Planetos, "Mega-Seasons" and Planet X. It'sh Schience!

[hiemal]

5 hours ago, Three-Fingered Pete said:

 

Cool! It's always nice when one crackpot theory can scratch another's back.

Mayhaps Planet X was responsible for the breakup of the moon that created the dragons in the Asshai myth?

Seems like there is certainly a relationship there, but I'm undecided on how literally to take that event so it all gets a bit complicated. So much tinfoil...

I

[Three-Fingered Pete]

11 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

1. There are indications that the lopsided seasons are a fairly recent phenomenon - meaning before the Long Night the seasons were likely normal. I think it is even mentioned in one of the fake history books. So it is doubtful that it goes back to the formation of the solar system or some other pre-human era.

 

Actually, that isn't incompatible with the overall theory. If the two bodies' interactions hadn't synchronized until that point, or are on a tens to hundreds of thousands years long cycle of strong and weak interactions, then the relatively recent accounts in history could be true.

 

11 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

2. Martin has said it is due to magic.

 

And I accept that. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be getting some help. The Others (or whomever is responsible) could just be taking advantage of, and magnifying, a natural phenomenon. Otherwise, the cyclic nature and predictability of the phenomenon is in question. The Others don't show up every winter. Is this because the Wall is now blocking them? Did they show up every winter before the Wall was built? I haven't read the history books, so this is an actual question.

[Morte]

1 hour ago, Three-Fingered Pete said:

13 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

1. There are indications that the lopsided seasons are a fairly recent phenomenon - meaning before the Long Night the seasons were likely normal. I think it is even mentioned in one of the fake history books. So it is doubtful that it goes back to the formation of the solar system or some other pre-human era.

 

Actually, that isn't incompatible with the overall theory. If the two bodies' interactions hadn't synchronized until that point, or are on a tens to hundreds of thousands years long cycle of strong and weak interactions, then the relatively recent accounts in history could be true.

 

 

1 hour ago, Three-Fingered Pete said:

13 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

2. Martin has said it is due to magic.

 

And I accept that. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be getting some help. The Others (or whomever is responsible) could just be taking advantage of, and magnifying, a natural phenomenon. Otherwise, the cyclic nature and predictability of the phenomenon is in question. The Others don't show up every winter. Is this because the Wall is now blocking them? Did they show up every winter before the Wall was built? I haven't read the history books, so this is an actual question.

I, too, would like to ask for the indications given, as I did not read the World-book either.

I could imagine that the Other with their ice-magic do get an advantage during the super-winter and are - to some degree and maybe under certain circumstances (or else they would appear ever winter and the Night Watch wouldn't have been able to forget about them - but they don't)- able to change it into something as the Long Night. But we don't know if the Long Night truly would have lasted forever, had the Others won, or if their magic just turned the normal super-winter into a super-harsh-winter, which nonetheless would have ended after the effect of Planet X (Duuuu duuuu DU DUUUUUUU!) had run it's course.

So I, too, think the natural explanation wouldn't contradict the magic but in this case would even give another hint why the Others don't come out every winter (till we get a magical reason like an broken pact or something like that).

[Three-Fingered Pete]

18 hours ago, Clegane'sPup said:

I like it.

 

Ah, a Hitchcock fan no doubt?

[Clegane'sPup]

On 3/8/2019 at 4:07 PM, Three-Fingered Pete said:

 

Ah, a Hitchcock fan no doubt?

I didn't catch the Bird's reference until you mentioned it. I was thinking more along the lines of martin trying to go about his daily business without being bombarded by ASOIAF devotees

Sometimes classic suspense dramas and mysteries are the best. Other times old comedies are better. Both can be deemed politically incorrect by 21 century standards.

Let me not leave out the swashbucklers

Considering martin was born in 1948,  martin may have had a TV in his home before he went off to college, weeeeeel, between reading comics and hard bound books he may have watched a few old movies on the 5-6 channels.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

38 minutes ago, Clegane'sPup said:

I didn't catch the Bird's reference until you mentioned it. I was thinking more along the lines of martin trying to go about his daily business without being bombarded by ASOIAF devotees

 

That is the joke, but Robot Chicken is known for their parody mash-ups if they can find one. The Nerd is one of their main recurring characters. They also have a sequence where he encounters George Lucas at a sci-fi convention (I'd link it, but this thread is already taking long enough to load already).

