Luyten

Luyten, named after the star it orbits, is the principal human colony in the Luyten's Star system. It is one of the oldest and most stable Inner Colonies.

Background
Luyten is a "twilight world" tidally locked to its star and the most populous of such worlds in the Human Sphere. The sun-facing side is uncomfortably hot while the night side has the opposite problem; most of the habitation is clustered along the temperate terminator line where a native, human-compatible biosphere also thrives. An artificial day-night cycle of sorts is maintained by massive sun shades in the L1 Lagrange point.

One of the first Inner Colonies, settled during the First Wave in 2326, many settlers from Earth's overcrowded cities were attracted to Luyten in the early years. However, as more pleasant worlds were charted in the coming decades and the Domus Diaspora began, immigration slowed down. As a result, most of Luyten's population are descended from the First Wave colonists, hailing mostly from Earth's Central Europe and East Asia. The planet and its system saw some unrest and civil conflict during the Inner Colony Wars in the 2380s, with a prominent civil war in 2383, but the subsequent solidification of the planet's government and cultural identity has made it a relatively stable world since. In the late 2300s and early 2400s, Luyten's academia and government served as one of the hotbeds of the Inner Colony exceptionalism trend, which manifested primarily on political and economic forums. Over the 25th century, the planet hosted several cooperation summits of Inner Colony leaders, industrialists and intellectuals.

Luyten is a wealthy colony with a high quality of life in the cities. Initial industry was mining-based, both planetary and throughout the system, though this has long since diversified to include various manufacturing and service industries. Luyten is not located along any major slipways, though it is close to both Epsilon Eridani and SolCore, and commercial ships often use the system as a secondary waystation. This is welcomed and encouraged by the Luytenese government and local industries, which have invested considerably in space infrastructure serving passing ships and their crews; most of these visitors never land on the planet itself but rather spend their enjoy their brief stay in the system in orbital hotels mostly located in the further-out planets' Lagrage points. Luyten's unique lighting conditions and geography still attract tourists to the world as well.

Luyten was attacked by the Covenant in mid-2552, but most of the Covenant fleet responsible was recalled to Reach during the invasion of the Epsilon Eridani system, and many of Luyten's settlements survived total destruction. Still, casualties were high, and the population dropped from the original low hundreds of millions to tens of millions by the post-war era. Refugee flows during and after the war have brought major changes to Luyten's demographics, though the planet has not been the most popular destination for either official or unofficial resettlement projects.