it all looks flat in deep space , no intermittent twinkle from stars ... thanks.
frontier - can we have star twinkle in next update ?
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Twinkle is caused by atmospheric turbulence....
Going to have to put this here;
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/ab.../stargazing/382-why-do-stars-twinkle-beginner
Basically stars twinkle because of the earths atmosphere, no atmosphere, no twinkle. The reason it looks flat in deep space is because the stars are so far away they present no mechanism to the unaided senses for determining distance. This is how it should look if you were really there.
I suppose stars could twinkle in certain cases, such as planetary rings, and particularly "dusty" landable planets...?
But, deep space, no twinkles there. Lol
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Brett C
Frontier
This submission via Quora.com is a rather nice write up of 'starlight flickering/twinkling'.
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-stars-appear-to-be-twinkling-brighter-than-other-stars
Why do some stars appear to be twinkling brighter than other stars?
TLDR: No atmosphere exists in space. Yes, there's an o2 "atmosphere" in your ship, but that is not enough (not even by a long shot) to cause twinkling or wavelength distortion/scattering.
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-stars-appear-to-be-twinkling-brighter-than-other-stars
Why do some stars appear to be twinkling brighter than other stars?
Your observations provide us with all the information we need to figure out the answer.
In this diagram, imagine you are the blue dot, standing on Earth, and the pale blue layer is the atmosphere of Earth. This diagram is obviously not to scale, but we can see that the light from stars that are directly above you has to pass through less atmosphere than stars lower on the horizon. In fact, the lower we get, the more atmosphere the light has to travel through.
Star twinkling is caused by turbulence in the atmosphere. This turbulence causes the light to refract as it travels. Refraction means the path of the light is bent. But the light is not one object, it is a stream of photons, so some will be deflected and some won't, as the turbulence changes. This makes the star appear to both constantly change its brightness and move about very slightly. We perceive these changes as twinkling.
So, stars lower in the sky twinkle more than stars higher in the sky, as you observed, because of this atmospheric refraction.
As that light travels through the atmosphere, some of it is scattered, too. Light at shorter wavelengths is more likely to be scattered than light at longer wavelengths. So, violet and blue light will largely be stripped out for stars lower in the sky. This can give an appearance of change in color, as you observed.
TLDR: No atmosphere exists in space. Yes, there's an o2 "atmosphere" in your ship, but that is not enough (not even by a long shot) to cause twinkling or wavelength distortion/scattering.
It would be nice to see from some planets. Also, what about whilst docked in a station, these are massive structures, how would the o2 and various gases perhaps emitted from ships and mechanisms in the station landing area affect looking outside, maybe that could distort the look of/flicker stars somewhat?
aww.. I thought you said Twinkie... 
im sure there are gas pockets in space that cause twinkle ....
Is this confirmation that when we are able to fly down and land on planets with atmospheres, we'll be able to look up and see stars twinkling?
And that if we stand on the planet surface and watch the system's sun setting in real time, we'll be able to see the shorter wavelength light being more scattered relatively as it goes through the thicker cross-section of the atmosphere and the sun looking redder and redder? Will the shift to red be graded in intensity from planet to planet based on the density, composition and variation in thickness of the atmosphere's cross-section (i.e. how quickly the angle changes, which will vary depending on the size of the planet and its rotation period)?...
Kidding! Kidding! To be clear to all, this is a joke. There are many, many other things that are more important in implementing atmospheres. I certainly don't expect anything this ludicrous. It does give some idea of how insanely complex implementing atmospheres could be. I mean... god, try to think about how you would even begin to implement weather systems. We can't even reliably predict those in real-life yet. And that's just Earth. The impossible variations in weather on other planets, based on atmospheric composition... methane snow... seas of liquid nitrogen? At some point there'd have to be a limit on the things that can be modelled. Or how about just Venus, our neighbour? 462 degrees Celsius surface temperature, an atmospheric pressure 92 times that of Earth, a shroud of clouds made of sulphuric acid completely hiding its surface from view, 185mph winds that circle the entire planet every couple of days... how could you possibly model this and how would it affect the flight model? It boggles the mind.