 

41 minutes ago, Clegane'sPup said:

Let me not leave out the swashbucklers

 

No matter how many times they remake that movie, that 1938 version is still the most fun to watch. Errol Flynn was made to play that part.

 

43 minutes ago, Clegane'sPup said:

Considering martin was born in 1948,  martin may have had a TV in his home before he went off to college, weeeeeel, between reading comics and hard bound books he may have watched a few old movies on the 5-6 channels.

 

Oh, I'm sure he did. George spent a lot of time in the movie theater too. Back then, you could go all day for a quarter and still have money left over for candy.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

I don't know if this post was satire or not, but I have been schilling for planet x since day 1. 

 

The World Book says:

"Though the Citadel has long sought to learn the manner by which it may predict the length and change of seasons, all efforts have been confounded. Septon Barth appeared to argue, in a fragmentary treatise, that the inconstancy of the seasons was a matter of magical art rather than trustworthy knowledge. "

"Maester Nicol's The Measure of the Days—otherwise a laudable work containing much of use—seems influenced by this argument.  Based upon his work on the movement of stars in the firmament, Nicol argues unconvincingly that the seasons might once have been of a regular length, determined solely by the way in which the globe faces the sun in its heavenly course. The notion behind it seems true enough—that the lengthening and shortening of days, if more regular, would have led to more regular seasons—but he could find no evidence that such was ever the case, beyond the most ancient of tales."

 

Maester Nicol, is a reference to Nicolaus Copernicus, who (re)discovered the heliocentric model of the solar system, I think that this rules out a second actual sun, the black dwarf star, George is telling us the single-sun heliocentric model is correct. 

 

In the ancient tales/star charts, the movement of the stars was regular, they are now irregular.

The lengthening and shortening of the days has become irregular.  Something ("magic") is altering the length of the days in an irregular and as yet unpredictable way.  The seasons are not being altered by mystical ice/fire forces advancing and retreating, because that would not alter the lengths of the days or the positions of the stars.

 

Earth has seasons because the axis of the planet is tilted 23.5 degrees off of the plane of the solar system, we will call this a regular orbit, in this case the Northern Hemisphere is angled more towards the sun in summer and away from the sun in winter.

The seasons of Westeros could possibly be explained by a Wobbly Orbit, Samwell Tarly's fake climate change paper suggests this, but this does not work because the North Star remains in the same position throughout the books (see below).  (If the North Star stayed the same, but the planet rolled, this is called true polar wander and scientists think this may have caused the Ice Age.)  And they don't propose any mechanism for what is causing the wobble, or why it can remain in summer position for 10 years and then rapidly shift to winter position and maintain that position for several years.  

The most recent summer lasted about 10 years, that would mean that the Earth tilted back and forth while going around to sun, so as to keep Westeros facing the sun with approximately the same angle for 10 years.    I do not think any natural phenomenon could cause this.

Quote

I have people constantly writing me with science fiction theories about the seasons — “It’s a double star system with a black dwarf and that would explain–” It’s fantasy, man, it’s magic. 

It seems like he told us what it was, a black dwarf, then said "it's magic"--which could be understood as "not a natural phenomenon"--because, like you say, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  So I don't think Planet X is a black dwarf or a gas giant, it is an artificial "planet".

What could have changed in the past 10,000-15,000 years to alter the tilt of the Earth?  What event happened around that time--the arrival of the Lion of Night and the founding of the Great Empire.   The Qaartheen "second moon" myth was a celestial body that causes an eclipse, is destroyed, and living creatures come down from it.  Dragons came from the second moon, dragons came from the Shadow, the Shadow is the second moon.  Both objects were big enough to cause eclipses.  Luwin's Shadow maps were tracking the movements of one of them.  The Shadow "planet" could be what is affecting the tilt of the Earth. 

The Shadow Planet is in geostationary orbit over Asshai.  It is latched onto that location and moves with it, so that to observers on the ground, it does not appear to move.  As the Earth travels around the sun, the Shadow Planet vacillates and tugs the Earth with it, changing the Earth's orientation to the sun, while keeping the axis of rotation pointing North to the Ice Dragon.

