KELÉSHTEVADÁRAN PORTAL

Keleshtevadáran seen from a geosyncronous orbit

Planet Keléshtevadáran is one inhabited planet that orbits around the Captors A star (known to keléshtevadárans as "Waráshtevadár"), the biggest star in the triple system. This is also a terraformed planet and is inhabited by humans who were taken from earth and ressetled there by the Captors for unknown reasons so far.

Differently from Gelo, this planet didn't see a high proliferation of grass on its surface, however algae have grown to cover many extents of the oceans and many of its surface, even though the algae that cover the oceans tend to be dark blue in color, in contrast to dark green algae that covers large areas of the planet's surface.

The species of plants that exist in Keléshtevadáran are the same that exist on Gelo.

It is home to the Nomækelé Federation, which is composed of 14 countries, 13 of them are satellite states to the Nomækelé Empire, a situation that has led to frequent rebellions against the ruling government. There are another 8 countries that once were under Nomækelé Kingdom's rule but attained independence through independence wars and now form the Independent Nations Coalition.

PLANETARY HISTORY
Much like the formation of Gelo, the planet was formed around 1.5 billion years ago. However, the planet has a very different composition than the rest of the other planets in the Captors' System with a lot of oxygen already mixed into the rocks, however the reason for that is unknown. This excess in oxygen mixed in the rocks and the carbon compunds released by volcanic eruptions lead to a runaway greenhouse effect in the early stages of the planet's formation due to the formation of carbon dioxide. This stage lasted for most of the planet's history.

Around 8,000 years ago, the planet's atmosphere started to drastically change, trapping the carbon in rocks and stable organic compounds, acumulating on the surface. This process was going on too fast to be a natural phenomenon, and is the first evidence that the planet was terraformed. The carbon dioxide gave place to free oxygen and the temperatures dramatically dropped, from the previous 680°C (aproximately 1110°F) to the more comfortable 23°C (around 74°F) averages the planet has today. It's unknown if the water was already on the planet's atmosphere in the form of vapour or if it was also part of the terraforming, brought from somewhere else in the system.

However, even with the terraformation, the planet's climate isn't stable, mostly due to the lack of a sizable moon, but also due to the intense volcanism going on the planet. Some experts theorize that the planet will not remain inhabitable for much longer, and several attempts at replicating the terraforming technologies have been made to maintain the planet inhabitable. The Captors left some technological artifacts behind, but even with the best technological progress on Keleshtevadaran, they stll remain mostly not understood and, as such, unable to be copied.

PLANET'S CHARACTERISTICS
Mass: 1.36 x 10^25 kg (2.28 Earth)
Average density: 5.82g/cm³
Diametre: 16,480 km
Composition: 39.1% iron, 29.0% oxygen, 18.1% nickel, 12.3% silicon, 1.5% other elements
Gravity: 1.37G
Rotational period: 19.36 Earth hours
Orbital Period: 1,255.64 days (1012.88 Earth days)
Semimajor axis: 299.2 million km
Eccentricity: 0.092 (271.6mi km periapsis, 326.7mi km apoapsis)
Rotational tilt: 20.45°
Surface: 46% water, 54% land;  8% polar caps
Atmosphere: 1.42atm (63.1% argon, 18.3% oxygen, 16.3% nitrogen, 1.3% carbon dioxide, 1.0% other gases)

Albedo: 0.376
Greenhouse effect: 131% of Earth
Temperatures: 296K (23°C/73.4°F; average), 256K (-17°C/1.5°F; minimum) - 351 K (78°C/172.4°F; maximum)

Geological activity

The planet is very active, full of volcanos and tectonic activity, due to the young age of the planetary system (around 1.6 billion years). There are more that 30 thousand volcanos on the planet, but most of them are small in size. However there are several large-size supervolcanos that come into activity quite frequenty, aproximately once every century. When it happens, planetary temperatures tend to drop in the first months after the eruption. However, this intense volcanism is causing the planet to warm more and more as the years come, due to large amounts of greenhouse gases being thrown into the atmosphere.
There are seasons for volcanic activity on the planet. Due to some unknown mechanism, they tend to be periods of strong volcanic activity that last for a year, then followed by two more years of low activity. Sometimes when the period of low activity reaches its minimum, no volcanic activity is registered anywhere. When the season is coming to a maximum,  there is a sudden rise on earthquakes, mainly in the Central Triangle Plate.

