Are all known stars supposed to be in the game?

[Teralek]

I might misunderstood what he meant. Maybe he did mean the playable systems. That makes me wonder where they get all 400 billion names from.. It is said that most of theese systems are randomly generated, right? So how can that be? I'm just curious myself, and I'm open to suggestions.

EDIT: I'm looking for the material. Give me a moment to find it

Allow me to explain.

The game has most of the well known stars in the right place. Canopus, Barnard, Capella, Bettelguese, Rigel, LGM-1... and so on and so on. The thing is NASA catalogue is incomplete because they don't have all known "named" stars. There are different star catalogues. But I think the common named stars, such as the constellations are all there.

Thus they used the NASA catalogue or whatever catalogue to place and make these stars as they are in real life. They are still missing a bunch of stars which are not on the catalogue they used

Other problems are that for the most part we do not know exactly how far are most of the stars in the galaxy, we have an estimate. Only precise measures we have are for the most studied stars, but they are very few. We also don't have a name for every star in the galaxy. Most of them are given a name according to a catalogue naming procedure.

An example that the game is using one source for it's catalogue and not an exhaustive and scientific astronomical naming, is that they named the pulsar PSR B1919+21, LGM-1 which is a kind of nickname.

I think its because they are developers and not Astronomers (still an awesome job for developers) and because for 99%+ of all stars in the galaxy their distance is not well known and for most their "name" is just a number in a catalogue. Thus they named a few of the well known, put them in the right places and procedurally generated the rest.

 

[Helvellyn]

The real stars will usually have a catalogue number in the info (Hipp, HD, Gliese).

 

[neXib]

I think some people get confused when they say it's procedurally generated. A LOT of the stars in the game are from catalogues and identifications and are named like this:
Gliese
HD (Henry Draper)
HIP (Hipparcos)
Ross (Frank Elmore Ross)
Wolf (Max Wolf)
LTT (Luyten Two-Tenths)
NLTT (New Luyten Two-Tenths)

Some of them obviously get popular names, some got them long time ago.

So many of the stars exist and are catalogued a long time ago. However, they do not know all the facts on the systems themselves of course. But based on known facts they generate the "likely" content of that star system, and in between some of the known stars they also fill in stars likely there but which cannot be seen. So obviously in some areas a lot of it aren't stars we can see in any way, thus more procederally generated stars there too.

Let's face it, it's the closest thing we'll ever get to visiting these systems, so strap on a Rift and believe it's the real ones

 

[Zetta]

I believe there are actually 160,000 real stars in game (all manually inputted by Michael Brookes) but they come from multiple catalogues and may not use the most common name. You'll likely have to research for alternate namings to some stars in order to find them.

+1

/10char

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Simbad.

Best aggregate of star catalogues I've found yet. Lots of cross-references and a picture of the objects position in the sky. Enjoy.

 

[Teralek]

Elite gives a great human understandable view of how vast our galaxy is, and how many stars are really out there. Still think we are alone? Our galaxy is only average. Smaller than average for the most part.. and there are estimated to be about 100-200 billion other galaxies of all shapes and sizes out there in the known universe. Many far far larger than our own.

Why space remains silent after decades of radio astronomy is for me the BIG mystery. There are all sorts of explanations. But that's all what they are... speculations. "Still think we are alone?" It's improbable but not impossible.

 

[Toscaner]

I might misunderstood what he meant. Maybe he did mean the playable systems. That makes me wonder where they get all 400 billion names from.. It is said that most of theese systems are randomly generated, right? So how can that be? I'm just curious myself, and I'm open to suggestions.

EDIT: I'm looking for the material. Give me a moment to find it

EDIT 2: I didn't find the exact video, but I found a video where he's stating that the most of the game is generated procedually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCnsXE6Zi2E
In other words, it's hard to know what's real and what's not. He also says every single star in the night-sky is real. That's the ingame horizon background he's talking about I guess

yes, there is a skybox in the background, but everytime you enter a system it's freshly calculated for your position

when you travel and pay attention, you will see the background changing, like nebula getting closer and constellations changing. also you most times can see the neighbouring stars, you can jump to.

and as already said, most known stars are ingame, some with different names because of the elite lore, but all show the catalogue IDs mentioned above.

 

[neXib]

Why space remains silent after decades of radio astronomy is for me the BIG mystery. There are all sorts of explanations. But that's all what they are... speculations. "Still think we are alone?" It's improbable but not impossible.

You have to realize the fact that light takes the time it takes to travel, and humans have been around in a span of thousands of years while the universe is billions of years old. There could have been human-like life millions of times, but nowhere near here and/or not in our time. So I don't think it's a big mystery, in fact, I think people are strange if they think there isn't life out there, but the fact that we won't find it makes sense to me. Also, who knows what form it takes

 

[Diwrnach]

Why space remains silent after decades of radio astronomy is for me the BIG mystery. There are all sorts of explanations. But that's all what they are... speculations. "Still think we are alone?" It's improbable but not impossible.

