A bit of science would be nice but anything would be good. You could discuss possible climate changes throughout the year, seasons, day-night cycles, or how a hypothetical culture (with human-like interpretations of the world etc for simplicity) might view the system. For example, the “summer” when the planet passes between the stars, always has the yellow star in the simulation closer [to the planet] than the orange star, however during “winter”, the orange star eclipses the yellow star. How do you think a people would react to this?
Looks like the planet will only have a day/night cycle when the planet is at apogee. It also appears those are also the two points where one star eclipses the other. Things may get fairly cool temp. wise. Probably not a good planting time.
I can’t imagine that the planet would remain in a zone where liquid water is possible throughout the entire orbit. By eyeball, if we say that the planet is at 1 AU from the closest star at aphelion, it looks like it’ll be less than 0.5 AU away from the closest star at perihelion (or whatever you call that point where it’s between the two stars). Considering only one star, that’s not unlike an elliptical orbit in our system that goes between the orbits of Earth and Mercury. Then, the second star will be between 0.6 and 2.0 AU away. Without doing any math, it seems that the extremes of total solar irradiation will be greater than the difference between Mars and Mercury.
If it’s hot but temperate-ish when swinging between the two stars, it’s going to get so cold that the entire world will freeze over at aphelion. Conversely, if it’s cold but temperate-ish at aphelion, the intensity of the sun will be so high that there will be massive, planet-wide evaporation of oceans. Possibly even such that a large portion of water will be blown off the planet for good during each orbit.
If you can somehow contrive a situation where it remains habitable (oceans neither freeze solid nor boil away) the only way I can conceive it as “habitable” is for ocean life. They could conceivably thrive near the surface during each “spring” and “autumn”, but would have to hide deep in the oceans to survive each “summer” and “winter”.
Surface life seems impossible, unless there’s some geology that allows surface critters to inhabit very deep caves each summer and winter.
Not necessarily. While such an orbit (of a small object between two much larger masses) may shift over time there are entire families of possible orbits between to major bodies that may vary within specified limits without any catastrophism, e.g. being kicked completely out of orbit or degenerate to orbiting only one body. However, this assumes the the orbits of the major bodies are themselves stable over long periods. Two identically stellar-mass bodies in a circular orbit around their common barycenter is enormously unlikely to occur in nature, and if any of the planetary bodies is of significant mass (within a few orders of magnitude) even the small perturbations are likely to result in fairly chaotic orbital dynamics in which it would be very difficult to find conditionally stable solutions.
And as already noted, the climate on the orbiting body in this scenario would vary wildly. Earth is able to regulate its temperate climate despite the mild eccentricity by virtue of being covered by a skin of mostly water, which acts as both a thermal sink and hymidifies the atmosphere, as well as being a medium to mediate excess energy via turbulent dynamics (tropical storms and hurricanes which, as destructive as they are to us, are beneficial in distributing pent-up excess thermal energy and also serving to transport nutrients and species across a wide geographic range). It is difficult to imagine any world in an orbit such as this as being capable of maintaining a body of liquid water; it would either freeze or vaporize (or both) at the extremities of its orbit, and especially in the apse in which it most closely approaches one star with the other being diametrically opposite (and therefore not able to effectively radiate away the “daytime” heat absorbed). The planet would need some reservoir of much higher specific heat value, like molten salt or lead, in order to mediate the global climate and the average surface temperature would be elevated accordingly. It would not be a happy place to live even if the orbit were stable.
I just did some quick and dirty measurements and calculations, just by selecting the “corotate” check box and taking measurements of planet P and stars O and Y from a screenshot. The “node”, for lack of a better term, is the position of the planet in the orbit where P-O and O-Y form a right angle.
Then I figured relative total irradiance, either in the scenario where both stars have equal brightness (Y = O) or the orange star is 10x brighter (Y = O/10). For simplicity, I ignored any possible eclipse of one star by the other.
In the first scenario, where both stars are equally bright, “summer” irradiance is more than 4x “winter” irradiance. If the yellow star is much less bright, the difference is only 2x. Interestingly, in that case, the is planet gets slightly more irradiance at perihelion than at the “node”, so there would be a warmish season between two small “winters”.
For comparison, the irradiance received by Venus is 1.9x that of Earth, and the irradiance received by Mercury is 6.6x that of Earth.
So in total, there will definitely be some very extreme seasonal shifts. As another point of comparison, the average local irradiance of the tropics is about 3x that recieved at the poles. My WAG is there will still be shifts at least involving freezing and melting of the entire surface of the oceans. Particularly if the yellow star is much dimmer, I can imagine an ocean ecosystem adapted for surviving under the ice most of the year and exploiting the extreme light (and currents, nutrient flows, etc) during the summer.
Assume the planet’s spin-axis is perpendicular to the orbital plane. Then it has no earth-type seasons caused by tilt, but instead has big seasonal changes due to varying distances from the 2 stars. And assume both stars have identical heat and light output.
In each orbital year there are 2 summers and 2 winters. And unlike on Earth, the seasons are concurrent in both hemispheres of the planet.
The 2 midsummers are when alignment is (star, planet, star). Here the parent star provides 40% of the insolation and the other star provides 60%. The day/night cycle is continuous daylight, provided alternately by parent star and other star, with no night. When one star sets the other rises.
The 2 midwinters are when alignment is (planet, star, star). Here the parent star provides 97% of the the insolation, and the other star provides only 3%. The day/night cycle comprises day and night of equal length, with the 2 stars close appearing close together in the sky during the day.
A brief total star-star eclipse occurs at each exact midwinter, and is always parent star blocking other star (never other way round) and only decreases daylight by 3%.