Westeros in Summer

Westeros in Winter
 

The Shadow over Asshai, and the "darkness in the North" are a literal shadow being cast by a totally black object hovering right over the far north-east portion of Asshai.  

"Asshai by the Shadow." "The nights are very black in Asshai, all agree, and even the brightest days of summer are somehow grey and gloomy."

The nights are very black because there is a object blocking out the night sky.  Asshai itself seems to be in the penumbra, and Stygia is in the umbra--"the heart of darkness" "The Shadow Lands"  (and the Ghost Grass is a metaphor for the Others, who live in darkness under the Shadow)

Carcosa is on the shore of the Hidden Sea, both of which I think are under the Shadow.  From The King in Yellow,

"Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies, But stranger still is Lost Carcosa."

Strange moons, and black stars above Carcosa.  There is also a story called the Black Hole of Carcosa, in which a black hole is near a planet which makes people have magical abilities?  No good summaries online.

In Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Kadath, Kadath is in a region of permanent darkness, and the Old Ones live on top of a gigantic mountain in an onyx castle, (and there are floating heads that are mistaken for mountains)
 

 

I think the Dothraki Mother of Mountains is actually this Shadow Planet as seen from a great distance (it is the Mountain, and it was heavily damaged (decapitated) at the end of the last Long Night when the Red Comet knocked it out of eclipse formation).  It is not recognized as a moon because of its irregular shape.

"Vaes Dothrak, which stands beneath the shadow of the lonely peak they call the Mother of Mountains, beside a bottomless lake they name the Womb of the World. "

"with the Mother of Mountains looming overhead."

"No steel was permitted within the sacred confines of Vaes Dothrak, beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains"

"toward the Mother of Mountains far to the northeast."

 

They call Vaes Dothrak a "hollow shell of a city," (but I think the Shadow Planet is the hollow shell)

 

"stallion who mounts the world." is a reference to the Shadow planet, which appears to humping the Earth.  This language parallels the Quartheen moon mating with the sun, and the Lion of Night mating with the sun.  When two celestial bodies are in eclipse formation, it is a mating. 

Mountain that Rides is a metaphor for the Shadow Planet, unhorsed by guile, his horse was decapitated, he was later decapitated, he was a Stone Giant.  (The jhogwin were massive stone giants that lived in the Bones Mountains.)

"A shadow fell across his face. He turned to find Clegane looming overhead like a cliff. His soot-dark armor seemed to blot out the sun."

 

Sandor's black horse is called Stranger, (and Sandoq the Shadow), both large men all in black.

 

In the section on Ib they mention the God-Kings Ruined Palace, and I think this is also a reference to the Shadow Planet. "the Port is dominated by the ruins of the God-King's castle, a colossal structure of rough-hewn stone that was home to a hundred Ibbenese kings. The last such king was thrown down in the aftermath of the Doom of Valyria, however. Today, Ib and the lesser isles are governed by the Shadow Council"

If the Lion of Night was the God-on-Earth's ship, "ruins of the God-King's castle" would be a close parallel to that.

 

And possibly the Azure Emperor from YiTi.

" though millions may worship the azure emperor in Yin and prostrate themselves before him whenever he appears . . . There the seventeenth azure emperor Bu Gai sits in splendor in a palace larger than all King's Landing"

 

 

The gravitational pull of the Shadow Planet is what sunk the Thousand Islands, it pulled a massive tide over them. I think they are supposed to be the St Petersburg area of Russia, and the land bridge between Essos and Scandinavia was submerged.  When the Shadow Planet moves again it will created tsunamis and reveal hidden islands.  This may have been the Hammer of the Waters that sunk Dorne and swamped the Neck also.

 

The Shadow Planet can be moved and controlled, and this is how it caused the Long Night by being parked in orbit to block out the sun.  Dragonbinder is the remote control, only those with Great Empire King's Blood can control the ship.  Quaithe of the Shadow is trying to get Dany to pass beneath the Shadow, that is, take control of the ship.  (in heraldry Quatherine means a "ship in full sail", and a quays are where ships are parked)

The Gods of the Seven are the planets, (think Greek and Roman paganism) one of them is a mysterious black thing without a regular orbit, that is a wanderer (planet) from far places, that is their god of death.  Recall that one of the oldest Septs is the Starry Sept, built of black marble.   And The Church of Starry Wisdom is worshiping something in the night sky, and they are an apocalyptic death cult, founded by a guy who caused the Long Night (eclipse).  I think was the Long Night was caused by the giant black Lion of Night spaceship that can be parked in orbit to block out the sun, the weirwoods are most powerful in complete darkness, and that is why the Bloodstone Emperor blocked out the sun when he hijacked the weirwood network--to maximize his power.

