TEXT: …“I—I did th-think once, just for an 
  instant, mind you, about how—er—how 
  much fun and interesting and, well, 
  unique it would be to—uh—visit 
  a—uuh…um…”
  “Um what?” Caramon demanded.
  “A…mmmmmm.”
  “A what?”
  “Mmmmmm,” Tas mumbled.
  Caramon sucked in his breath.
  “A moon!” Tas said quickly.
  —Dragonlance Legends, Volume III, 
  Test of the Twins, Margaret Weis and 
  Tracy Hickman
  I agree with Tasslehoff: traveling to one 
  of the moons of Krynn does sound like 
  fun. Sadly, the laws of reality prevent me 
  from hopping aboard the Cloudmaster or 
  just, um, “borrowing” the Device of Time 
  Journeying for a quick trip up there. 
  Still, it is a fascinating idea…it appeals 
  to the kender blood in me. (You see, my 
  mother’s third cousin twice removed by 
  marriage on her father’s side was the 
  stepfather of Uncle Trapspringer’s aunt’s 
  great-granddaughter…)
  I digress.
  Since getting to the moons of Krynn isn’t 
  possible, I decided on the next best thing: 
  cranking out the numbers for them. There 
  are lots of references to the white moon 
  Solinari, the red moon Lunitari, and 
  the black moon Nuitari throughout the 
  Dragonlance novels and game books, but 
  there isn’t much hard data on their sizes 
  and relative distances from Krynn. Believe 
  me, I am no astronomer, and the average 
  gully dwarf could probably calculate orbits 
  better than me, but still, when the idea 
  came to me, I couldn’t let it go. So, with 
  calculator in hand and books all over the 
  place, I set out on a quest for the moons 
  of Krynn. (Incidentally, if there are any 
  ambitious gnomes out there with degrees 
  in astrophysics, please feel free to double-
  check my calculations!) 
  Making some assumptions
  Before I could even begin this Krynnish 
  moonquest, I had to make several basic 
  assumptions about the world of Krynn and 
  its satellites:
  1. Krynn’s size and mass are identical to the 
  Earth’s. I’ve seen nothing in the books 
  to suggest otherwise. Gravity seems 
  to work the same, the days are just as 
  long, the seasons are the same, the 
  climate and atmospheric conditions 
  seem to be the same, etc.
  2. Solinari is the same size as our own moon. 
  Just another assumption for conve-
  nience’s sake: if one of Krynn’s moons 
  is the same size as our own moon, that 
  will give us some real numbers to start 
  working with.
  3. Solinari is the moon furthest away from 
  Krynn. Two sources back up this as-
  sumption: the Moon Tracking Chart 
  on page 28 of the Dragonlance Adven-
  tures game book (assuming that the 
  moon furthest away has the longest 
  period), and the cover art of Night 
  of the Eye—Defenders of Magic Trilogy, 
  Volume I. The illustration clearly shows 
  the three moons nearly in alignment, 
  with Solinari behind the other two 
  moons. (There is a snag here, but I’ll 
  get into that later.)
  4. All three moons follow elliptical orbits 
  around Krynn. There are many dif-
  ferent types of orbital paths that 
  they could follow (circular, elliptical, 
  parabolic, hyperbolic, quasi-periodic, 
  ergodic, and so on), but I will stick 
  with Occam’s Razor and go with plain 
  vanilla ellipticals.
  With these four assumptions in place, 
  the number crunching can begin. The 
  plan is to take existing data on our 
  Earth–Moon system, apply it to the 
  Krynn–Solinari system, adjust the numbers 
  to establish the orbit of Solinari, and from 
  that, extrapolate all the figures for the 
  other two moons.
  Collecting data
  Substituting “Krynn” for “Earth” and 
  “Solinari” for “moon,” we get the follow-
  ing:
  Krynn
  Mass: 5.97 × 1024 kg
  Radius: 6,378.15 km
  Diameter: 12,756.30 km
  Circumference: 40,075.10 km
  Density: 5.52 g/cm3
  Solinari
  Mass: 7.35 × 1022 kg
  Radius: 1,738 km
  Diameter: 3,476 km
  Circumference: 10,920.18 km
  Density: 3.34 g/cm3
  Avg. distance from Krynn: 384,400 km 
  Orbital period: 27.3 days
  Here’s where reality and data clash: 
  according to the Moon Tracking Chart, 
  Solinari has a period of 36 days, not 27.3. 