It's actually very probable: The Drake Equation

What is improbable is that we'll ever get to meet aliens. The speed of light is just too slow.

Edit: Aha, ninja'd, curse you neXib

 

[Andovar]

Still quite impressive what they've done. Can't believe poor Michael had to manually enter 100,000+ names of the knows systems.

I know it's probably low on the list, with ongoing bug-fixing, balancing, creating the 'wings' implementation, etc. But I'm really looking forward to when they can add some more of these unique systems based on new scientific discoveries.

 

[Pekka]

It's extremely impressive what they've done! No other game gives us such a wonderful opportunity to explore the galaxy.

 

[Teralek]

You have to realize the fact that light takes the time it takes to travel, and humans have been around in a span of thousands of years while the universe is billions of years old. There could have been human-like life millions of times, but nowhere near here and/or not in our time. So I don't think it's a big mystery, in fact, I think people are strange if they think there isn't life out there, but the fact that we won't find it makes sense to me. Also, who knows what form it takes

Let me be more specific. It is not the question of us sending signals it is the question of extensive programs like SETI surveying the heavens minutely and come up with nothing. We are here since a second ago on astronomical time but some "others" must be here for longer.

It's actually very probable: The Drake Equation

What is improbable is that we'll ever get to meet aliens. The speed of light is just too slow.

Edit: Aha, ninja'd, curse you neXib

Hmmm, that's what I said. It's quite improbable that we are alone, or in other words it's quite probable that there are Intelligent beings out there.
However it is not impossible that we are alone. Regarding Drake equation, many of it's values are arbitrary. If you believe, and I think you may have grounds to hold that belief, that intelligent life is astronomically improbable we may be alone in the Universe. We simply do not know... unfortunately because I would like to know

 

[adoredtv]

Biggest star in the galaxy never made into the game.

I really doubt that - it probably has a different designation though.

 

[Teralek]

I really doubt that - it probably has a different designation though.

This star (UY Scuti) also goes by the names UY Sct, BD-12 5055, IRC -10422,RAFGL 2162, HV 3805

Edit: to be honest I think the most massive stars are way more interesting than these boring Red giants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_massive_known_stars

These are monsters. Unpredictable. Can explode at any moment without notice. They are the ones who leave black holes behind for certain.

 

[Vikinger]

In case you missed it.
The last dev diary from Mr Braben.
He talks about the galaxy,,,,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQou9-QmjAo&list=UUd1Xmm1TFBD-lfZUWaWf7EA
At 3:30 it start.

 

[Rall]

The game is built using NASA's data on visible systems, if I remember right, and as the database is updated, the game plugs in the new stuff. If this is a recent discovery, it probably will make it's way in to the game sooner or later

Even the known exoplanets are in the game.

 

[Helvellyn]

This is all going rather off-topic. Anyway (and these are all complete opinions since there's precious little evidence)...

Life elsewhere - very, very likely. We're talking any life here, even if it's just single celled.

Complex (multicellular) life - pretty likely. It's a big universe. It took an awful long time to appear on Earth though.

Intelligent life - probable but I doubt you'll bump into it on every other inhabitable planet. Perhaps a few hundred throughout the galaxy.

Technological intelligent life - The whole universe is big enough that it surely exists somewhere but whether this galaxy is or not I'm not so sure. I'd hope so. It would have to be reasonably nearby I think for us to be able to detect it even if it's using radio, and we've no idea how likely changing to something else, or self-destruction, is for such a society. I'm not surprised SETI hasn't found anything.

All complete and utter speculation that time may well eventually prove to be completely wrong of course.

 

[Frank]

Do we know of any stars in any other galaxies?

 

[Vikinger]

This is all going rather off-topic. Anyway (and these are all complete opinions since there's precious little evidence)...

Life elsewhere - very, very likely. We're talking any life here, even if it's just single celled.

Complex (multicellular) life - pretty likely. It's a big universe. It took an awful long time to appear on Earth though.

Intelligent life - probable but I doubt you'll bump into it on every other inhabitable planet. Perhaps a few hundred throughout the galaxy.

Technological intelligent life - The whole universe is big enough that it surely exists somewhere but whether this galaxy is or not I'm not so sure. I'd hope so. It would have to be reasonably nearby I think for us to be able to detect it even if it's using radio, and we've no idea how likely changing to something else, or self-destruction, is for such a society. I'm not surprised SETI hasn't found anything.

All complete and utter speculation that time may well eventually prove to be completely wrong of course.

I use to say.
Iam not scared if there is intelligent life out there.
What scares me is ,,, Are we the only life in this infanity vaste huge universe,,,,,,
And I doubt it. Iam sure there is life in many different ways. Highly evolved, intelligent, from our perspective, to the small single cell. The universe is full of life

 

[adoredtv]

Do we know of any stars in any other galaxies?

Well we know they are there obviously, as that's what galaxies mainly consist of.

In terms of individual stars in other galaxies - it's mostly the extremely massive ones that have blown themselves apart in supernovae, as those are easily detected.