I think that Planetos is Earth, and at the end of the series the Shadow planets will depart and the seasons will return to normal.

 

-------------

Polestar references

I think the Blue North Star is Vega, which was Earth's polestar 14,000 years ago, due to the axial precession, and the Ice Dragon is the constellation Draco.

In Sworn Sword: summer 211ac?  "and the blue eye of the Ice Dragon was lost to him, the blue eye that pointed north."

In Clash Bran V:  late summer 299ac "Look for the Ice Dragon, and chase the blue star in the rider's eye."ac

In Storm Bran II: autumn 299ac "look up in the sky for the Ice Dragon. The blue star in the dragon's eye pointed the way north, as Osha told him once. "

In Storm Jon V: autumn 299ac "Jon searched the sky until he found the Ice Dragon, then turned the mare north for the Wall"

In Storm Sam III: autumn 299ac "and on clear nights they could follow the Ice Dragon's tail" (south)

In Storm Davos VI: autumn 299ac"The clouds hid most of the Ice Dragon, all but the bright blue eye that marked due north."

 

If the Ice Dragon is Draco, then the Blue Star must still refer to Vega, because the two bright stars in Draco's head are orange (Eltanin) and yellow (Rastaban), not blue. 

Sidebar: There is no way the dragon's tail points south, it would rotate around the Blue Star during the night.  What was going on here Sam?  Was that why he couldn't find the wall--he was walking in circles?

 

However, the fact that they all believe there is a consistent Polestar indicates that it must not change too much, let us say that the polestar remains Vega, and there could be a slight axial wobble, but not enough to alter the seasons.

 

However, there is one passage where the sun is described doing something odd, when it is overhead at the Wall:

Quote

By the sixth hour, Jarl had moved ahead of Grigg the Goat again, and his men were widening the gap. "The Mance's pet must want a sword," the Magnar said, shading his eyes. The sun was high in the sky, and the upper third of the Wall was a crystalline blue from below, reflecting so brilliantly that it hurt the eyes to look on it. Jarl's four and Grigg's were all but lost in the glare, though Errok's team was still in shadow.

It is Autumn, in the far north, but the sun was overhead and it reflected off the wall?  That doesn't make sense.  They would have to be near the equator for that to happen.

Sun position shadow calculator

Let's say the wall is at Edinburgh, Scotland, and is 700 feet tall, in September at mid-day, it would still cast a shadow almost 1000 feet long, never getting close to being overhead.  So the Wall must be much further south than Scotland the day Jon climbs the wall, it is nearly at the equator.  If the planet is being tugged around by the Shadow, this is possible.

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

In Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness, there is a huge mysterious mountain, beyond the Plateau of Leng, in Kadath in the Cold Waste, that was well over 40,000 feet high, that was worshiped and feared by the Old Ones, "like the serrated edge of a monstrous alien planet about to rise into unaccustomed heavens."  Danforth caught a glimpse of the Mountain and it drove him insane.