  In order for the initial calculations to get 
  off the ground, we’re going to have to 
  shove Solinari further away from Krynn to 
  increase its orbital period. The question is: 
  how far away does it have to go?
  Finding the formula
  I found a formula for calculating orbital 
  distances on the web, courtesy of G. David 
  Nordley, Hugo award nominee and mem-
  ber of the American Institute of Aeronau-
  tics and Astronautics:
  Where:
  T  = number of hours in the orbital 
  period of the moon
  r  = distance of the moon from 
  the planet, in Earth radii (1 radii 
  = 6,378.15 km)
  M  = mass of the planet the moon is 
  orbiting (M = 1 for the Earth)
  For example, in the Earth–Moon system:
         T = 655.03 hours, or 27.3 days
  Oddly enough, this formula doesn’t 
  require foreknowledge of the mass of the 
  moon. In order to figure out the correct 
  orbital distance of Solinari, we just need 
  to plug in slightly different numbers: we al-
  ready know T = 864 (36-day orbital period 
  × 24 hours/day), M = 1 (Krynn has the 
  same mass as Earth), and a single Krynn 
  radii: 6,378.15 km. 
         x = 462,330 km
  This places Solinari at an average 
  distance of 462,330 kilometers away from 
  Krynn, about 78,000 kilometers further 
  away than our own moon is from the 
  Earth. Since we also know the periods of 
  Lunitari (8 days, or 192 hours) and Nuitari 
  (28 days, or 672 hours), we can use the 
  same equation to find out their relative 
  distances:
     x = 169,620 km (Lunitari)
     x = 391,011 km (Nuitari)
  What’s the order?
  Reality clashes with the data again (the 
  snag mentioned in assumption #3). If the 
  moons furthest away from Krynn have the 
  longest periods, then Solinari should be 
  the furthest out, then Nuitari, then Lu-
  Quest for the moons of Krynn
  by Darren J. Bellisle
  T = 1.4 × √
  r3
  M
  √
  T = 1.4 × (384,400/6,378.15)3
  1
  √
  864 = 1.4 × (x/6,378.15)3
  1
  √
  192 = 1.4 × (x/6,378.15)3
  1
  √
  672 = 1.4 × (x/6,378.15)3
  1
  
  nitari. However, the Night of the Eye cover 
  art clearly shows the moons lined up with 
  Solinari furthest out, then Lunitari, with 
  Nuitari closest to Krynn. This could be 
  explained in a number of ways:
  1. The Night of the Eye cover art is wrong. 
  This would be the easiest explanation, 
  except that the entire book is based 
  on the premise that the moons, when 
  aligned, look like a huge eye in the 
  sky, with Solinari as the white, Nuitari 
  as the pupil, and Lunitari as the (red) 
  iris.
  2. One of the moons has an eccentric orbit. 
  Pluto’s orbit, although elliptical, is 
  eccentric, causing it to sometimes 
  come closer to the sun than Neptune. 
  (Pluto became the furthest planet 
  from the sun again in 1999, and it 
  will remain furthest out until the year 
  2227.) Could it be that either Nuitari 
  or Lunitari have a similarly eccentric 
  orbit, causing them to change their 
  relative distances to Krynn? Hey, 
  anything’s possible, but I want to keep 
  things simple, so instead, I’ll go with 
  the third option:
  3. The Moon Tracking Chart is wrong. 
  Think about it: with Neutrality as the 
  balancing force between Good and 
  Evil, wouldn’t it make sense to have 
  the “neutral” moon between the other 
  two? Also, consider the descriptions of 
  the Orders of Magic on pages 35–36 
  of the Dragonlance Adventures book:
  —Wizards of the White Robes generally 
  gain levels slower than their brothers
  —A wizard of the Red Robes gains levels 
  faster than his White-Robed broth-
  ers, but slower than his Black-Robed 
  counterparts
  —Black Robe wizards gain levels faster 
  than either of the other to orders
  Somehow, I find it very easy to equate 
  the speed of progression through the Or-
  ders with the speeds of the moons through 
  the heavens. (Even more poetic, now that 
  I think about it, would be to have Solinari 
  and Nuitari following orbits that would 
  eventually cause them to collide, but 
  Lunitari’s presence stabilizes their orbits.) 
