: I'd say that there's a difference between a jump to Lh'Owon, and a jump to
: the Marathon, but now that I remember, the Marathon was initially located
: above a colony at the time it was attacked, right? Well, that means there
: was a planet there, which also means there had to be a sun somewhere near
: it. Since I don't have any details (Distance between the Marathon and a
: planet/sun and Distance between Lh'Owon and the sun) I can't dwell more on
: that theory.
We now have some distance information at our disposal which may be born out in the future. Sorry for any rehash here. There is (unconfirmed) data indicating the existence of 5 planets at tau Ceti. Initially two were thought to be in the habitable zone (where liquid water can remain on a planet's [or moon's] surface at least during part of its orbit). The way hab zones were defined was soon revised and one candidate remains: tau Ceti e (letters start with the star itself and are normally done in discovery order. In this case all 5 planets were evidenced at the same time, so the lettering is from inward out, from the star. This means that this planetary candidate is tau Ceti 4, at the hot inner edge of the hab zone. It happens that this is in harmony with: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/ben_reiter_synopsis.html
According to the Extrasolar Planet Encyclopedia http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/tau_cet_e/ , tau Ceti e would be a little over half the distance to its sun as we are to Sol (0.55 Astronomical Units). Its year is about 168 Earth days. It may be hot, say 70 C (or 158 F), so we hope that the atmosphere is a little different than Earth's, but still breathable. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Ceti_e
For an orbital diagram, see: http://oklo.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TauCeti6.gif
Interestingly, Robert Heinlein, in Time for the Stars, named tau Ceti 4 "Constance". It was located about 0.54 AU (50 million miles) out. It was a more 'comfortable' planet than what science now predicts.