Spoiler

There now lay revealed on the ultimate white horizon behind the grotesque city a dim, elfin line of pinnacled violet whose needle-pointed heights loomed dream-like against the beckoning rose-colour of the western sky. Up toward this shimmering rim sloped the ancient table-land, the depressed course of the bygone river traversing it as an irregular ribbon of shadow. For a second we gasped in admiration of the scene’s unearthly cosmic beauty, and then vague horror began to creep into our souls. For this far violet line could be nothing else than the terrible mountains of the forbidden land—highest of earth’s peaks and focus of earth’s evil; harbourers of nameless horrors and Archaean secrets; shunned and prayed to by those who feared to carve their meaning; untrodden by any living thing of earth, but visited by the sinister lightnings and sending strange beams across the plains in the polar night—beyond doubt the unknown archetype of that dreaded Kadath in the Cold Waste beyond abhorrent Leng, whereof unholy primal legends hint evasively. We were the first human beings ever to see them—and I hope to God we may be the last.
If the sculptured maps and pictures in that pre-human city had told truly, these cryptic violet mountains could not be much less than 300 miles away; yet none the less sharply did their dim elfin essence jut above that remote and snowy rim, like the serrated edge of a monstrous alien planet about to rise into unaccustomed heavens. Their height, then, must have been tremendous beyond all known comparison—carrying them up into tenuous atmospheric strata peopled by such gaseous wraiths as rash flyers have barely lived to whisper of after unexplainable falls. Looking at them, I thought nervously of certain sculptured hints of what the great bygone river had washed down into the city from their accursed slopes—and wondered how much sense and how much folly had lain in the fears of those Old Ones who carved them so reticently. I recalled how their northerly end must come near the coast at Queen Mary Land, where even at that moment Sir Douglas Mawson’s expedition was doubtless working less than a thousand miles away; and hoped that no evil fate would give Sir Douglas and his men a glimpse of what might lie beyond the protecting coastal range. Such thoughts formed a measure of my overwrought condition at the time—and Danforth seemed to be even worse.

. . .

But Danforth, released from his piloting and keyed up to a dangerous nervous pitch, could not keep quiet. I felt him turning and wriggling about as he looked back at the terrible receding city, ahead at the cave-riddled, cube-barnacled peaks, sidewise at the bleak sea of snowy, rampart-strown foothills, and upward at the seething, grotesquely clouded sky. It was then, just as I was trying to steer safely through the pass, that his mad shrieking brought us so close to disaster by shattering my tight hold on myself and causing me to fumble helplessly with the controls for a moment. A second afterward my resolution triumphed and we made the crossing safely—yet I am afraid that Danforth will never be the same again.
I have said that Danforth refused to tell me what final horror made him scream out so insanely—a horror which, I feel sadly sure, is mainly responsible for his present breakdown. We had snatches of shouted conversation above the wind’s piping and the engine’s buzzing as we reached the safe side of the range and swooped slowly down toward the camp, but that had mostly to do with the pledges of secrecy we had made as we prepared to leave the nightmare city. Certain things, we had agreed, were not for people to know and discuss lightly—and I would not speak of them now but for the need of heading off that Starkweather-Moore Expedition, and others, at any cost. It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.
All that Danforth has ever hinted is that the final horror was a mirage. It was not, he declares, anything connected with the cubes and caves of echoing, vaporous, wormily honeycombed mountains of madness which we crossed; but a single fantastic, daemoniac glimpse, among the churning zenith-clouds, of what lay back of those other violet westward mountains which the Old Ones had shunned and feared. It is very probable that the thing was a sheer delusion born of the previous stresses we had passed through, and of the actual though unrecognised mirage of the dead transmontane city experienced near Lake’s camp the day before; but it was so real to Danforth that he suffers from it still.
He has on rare occasions whispered disjointed and irresponsible things about “the black pit”, “the carven rim”, “the proto-shoggoths”, “the windowless solids with five dimensions”, “the nameless cylinder”, “the elder pharos”, “Yog-Sothoth”, “the primal white jelly”, “the colour out of space”, “the wings”, “the eyes in darkness”, “the moon-ladder”, “the original, the eternal, the undying”, and other bizarre conceptions; but when he is fully himself he repudiates all this and attributes it to his curious and macabre reading of earlier years. Danforth, indeed, is known to be among the few who have ever dared go completely through that worm-riddled copy of the Necronomicon kept under lock and key in the college library.