Wall of Fire chain of volcanos,
also the highest mountains
on Keléshtevadáran

Tranquility Island has a relatively small supervolcano that erupts usually during this period, causing tsunamis that reach all parts of the seashore, sometimes reaching as high as 20 meters. It is believed that these tectonic plates under the sea have a thinner crust because it is an impact crater, caused by an asteroid half the size of Earth's moon. Even though the Big Sea Plate is marked as a single plate, it is actually in the process of breaking in half starting from Tranquility Island's volcano (that already is at the border among Big Sea, Centra and Tukalash tectonic plates).
One of the biggest volcanic systems active on the planet is the Wall of Fire mountains. They are a chain of volcanos that are constantly releasing lava, but not in a explosive way. They've been active like this at least over the last half millenium. Once every two thousand years on average, the Big Soldier (the highest peak on the planet) erupts as a supervolcano, leading to global temperature drops that can be as low as 10ºC. The last eruption of this kind from the Big Soldier caused nearly 1 million deaths (about 50% of the  global population at the time), as the pyroclastic flow reached nearby cities. This volcanic system releases a lot more water vapour than all the other volcanic system on the planet combined, and the mechanism that causes this is yet unknown.
The majority of supervolcanos, however, are localized near the south pole of the planet. Most of them have a constant lava flow, however there are seasons that they stop this flow. Lava flow pauses that last over than a year usually signal that it will erupt as a supervolcano soon.

Climate
The majority of the planet's climate can be considered to be desertic, as deserts cover aproximately 50% of the planet's surface, more than the sea. Desertic areas use to have high albedo rates, and as such this prevents the planet from heating too much from the star's sunlight. These desertic areas tend to be at higher elevation than the rest of the planet by an average of 1000m.
In areas close to the sea shore, climate tends to be a little more diverse, going from tropical to swamps. These are the areas rainfall usually occurs, as they tend to dissipate more and more as they keep going even more inside the continental area. This is what prevents the central regions of the continent to be agriculturally useful, because the air usually gets drier and drier.

Phases of an HACB. Courtesy
of Tukalash University

Usually during fall on the northern hemisphere, wide high-altitude clouds cover the planet, leading to global drop in temperature of 2 to 5 degrees Celcius on average, and tend to last for a week. The real trigger for this fenomenon is unknown, but it seems that it happens as the southern waters get warmer due to the proximity to summer and vapour builds up above the planet's only ocean and thus goes up into the atmosphere. The colder, desertic regions on the northern hemisphere lead to a drop in its atmospheric temperature, and so clouds tend to form more easily. Strong winds in the upper atmosphere also occur during this time, which rapidly takes newly-formed clouds around the planet. It's believed that volcanic eruptions also take part in this event, as these High-Altitude Cloud Buildup (HACB, for short) usually are stronger in a year that had a supervolcano eruption due to aerosol particles emitted during these eruptions.
These HACB usually take two or three days to reach its maximum, and then slowly decreases, taking no longer than 12 days to dissipate. This causes rain to fall in extense areas of the planet, including desertic regions. Most areas of the Central Desert get rain only during this period.
This regular rise of brightness caused by the HACB led the Geloans to call the planet as Mezuhar, the "bright one".

Due to the intense volcanism on the planet, large amounts of sulfur dioxide are released into the stratosphere, which then reacts and turn to sulfuric acid, then causing the formation of acid rain. Also, this causes the formation of sulfate aerosol particles, decreasing the planet's albedo - if it were not for this mechanism, the planet's surface would most likely be on average above 60°C.

The main climate on the planet is desertic, covering almost the entire planet from 25°N until the north pole, where no large water bodies are found. The average temperatures can vary from 50°C to -10°C, depending on the latitude - the lowest temperature ever recorded, -17°C, was recorded at the north pole in the middle of the dry, cold Northern Desert. Also, the highest temperature ever recorded, 78°C, was recorded near the North Lake in an exceptionally hot year, which is also the lowest point in the planet's surface, around 400m below the sea level.

