Monach

Monach, the second planet from Aster.

**Monach**, also known as **Aster c**, is a terrestrial planet in the Aster System. It's the second planet in the system. It is most known for its quite extensive ring system.

## Physical Characteristics

Monach is the second largest terrestrial planet in the Aster System. It is 13 400 kilometers across and has a mass that of 1.2 Earths. 1 day on Monach lasts 20 hours. Monach is really similiar to Epizon. They're often referred to as the "twin planets of Aster". Just like Epizon, it has no substantial atmosphere and a lot of craters. It's not entirely clear, if it had an ocean of water, but it is a possibility.

## Orbit

One year on Monach lasts 4.5 years. It moves around Aster with a velocity of around 11 km/s. Its orbit is very eccentric. The closest it gets to Aster is around 2.4 AU and the farthest is around 3.6 AU. It has a semi-major axis of around 3 AU.

## Natural Satellites

Monach has 1 confirmed moon: Syntroph, and 7 rings. The moon and rings are relatively young and possibly formed just around 10 million years ago, when an asteroid got into an orbit around Monach and passed trough its roche limit, getting teared apart.

### Syntroph

Syntroph is a shepherd moon that orbits just outside the ring system, 20 120 km from Monach. It keeps the whole ring system in place. It's quite small, having a diameter of only 50 km. It has a smooth surface and an equatorial ridge due to it accumulating material from the rings. Syntroph's orbit has a very low eccentricity, thus being circular. It orbits Monach every 3 days.

### Ring System

Monach's ring system stretches out from 2 330 km to 20 119 km from its equator. It consists of 7 rings. From the planet outward, they are named MoR1, MoR2, MoR3, MoR4, MoR5, MoR6 and MoR7. (MoR standing for Monach Ring)

There have been some moonlets found orbiting within the rings, ranging from 10 to even about 250 meters in size. The largest one called S/Monach 2 blurs the border between a moonlet and a major moon. It has a diameter of 254 meters and due to gravitationally interacting with the MoR5 ring, is classified as a propeller moonlet.

The ring system is still very young and it is possible that in the future, if the moonlets will accumulate enough material, they'll turn into normal moons.

## History and Future

Monach formed about 4 billion years ago along with other planets in the system. Like Epizon, in the past it had a thick atmosphere and possible oceans of flowing water. It lost them, due to Aster evolving into a red giant. As Aster turned into a white dwarf, Monach transformed into a frozen world.

As previously stated, a massive object passed trough Monach's roche limit 10 million years ago. It created the now present rings. There is a possibility of the object being not an asteroid, but rather Monach's former ancient moon.

Epizon's orbit is slowly decaying and in about 10 billion years from today, if it doesn't get perturbed by any massive object passing through the system, Epizon will reach Aster's roche limit and will get ripped apart into an enormous disk. This event could cause chaos on Monach as pieces of Epizon could start bombarding its surface.

## Colonization

The Verdan Federation has settled a few bases on Monach and has put satellites into an orbit around it. There have been plans of terraforming it, but that would be too hard, due to it not having a substantial atmosphere and being too cold.