Lovecraft says several times that the moon was formed from material flung off the earth:

"Their original place of advent to the planet was the Antarctic Ocean, and it is likely that they came not long after the matter forming the moon was wrenched from the neighbouring South Pacific. "  . . ."the earth had flung off the moon"

Spoiler

"Yet even more monstrous exaggerations of Nature seemed disturbingly close at hand. I have said that these peaks are higher than the Himalayas, but the sculptures forbid me to say that they are earth’s highest. That grim honour is beyond doubt reserved for something which half the sculptures hesitated to record at all, whilst others approached it with obvious repugnance and trepidation. It seems that there was one part of the ancient land—the first part that ever rose from the waters after the earth had flung off the moon and the Old Ones had seeped down from the stars—which had come to be shunned as vaguely and namelessly evil. Cities built there had crumbled before their time, and had been found suddenly deserted. Then when the first great earth-buckling had convulsed the region in the Comanchian age, a frightful line of peaks had shot suddenly up amidst the most appalling din and chaos—and earth had received her loftiest and most terrible mountains.
If the scale of the carvings was correct, these abhorred things must have been much over 40,000 feet high—radically vaster than even the shocking mountains of madness we had crossed. They extended, it appeared, from about Latitude 77°, E. Longitude 70° to Latitude 70°, E. Longitude 100°—less than 300 miles away from the dead city, so that we would have spied their dreaded summits in the dim western distance had it not been for that vague opalescent haze. Their northern end must likewise be visible from the long Antarctic Circle coast-line at Queen Mary Land.
Some of the Old Ones, in the decadent days, had made strange prayers to those mountains; but none ever went near them or dared to guess what lay beyond.

 

(In the Lovecraft spinoff tale To Clear the Earth, a guy named Stark goes to Antarctica and discovers that the mountain is a spherical alien black spaceship that shoots black fire that turns everything into fused black stone, that when activated by humans will destroy all life on Earth so that the Old Ones may return.)

 

In Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Kadath and Leng and the Mountain is in Asia rather than Antarctica.  The Mountain is an enormous unearthly black mountain, in a region of permanent night, the Great Ones live in an onyx castle on top of it, and there is a single light in the highest tower. 

Spoiler

That they were in a realm of eternal night he felt certain, and he fancied that the constellations overhead had subtly emphasised their northward focus; gathering themselves up as it were to cast the flying army into the void of the boreal pole, as the folds of a bag are gathered up to cast out the last bits of substance therein.
Then he noticed with terror that the wings of the night-gaunts were not flapping any more. The horned and faceless steeds had folded their membraneous appendages, and were resting quite passive in the chaos of wind that whirled and chuckled as it bore them on. A force not of earth had seized on the army, and ghouls and night-gaunts alike were powerless before a current which pulled madly and relentlessly into the north whence no mortal had ever returned. At length a lone pallid light was seen on the skyline ahead, thereafter rising steadily as they approached, and having beneath it a black mass that blotted out the stars. Carter saw that it must be some beacon on a mountain, for only a mountain could rise so vast as seen from so prodigious a height in the air.
Higher and higher rose the light and the blackness beneath it, till half the northern sky was obscured by the rugged conical mass. Lofty as the army was, that pale and sinister beacon rose above it, towering monstrous over all peaks and concernments of earth, and tasting the atomless aether where the cryptical moon and the mad planets reel. No mountain known of man was that which loomed before them. The high clouds far below were but a fringe for its foothills. The gasping dizziness of topmost air was but a girdle for its loins. Scornful and spectral climbed that bridge betwixt earth and heaven, black in eternal night, and crowned with a pshent of unknown stars whose awful and significant outline grew every moment clearer. Ghouls meeped in wonder as they saw it, and Carter shivered in fear lest all the hurtling army be dashed to pieces on the unyielding onyx of that Cyclopean cliff.
Higher and higher rose the light, till it mingled with the loftiest orbs of the zenith and winked down at the flyers with lurid mockery. All the north beneath it was blackness now; dread, stony blackness from infinite depths to infinite heights, with only that pale winking beacon perched unreachably at the top of all vision. Carter studied the light more closely, and saw at last what lines its inky background made against the stars. There were towers on that titan mountain-top; horrible domed towers in noxious and incalculable tiers and clusters beyond any dreamable workmanship of man; battlements and terraces of wonder and menace, all limned tiny and black and distant against the starry pshent that glowed malevolently at the uppermost rim of sight. Capping that most measureless of mountains was a castle beyond all mortal thought, and in it glowed the daemon-light. Then Randolph Carter knew that his quest was done, and that he saw above him the goal of all forbidden steps and audacious visions; the fabulous, the incredible home of the Great Ones atop unknown Kadath.
Even as he realised this thing, Carter noticed a change in the course of the helplessly wind-sucked party. They were rising abruptly now, and it was plain that the focus of their flight was the onyx castle where the pale light shone. So close was the great black mountain that its sides sped by them dizzily as they shot upward, and in the darkness they could discern nothing upon it. Vaster and vaster loomed the tenebrous towers of the nighted castle above, and Carter could see that it was well-nigh blasphemous in its immensity. Well might its stones have been quarried by nameless workmen in that horrible gulf rent out of the rock in the hill pass north of Inganok, for such was its size that a man on its threshold stood even as an ant on the steps of earth’s loftiest fortress. The pshent of unknown stars above the myriad domed turrets glowed with a sallow, sickly flare, so that a kind of twilight hung about the murky walls of slippery onyx. The pallid beacon was now seen to be a single shining window high up in one of the loftiest towers, and as the helpless army neared the top of the mountain Carter thought he detected unpleasant shadows flitting across the feebly luminous expanse. It was a strangely arched window, of a design wholly alien to earth.
The solid rock now gave place to the giant foundations of the monstrous castle, and it seemed that the speed of the party was somewhat abated. Vast walls shot up, and there was a glimpse of a great gate through which the voyagers were swept. All was night in the titan courtyard, and then came the deeper blackness of inmost things as a huge arched portal engulfed the column. Vortices of cold wind surged dankly through sightless labyrinths of onyx, and Carter could never tell what Cyclopean stairs and corridors lay silent along the route of his endless aërial twisting. Always upward led the terrible plunge in darkness, and never a sound, touch, or glimpse broke the dense pall of mystery. Large as the army of ghouls and night-gaunts was, it was lost in the prodigious voids of that more than earthly castle. And when at last there suddenly dawned around him the lurid light of that single tower room whose lofty window had served as a beacon, it took Carter long to discern the far walls and high, distant ceiling, and to realise that he was indeed not again in the boundless air outside.