  For the purposes of this article, I will as-
  sume that Nuitari is closest, then Lunitari, 
  with Solinari furthest out. It’s a simple fix: 
  we just give Lunitari the 28-day period and 
  Nuitari the 8-day period.
  Size matters
  Okay, so we have the distances in place, 
  and the “correct” order for the moons. 
  How big are they?
  This is the part of the number crunch-
  ing that I am least confident about: there’s 
  a lot more guessing involved, and my 
  primary data source is a not-guaranteed-to-
  be-100%-accurate picture. Still, the quest 
  must go on!
  The diagram at the bottom of this page 
  shows a planet (x) with two moons (y and 
  z). When the ratio of z’s diameter to y’s 
  diameter is the same as the ratio of dis-
  tance a to distance b, then, to an observer 
  standing on x, z will appear to be the same 
  size as y. (In the illustration, z’s diameter 
  is one-half that of y, and the ratio of a/b = 
  1⁄2.) For now, let’s call this the Proportional 
  Ratio (PR): when a:b = z:y, z and y appear 
  to be the same size.
  We can use this set of ratios, with Krynn 
  as x and Solinari as y, to figure out the PRs 
  for the other two moons:
  distance b (from Krynn to Solinari) = 
  462,330 km 
  diameter y (Solinari) = 3,476 km
  distance a for Lunitari = 391,011 km
  distance a for Nuitari = 169,620 km
  therefore
  391,011/462,330 = PR Lunitari/3,476
  PR Lunitari = 2,940 
  and
  169,620/462,330 = PR Nuitari/3,476
  PR Nuitari = 1,275
  Using the orbital paths we calculated, 
  we can see that if Lunitari’s diameter = 
  2,940 km and Nuitari’s = 1,275 km, then 
  all three moons (to an observer on Krynn) 
  would appear to be the same size. 
  However, as we can see in the illustra-
  tion from Night of the Eye, the two inner 
  moons look a lot smaller than Solinari. For 
  the final part of the calculation, we need 
  to measure the apparent diameters of the 
  moons in the picture, and then apply those 
  ratios to the PRs of Lunitari and Nuitari.
  Solinari: 22.86 mm
  Lunitari: 13.21 mm
  Nuitari: 6.86 mm
  Ratio of Lunitari’s apparent diameter to 
  Solinari’s = 13.21/22.86 = .58
  .58 × PR of 2,940 = 1,705.2 km
  Ratio of Nuitari’s apparent diameter to 
  Solinari’s = 6.86/22.86 = .30
  .30 × PR of 1,275 = 382.5 km
  Using standard formulas and assum-
  ing uniform density, the table on the 
  next page gives the statistics for all three 
  moons. For comparative purposes, Luni-
  tari is a little bigger than Rhea (one of the 
  moons of Saturn), and Nuitari is a little 
  smaller than Mimas, another of Saturn’s 
  moons.
  Accurate?
  I decided to use Starry Night Backyard 
  (Space Holding Corp., Inc.) to test the ac-
  curacy of the calculations. It allows a user 
  A portion of the cover art for Night of the 
  Eye—Defenders of Magic Trilogy, Volume I (artwork 
  © 1993 Larry Elmore). The three moons of 
  Krynn are nearly aligned, showing their relative 
  proportions.
  a
  b
  x
  y
  z
  The Proportional Ratio (PR).
  
  to create their own planet–moon systems 
  and view them at different speeds, dates, 
  and from a variety of viewpoints. What 
  made this program an ideal choice was 
  that the numbers for the Sun, Earth, and 
  Moon were already entered. All that was 
  necessary was to rename Earth as “Krynn,” 
  duplicate the Moon and move it further 
  out (to create Solinari), and then punch 
  in the figures for the other two moons and 
  let ’er rip. Sadly, the program doesn’t al-
  low you to edit or remove already-existing 
  bodies, so Krynn actually had four moons 
  during the simulation. I don’t know how 
  accurate SNB’s calculations are with re-
  gards to the gravitational fields of satellites 
  affecting each other’s orbits, but I kept my 
  fingers crossed and said a quick prayer to 
  Reorx.
