Moons: Thea and Themsa
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Helevos has two small moons. TheaThea is the larger moon, a disc about half the size of Earth's moon, and much less bright. It's surface is ochre, giving Thea a pinkish light in the night sky. The moon was a planetoid that captured in Helevos' late cooling stage, approximately 2.7 billion years ago. Thea is the "official" Miyarrain name: in the north it is called the Eye, the Red Moon, or just the moon. ThemsaThemsa is a small, silvery, potato-shaped moon that spins through the sky on it's long axis, like the hands of a clock - so much so that one rotation is the basis of an hour in the Hirèrk Moonscale. The smaller second moon was almost certainly a large asteroid that narrowly avoided striking the surface, and instead was captured in orbit. Like the planet Mars' small moons, Deimos and Phobos, Themsa is roughly potato-shaped. It has a large crater visible at one end, the result of an impact that set the moon spinning on it's vertical axis. Moon-TidesBoth moons probably caused tidal friction during their capture, but today their small mass creates only very small tidal influences on the planet, compared with the semi-annual cycle of Storm Tides. |