And recall the alien colony spaceship/planet Yuggoth made entirely out of black stone, from the Whisperer in Darkness, that the Old Ones used to come to Earth.

So, in Lovecraft there is a lot of imagery to suggest a "moon" or "alien planet" being very close to the Earth, if not in direct contact with it.  Close enough to cause some places to be in permanent eclipse, and to mess up the rotation of the Earth and disrupt the seasons.

I think the Mother of Mountains is an alien planet that is hovering over Asshai.  I think it can shoot black fire and turn things into fused black stone.  The Long Night was when the Bloodstone Emperor parked it in eclipse formation, and he may have used it to irradiate the cities of the Great Empire of the Dawn during the Long Night, and that is why they are poisonous.  The Long Night was ended when someone warged the Red Comet and crashed into the Lion of Night, knocking it out of eclipse.  I also think dragonglass shards might be pieces of it that broke off when the Red Comet hit it.

[Sandy Clegg]

Big fan of the Planet X theory, or anything related to the astronomy-related mythos of ASOIAF. Maester Luwin's Myrish lens is probably the biggest Chekov's gun in the whole series for me  - and a sign that we might be in for a blend of fantasy and sci-fi before the end of the series. The Lovecraft allusions are also undeniable, I'm just wondering how much of this is just adding 'flavour' to the world of ASOIAF as opposed to plot points which have yet to be revealed. Hoping for the latter, obviously

Regarding the Mother of Mountains, though: it's mentioned in AGOT that Khal Drogo and the other Khals spend some time up the mountain, so that would suggest it is a regular, albeit large, outcropping and not alien in nature. The name is intriguing though, as where there is a Mother, the implication would be that there is a also a Father - perhaps an even larger Mountain which has remained unmentioned in canon (thus far). This might be the "shadow planet" over Asshai that the OP is theorising?

[Fun Guy from Yuggoth]

Metaphorical eclipses and what they tell us about the "second moon"

When Viserys threatens Dany in Drogo's tent: Dany is the Moon, Drogo is the Sun, Viserys is the "second moon"

In the scene when Drogo pours molten gold over Viserys' head, Lml has pointed out, is describing an eclipse and closely parallels the Bloodstone Emperors blood betrayal which caused the Long Night. 