Fom around the equator until the south pole, most of the planet's surface is an ocean, which covers 46% of the entire planet's surface, bringing heavy rains that favours the rain forests, temperate forests and temperate steppes that stretch around 2,000 km inland in the main continent - the islands are covered almost entirely in rain forests. There are several islands and two small continents surrounded by the ocean. Due to the high temperatures on the planet's surface, the ocean waters are always warm, feeding storms that can easily become tropical cyclones. The strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded, Tukalash's Cyclone of 986, saw winds going up to 490km/h; this storm caused the destruction of several cities in the Tukalash Archipelago, and a considerable portion of the forest was destroyed.

At the south pole there is a continent similar to Earth's Antarctica, where average temperatures are around -10°C and is covered in snow for most of the year. However, in years that the global temperatures rise well above the average, all the snow may disappear all year round, bringing small vegetation to life as temperatures can rise up to 10°C in the south pole.

Mezuhar 4 first images

During the first years of Gelo's space race, several probes were sent to Keleshtvadaran, both for orbit and for flybys. The first mission to succesfully reach the planet was the Mezhuar 4, an Yisrelite flyby mission that managed to take the first up close pictures of the planet. However, an HACB started only 2 days before the closest aproach, making it difficult for the probe to take clear images of the planet's surface. Although the planet showed severe weather conditions, the Geloans considered a space race for the first to colonise the planet and theoretical plans were being devised to alter the planet's weather, since they believed the weather was too harsh for humans to survive. Back then, the Keleshtevadarans were at least a century technologically behind the Geloans, and so they thought the planet was uninhabited.

GELOAN SPACE RACE FOR "MEZUHAR"/KELÉSHTEVADÁRAN (see Geloan-Keléshtevadáran relations)

South (above) and north (below) poles
of Keléshtevadáran, as seen by
the Mezoaras 2 spacecraft

During the first years of the Geloan space race, several attempts were made for the title of being the first to reach the planet. The first successful flyby mission was the Israelite Mezuhar 4 (with three pevious attempts failing to launch or missing the planet by several million kilometres); the spacecraft also had a camera, but an unusually strong HACB started prior to its arrival, preventing any significant pictures from the surface. The first clear images of the surface came from the State of Canaan's spacecraft Mezuhar Flyby 2. The Ekronean Mezoaras 2 was the first to successfully enter orbit aroudn the planet; the chosen orbit was polar, and pictures from the planet's polar caps were taken, even though the camera had suffered major radiation damage caused by a CME. A joint Aha'ite-United Canaan spacecraft, called Mezuhar Lander 1, managed to be the first spacecraft to "land" on the planet (even though it "landed" on the ocean), sending the first images from the surface before the spacecraft finally sank.

Mezuhar 9's salute plate. It reads:
"Are you fine? Blessed be you.
Meshola Yisrel - Mezuhar 9"

These Geloan missions at first weren't noticed by the Keléshtevadárans. However, with the failure of the Israelite lander Mehuzar 6, which exploded above the skies of the Nomaekelean city of Tukalash and fishermen catching the Mezuhar Lander 1 out of the sea, panic spread throughout the planet, fearing these to be the first signs of the arrival of the Captors. Also, the sights of "new, fast-moving stars" minutes after sunset or before sunrise (caused by the Captors A's light being reflected by the spacecrafts' insuation), helped spread rumours that the Captors had returned and were already taking people. When the State of Canaan's Ber-Ahiram Lander I landed in the outskirts of the city of Aerthkelé, the spacecraft sent back to Gelo images of the Nomaekelean population running towards the spacecraft, firing weapons and cannons; the situation was a complete surprise to Geloan scientists, who not only though that the planet was barren, but also had no idea they would find humans living there. The Nomaekelean king at the time ordered its scientists to study and try to replicate the technology (which they never succeded until 30 years later); after another probe landed on the vicinites, this time an Israelite one, the Keléshtevadárans began to lose fear of the return of the Captors, as the drawings on the lateral of the proble showed the position of Gelo in Keléshtevadáran skies and an image of a man and a woman, hinting to them that they were in fact humans and not the Captors. Other probes managed to land, bringing photographs from the teams responsible for the probes, as well as a variety of other things; the Keléshtevadárans then used to dance, sing and do parties in front of the landers before the Nomaekelean government took them, which took photographs and transmitted back to Gelo.

COUNTRIES
• List of Countries
• General History
• Geological Characteristics
• Biosphere

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