Lagrange point calculator
Lagrange point calculator
Lagrange Point Finder
Following from my earlier post. This website will give you the Lagrange points for a two body system given their masses and distance between them.
I used Pluto (or a pluto-like dwarf planet with no moon) and the sun as examples, and I got about 6881688.874956055 km for L1, which is where the mini sun from my other post would have to go.
If I wanted the insolation from the mini sun to equal the actual sun on Earth, it would have to put out 810 zettawatts. That's a lotta watts.
But we're not talking about Earth. Yih has a solar constant (focal constant?) of arount 860 W/m2, so we can shave the power output down to about 511 ZW. If we wanted it to equal the insolation at Yih's pole during the summer solstice which is 430 W/m2, we get 256 ZW. Now that's the equator of our dwarf planet getting that amount of pseudo sun, the poles would get much less.
At this point I have to wonder, why bother with the lagrange point? Surely if I put the thing in LEO any savings on fuel provided by the lagrange point would be more than made up for by the lower power needed to get a reasonable amount of insolation, so we're back to my constellation of close-orbiting satellites. That's not quite as dramatic lore-wise though.