  I ran a 10,000-year-long simulation, and 
  I am happy to report that in that span of 
  time, none of the moons crashed into 
  THE MOONS OF KRYNN
  Name
  Radius
  Diameter
  Circumference
  Orbital Period
  Distance from 
  Krynn
  Volume
  Mass (density 
  = 5.52 g/cm3)
  Solinari
  1,738.0 km
  3,476.0 km
  21,840.4 km
  36 days
  462,330 km
  2.20 × 1019 m3
  7.35 × 1022 kg
  Lunitari
    852.6 km
  1,705.2 km
    5,357.0 km
  28 days
  391,011 km
  2.60 × 1018 m3
  1.43 × 1022 kg
  Nuitari
    191.3 km
    382.5 km
    1,201.7 km
   8 days
  169,620 km
  2.93 × 1016 m3
  1.68 × 1020 kg
  D J B
  Krynn, or each other, and none of them 
  spun off into the depths of space, either. 
  Within the limits of my mathematical 
  abilities and the software, I consider the 
  experiment a success. As a final challenge, 
  I created some pictures of how the sky 
  might appear as seen from Krynn and its 
  moons at a specific moment in time 
  (1 a.m. GMT, 12/26/2003). I didn’t go the 
  extra step and include the other planets 
  orbiting Krynn’s sun (Sirrion, Reorx, 
  Chislev, and Zivilyn) or any of the constel-
  lations, although that does sound like an 
  interesting future project…does anyone 
  know if gnomes do freelance work?
  References
  “Back of the Book links for the 2/22/99 
  Program.” http://www.glib.com/
  botb_02-22-99.html.
  “Calculating Orbits for Your Moons.” 
  World Builders 1. http://curricu
  lum.calstatela.edu/courses/builders/
  lessons/less/les1/moonorbits.html.
  Gerald [G. David] Nordley’s Official Web Page. 
  http://www.sfwa.org/members/
  Nordley/.
  Google. http://www.google.com. Search 
  term: mass of earth.
  Kirchoff, Mary. Night of the Eye. Dragon-
  lance Defenders of Magic Trilogy, 
  Volume I. TSR, Inc., Lake Geneva, 
  WI, 1994.
  Pluto. http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/
  nineplanets/nineplanets/pluto.html.
  PrintKey 2000. http://www.warecentral.
  com/
  “Saturn.” http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/
  nineplanets/nineplanets/saturn.html.
  Starry Night Backyard. © 2003 Space Hold-
  ing Corp. http://www.starrynight.com/.
  Texas Instruments TI-35 Student Calculator 
  A partial view of the night sky over Krynn, as seen from latitude 43˚ 4.47´ N, longitude 89˚ 23.15´ W , at 1:00:00 a.m. GMT, 12/26/2003 (local time 7:00 p.m. 
  12/25/2003). Looking to the east, Lunitari and Nuitari are both visible; Solinari is below the horizon, and will not rise for another 3 hours and 59 minutes. 
  The software used to generate this image, Starry Night Backyard, only shows the positions of the moons, not their apparent sizes. 
  
  Another view from the same location on Krynn, 4.5 hours later. Solinari is now visible rising over the eastern horizon.
  The sky as it appears from Lunitari (1:00:00 a.m. GMT, 12/26/2003). Only Solinari is visible; Krynn and Nuitairi are both below the horizon.
  Mathbook. Texas Instruments Incorpo-
  rated, 1984.
  Thompson, Paul B., and Carter, Tonya 
  R. Darkness & Light. Dragonlance 
  Preludes, Volume I. TSR, Inc., Lake 
  Geneva, WI, 1989.
  Weis, Margaret, and Hickman, Tracy. 
  Dragonlance Adventures. TSR Inc., Lake 
  Geneva, WI, 1987.
  Weis, Margaret, and Hickman, Tracy. Test 
  of the Twins. Dragonlance Legends 
  Volume III. TSR Inc., Lake Geneva, 
  WI, 1986.
  World Builders: Statistics about Planets and 
  Moons. http://curriculum.calstatela.
  edu/courses/builders/lessons/less/
  les1/planetstats.html.
  
  A dramatic view from Nuitari (1:00:00 a.m. GMT, 12/26/2003). Both Krynn and the Sun are low in the eastern sky; Solinari is high in 
  the southern sky, and Lunitari is to the southwest (see figure below).
  
  This final image is the view from Solinari, the outermost moon of Krynn (1:00:00 a.m. GMT, 12/26/2003). Lunitari, Nuitari, and Krynn are all visible, and 
  are very nearly lined up with each other. 
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Dungeons & Dragons [multi]/1st Edition (ODD, D&D Basic, AD&D)/1st Edition/3rd Party/Dragonsfoot/Articles/Moons of Krynn.pdf