivers and deltas. I like to imagine pr'Sefone had dramatic canyons and waterfalls and such globally before it became tidally locked; most of those features are now lost in tundra or desert. The green is, technically, Earthly vegetation, although in Roselight's setting it's perhaps thousands of years removed. I've also depicted the primary spaceport out of Eterna, pr'Sefone's capital city, near the north pole.

irid'An is a lush, tropical ocean world, with a few small archipelagos and atolls springing forth from the gentle, temperate sea. irid'An is the most Earthlike of the three, with a rapid rotation period of around 15 hours and an atmosphere supporting lots of dynamic convection and such. Small ice caps are present, probably composed entirely of transient patches of sea ice. I had a lot of fun with the clouds; I duplicated the cloud layer, darkened it, and offset it slightly to get the shadow effect, even offsetting different portions at different distances to mimic the changing light angle.

Orus is the largest and most distant of the three, and is similarly covered in a deep ocean, albeit colder and more turbulent than that of irid'An. The islands jutting from the chaotic waves are harsh, rocky, and barren. Orus is a slow-rotating world, not quite tidally locked, but sluggish enough to generate pretty big temperature swings between the temperate days and absolutely frigid nights. The ocean gradually freezes over when Rosa dips beneath the horizon, making Orus resemble a "cold eyeball planet" despite retaining a day/night cycle. I did illustrate this, but it's barely visible at the terminator under the cloud cover. Incidentally, the cloud pattern is inspired by that of Venus' similar slow-rotating atmosphere when viewed in infrared.

More on each of these worlds can be found on the "The Rosa System" page up at the top of the blog! And, of course, lots of worldbuilding and relevant artwork can be found using the tags in the left column.