In Latin, derogo means to "take away" and Drogo is the Sun. a "veseris" is a weighted ball attached to a wire that you spin around and throw in track and field events, i.e, the hammer, i.e., a huge weighted ball attached to the Earth--which is how I described the Shadow over Asshai, and "vis erus" means "master of the power" in Latin and I think represents the Black Planet an incredibly powerful spaceship (as in Plague Star), and Dany is the moon, Viserys usurps his sister, eclipses (takes away) the sun, and is given a golden crown (corona) by the sun.    ETA: "visere/viseris" also means "to visit" in Latin, the second moon is a visitor.

 

Jaime's weirwood stump dream:  Jaime is the sun, and Brienne is the moon, and they are both hidden in a cave-- (in Dance, when Ghost thinks about the sun going down he thinks "the cave of night where the sun had hidden".)* Jaime's dream is a symbolic depiction of the Long Night eclipse. The thing that causes the eclipse is a huge Lion-shaped rock, Casterly Rock, --reminds me of the Lion of Night planet that caused the first Long Night.  "Caster" is something that casts, as in a huge rock that casts a shadow? 

In Jaime's dream, in the eclipse darkness the Others come, and the Others are a Kingsguard led by a Targaryen King. Jaime never wanted Casterly Rock, but Tyrion desperately wants it. Tyrion wants control of the thing that causes the Long Night. Tyrion = Tar yin = Yin Tar, "In the Jade Compendium, Colloquo Votar recounts a curious legend from Yi Ti, which states that the sun hid its face from the earth for a lifetime, ashamed at something none could discover, and that disaster was averted only by the deeds of a woman with a monkey's tail." Tyrion was supposed to have been born a hermaphrodite, and with a tail, and he is called a demon monkey, and he has the black eye/Bloodstone Emperor symbolism. 

The ancient real world city of Tyre got its name because it was situated on a large rock, and "turos" means "rock"  "Tyre consisted of two distinct parts, a rocky fortress on the mainland, called 'Old Tyre,' and the city, built on a small, rocky island about half-a-mile distant from the shore. It was a place of great strength."  "Tyrian" is a purple dye from Tyre.  And "tyria" means "to screw up" or mess up"  And in the Audubon astronomy guide that I am pretty certain George used to write his constellation passages, the guy who did all the star charts is named Tirion.

 

* In Asimov's Nightfall, the eclipse ("the long night") caused by a dark planet leads to the collapse of civilization, they say the sun hid in the "cave of night"

Quote

'The Cultists said that every two thousand and fifty years Lagash entered a huge cave, so that all the suns disappeared, and there came total darkness all over the world! And then, they say, things called Stars appeared, which robbed men of their souls and left them unreasoning brutes, so that they destroyed the civilization they themselves had built up. Of course they mix all this up with a lot of religio-mystic notions, but that's the central idea.'

. . .

Even now the Cave approaches to swallow Lagash; yea, and all it contains.' ' "And even as he spoke the lip of the Cave of Darkness passed the edge of Beta so that to all Lagash it was hidden from sight. Loud were the cries of men as it vanished, and great the fear of soul that fell upon them.

' "It came to pass that the Darkness of the Cave fell upon Lagash, and there was no light on all the surface of Lagash. Men were even as blinded, nor could one man see his neighbor, though he felt his breath upon his face. '

"And in this blackness there appeared the Stars, in countless numbers, and to the strains of music of such beauty that the very leaves of the trees cried out in wonder. '

"And in that moment the souls of men departed from them, and their abandoned bodies became even as beasts; yea, even as brutes of the wild; so that through the blackened streets of the cities of Lagash they prowled with wild cries. '

"From the Stars there then reached down the Heavenly Flame, and where it touched, the cities of Lagash flamed to utter destruction, so that of man and of the works of man nought remained.

ETA:

One of the courtesans of Braavos is called The Black Pearl, Bellegere Otherys.  belliger means "war bringing" and Otherys is Others.  Black pearl references the object that causes the eclipse of the sun during the Long Night.  "was black as a pot of ink"  "She's descended from the dragons" and " was a captain and a pirate queen"  The name and job of Black Pearl is hereditary.  Mother was Bellonara, Bellonarius was the Roman goddess of war, sister to Mars.  (Black Pearl, black as a pot of ink, associated with the Others, and war, and ships, and dragons (dragons descended from the second moon), and war and the planet Mars, I think it is the Lion of Night/Shadow/Stranger)