Calpamos was the ringed gas giant in the Zeta 2 Reticuli system, the fourth planet from the star, and the parent of LV-426, LV-223, and an unidentified third moon. Alien shows the giant in 2122 and does not print a name. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual classes it as a brown-dwarf Jovian. The name Calpamos is the one used in Alien: River of Pain, the Weyland-Yutani Report, and the Alien RPG.
The Star System
The Colonial Marines Technical Manual treats Zeta 2 Reticuli as a G1 V star about 36.7 light years from Earth, with a G2 V companion 5,800 AU away. Calpamos is the fourth planet in that system. The Alien RPG map Stars of the Middle Heavens, dated 2183, marks the giant, LV-223, and LV-426 at that star on the Frontier edge, beside Kathar Station. S. D. Perry's Weyland-Yutani Report uses the same order, fourth planet, for the ringed giant.
The Gas Giant
The Colonial Marines Technical Manual classes the fourth planet as a brown-dwarf Jovian, a huge gas world. The Alien RPG describes it as a large ruddy-brown gas giant, and the 1979 approach shows dark bands and one thin ring catching the star. In Prometheus the bridge display draws several bright rings, a small moon on one side, and a larger moon tagged LV-223. Perry's report calls the same body a ringed gas giant. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual does not print a gas mix, a mass, or a diameter for the giant. The giant was never landed on. Every recorded landing in the system was on one of the moons.
Moons
Calpamos had three known moons: LV-223, LV-426, and an unidentified third.
LV-223
LV-223 is the moon the Prometheus display tags LV_223. From the surface, the limb of the giant stands over the cloud deck, with the USCSS Prometheus in the sky and the star low. The ground was rock and dust under heavy cloud, and a silica storm crossed the landing ground, so the crew spent the night in the temple. Domed Engineer installations stood on that plain, with urn chambers of the Black Goo inside, and a hologram showed Engineers running through the halls before the crew found their bodies. Several Juggernauts were stored in the caverns under the surface. The moon was an Engineer bioengineering site, placed far from the Engineer homeworld so the work stayed off that planet.
LV-426
LV-426, later Acheron, was the biggest moon. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual counts it as the second major moon from the giant: 12,201 kilometers across, surface gravity 0.86 g, tidally locked, on a 5.07-day orbit. Its air before terraforming was nitrogen and carbon dioxide, with methane and ammonia. In 2122 Dallas, Lambert, and Kane set down within 2,000 meters of the beacon, near +0°6'20", +39°0'2", and entered the derelict. Hadley's Hope was founded there in 2157 and held about 158 people before the 2179 outbreak. The colony, the wreck, and the hive were on this moon, with the giant in the sky.
Unidentified Moon
The third moon has no published name and no LV number. In the 1979 approach it is the moon at the right of the frame, past the moon the USCSS Nostromo crosses, with LV-223 in the middle. The Prometheus display tags LV-223 and leaves the smaller moon blank. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual prints a diameter and a surface for Acheron and does not print them for this moon.
Surveys
The 2039 Log
On 14 May 2039 Peter Weyland's astronomers logged a ringed planet and several moons just outside Zeta 2 Reticuli, including LV-426, and they expected a voyage there within the century. The public timeline recorded that find and did not use the name Calpamos. Company ships did not reach the system until the Prometheus left in 2091. The ringed planet in the 2039 log is the giant the later books call Calpamos.
The Prometheus Voyage
In 2091 Weyland sent the USCSS Prometheus, a larger Heliades-class ship, on that crossing. The flight took about two years, and the crew reached LV-223 in 2093 and set down there. The mission ended in disaster when the last living Engineer launched a Juggernaut toward Earth and Captain Janek rammed the Prometheus into that ship. Janek and most of the crew were killed. Elizabeth Shaw left the moon with David on another Juggernaut.
The Nostromo Landing
In 2122 Mother woke the USCSS Nostromo on the haul back from Thedus. The tug left its refinery in a holding orbit and set down on LV-426. From the rocks, the crescent of the giant and the line of the ring showed through the storm. Dallas, Lambert, and Kane left the ship for the derelict. The landing was on the moon, and the giant stayed overhead.
The 2130s Survey
An early French fly-by had classed the moons as icy bodies. A survey in the 2130s, after the Nostromo landing, found Acheron was rock and treated that moon as a body captured in the last 40 million years. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual uses that capture to explain the rings: debris from a moon broken up when Acheron entered orbit, and the broken ground on the moon itself. Hadley's Hope was founded on that moon in 2157, after the survey.
Conclusion
Calpamos was the fourth planet of Zeta 2 Reticuli, a ringed brown-dwarf Jovian, and the parent of LV-426, LV-223, and an unidentified moon. The films show the giant and leave it unnamed. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual gives the star, the distance, the class, and the capture that accounts for the rings, and the later books are the ones that use the name.
Appearances
- Alien (1979)
- Prometheus (2012)
- Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual (Boxtree, 1995)
- Alien: River of Pain (Christopher Golden, Titan Books, 2014)
- Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report (S. D. Perry, Insight Editions, 2014)
- Alien: The Roleplaying Game (Free League, 2019)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Planets | Alien Lore
