Aeneas And Dido

The Rebel Worlds.

Dido and Aeneas are the third and fourth planets in the Virgilian System. They are like the Venus and Mars of early twentieth century sf: hot and cold, respectively, but habitable. CHAPTER SIX, which has been our source on Aeneas, adds that the Aenean day is twenty hours long.

Ensign Flandry begins with a page-long quote from a Pilot's Manual and Ephemeris on Starkad. That Manual was for the Cis-Betelgeusean Orionis Sector. The Rebel Worlds, CHAPTER SEVEN, quoting the equivalent Manual for this region of Sector Alpha Crucis, informs us that Dido:

has an eccentric orbit;

averages one astronomical unit from Virgil;

is slightly smaller and less massive than Terra;

rotates once in eight hours and forty-seven minutes;

has an axis tilted at thirty-eight degrees;

has a hot and dense but breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere;

has a biochemistry neither poisonous nor nourishing to human beings.

Dido is inhabited but uncomfortable for human beings who colonized Aeneas in order to study the Didonians. There is a research base, Port Frederiksen, on Dido.