Nisinasha, how can you be!???

[Andrew M]

The Banasdab subsector [.. on the Solomani Rim ..] contains a number of unusual worlds. [ One such, ..] Nisinasha is egg-shaped, distorted by tidal forces in the far past, when it was much closer to its gas giant primary. Its atmosphere, however, is nearly spherical, producing near-vacuum at the ends, too-high pressure at the middle, and two habitable bands between these extremes.

from Supplement 10: The Solomani Rim

Nisinasha 0402 A9EA987 E W Water World G

Thats right! Not only is it irregularly shaped, with an atmosphere which confrorms to a more regular gravity well. It is a water world. The ocean would also conform to the same gravity well, but it covers the whole planet. In effect the ocean surface defines the irregular shape of this world.

Please do not be daunted. This is the sort of conundrum geophysicists enter science to solve. What sort of shapes must the planet, its ocean and its atmosphere have to produce this marvel?

 

[Icosahedron]

Perhaps the ocean is very shallow, effectively a huge number of lakes covering a planet with a rough, cinder-like surface, the land forming a series of ridges snaking between the lakes.

 

[far-trader]

A water world in a distant orbit of a gas giant? Likely to be an ice world then imo.

A solid high density spheroid core with an egg shaped (shallow at midband, deep at ends) frozen ocean, distorted to such by tidal effects as it froze, covering the whole.

The gravity shapes the atmosphere more spherical than elipsoid as it is held by the core and not the less dense ice, providing a breathable range around the midband, thinning to the ends.

Hmm, sounds a bit like Tran-Ky-Ky (or am I conflating that ice-world with another?) from the Alan Dean Foster novel Icerigger c1974

 

[aramis]

An ice world? a large comet fell into a nearly stable orbit, equatorial, and kept moving materials from the equator outward, as bits and pieces smashed in, raising the local temp by impact heating.

Or it was gathering the ring, and is in close enough that the dark resulted in solar and GG IR heating of the equatorial ices as well as impact, but not the polar.... and again, being frozen, the ice falls mostly outside the equatorial ranges.

Also, keep in mind, only a 3 mile bulge is really needed to cause major distortions.