871-438 (world)/meta

Alternative System Description

The system containing 871-438 (Spinward Marches Jewell) the barren dust ball is in the third orbit. There are two asteroid belts in orbits four and six. In addition, there is a pair of gas giants: a small one in the seventh orbit and a large one in the ninth. The system's Oort cloud contains the usual hundred billion or so comets.

The two asteroid belts mostly consist of small bodies up to a maximum diameter of ten meters (roughly fifty displacement tons). Over eighty percent of these bodies are carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. The remainder are formed from various different ice compounds. Neither belt contains sufficient mineral resources to be of interest to belters. The inner belt has a diameter of about 0.1 AU and the outer about 1.5 AU.

The small inner gas giant (GG438-1) is a dull bluish-green disc composed of eighty percent hydrogen and fifteen percent helium. The remaining five percent of the giant is composed of the usual heavier gasses: ammonia, argon, carbon dioxide, chlorine, fluorine, methane, neon, nitrogen. Also detectable in trace concentrations are a multitude of other compounds created from these basic gasses as well as some other heavier elements, notably sulfur. This planet has three rocky moons and two icy moons orbiting, none of which showed any signs deserving of further investigation.

The large outer gas giant (GG438-2) Known locally as Bridgett, is your standard whitish-orange giant composed primarily of hydrogen. Detectable quantities of ammonia, fluorine, helium and nitrogen exist. Notably absent is the presence of carbon based gases and compounds. This gas giant has a system of rings containing large numbers of very small carbonaceous bodies. Also present in orbit are upwards of twelve to fifteen natural moons in a variety of orbits.