So, uh... the very best of luck, Frontier ;-;
Though given that I would have thought a few years ago that modelling an entire galaxy's formation, or modelling entire 1:1 scale planetary surfaces without atmosphere with the practically photo-realistic quality we have now... I thought those were both impossible... if anyone can take this on and do it, it would be Frontier.
I'll just be rather uselessly rooting for you and providing spiritual encouragement. You've all done incredible things so far. ;-;
Refraction is "caused by" changes in density. Any gas pocket in space would very quickly reduce to near zero pressure and such similarly low density, so the interface between it and surrounding space would be almost unnoticeable for one, and very "rigid" too. In comparison, it takes hundred(s) to thousands of kilometres of a dense, turbulent atmosphere with some abrupt layers to produce the very minute effect we can observe with the naked eye.
sorry .... i dont agree , do i need to source links about nebula ... and the components ( or gasses that lay dormant in clusters ? ) - im not going too .... like i say twinkle should be present . I am not saying it should be a carpet effect , but should be in areas where dust clouds , gasses are able to be stagnant . If you look at the galactic plane side on - you will see the twinkle .... nevermind . As for the graph from earth - yes the more atmosphere or haze would give the twinkle due to the amount of components the lower down you view the stars light . Hence my initial post . - thanks .
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Dust clouds will obscure the light from stars, not make it twinkle, atmospheric turbulence causing the twinkle, while dusk clouds in space may be turbulent due to solar wind and other effects, it's not at a rate that would make the stars twinkle to the human eye. As suggested by others localised twinkling may occur, but it won't be because of distant dusk clouds, but more likely because your ship is flying through a dust cloud.
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/stars/twinkle.shtml
Wow, failed basic earth science, did you? "Twinkle" is caused by atmosphere, small variations in air pressure that cause small refractions in the path of light from stars to your eye when on you are the ground, in an atmosphere. In space (and on the moon) stars do not twinkle. o7
Stuff I Found On The Interwebs suggests that a dense nebula will have on the order of 1e5 molecules per cm³, whereas earth's atmosphere would be at around 1e19, so even assuming that a nebula was made up of complex molecules like alcohols or amino acids, the media interface between "black space" and a nebula would be close to irrelevant for refraction. Similarly, any other material (dust) in a nebula would reflect and scatter light, but not so much refract it. And again: twinkle requires motion, be it by the observer or by the medium interface, to occur. When you are looking at a nebula, there would be no observable movement or pressure gradient strong enough to induce short-term variation, unless maybe if you lucked into observing a supernova inside a nebula going off from short distance.
Inside nebulae the gasses are so diffuse as to have very little effect on the travel of light. On earth the amount of atmosphere above you weighs about 18 pounds for every square inch. That's a lot of gasses. Pop a balloon full of air in space and the gas will almost instantly diffuse until it reaches homeostasis with the surrounding space. The only reason we see nebulae at all is that they are (comparatively) huge and there is enough gasses to reflect a small amount of light. Also, many photographs of nebulae are color enhanced to make them easier to see. If you get a chance, look for an un-enhanced photograph of the "Pillars Of Creation". Pretty un-spectacular compared to the color-enhanced versions.
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Stars twinkling seems like one of those effects that would be small and easy to miss - you would notice it once or twice and then never pay any more attention to it. And if they made it too strong and obvious, it would look really off. ED is a space flight simulator, but Frontier made no claims to make it 100% scientifically accurate. I would much rather they spend time adding things to the game that we would notice a bit more and get more use of. Space legs/changing UI colour, etc. In the end, it's a video game, after all.
And if the tech art folks manage to make the effect not too annoying. Pixels are big and bright, and stars as seen from Earth are very small and dim, so that's not a match made in heaven, and the thought of an unstoppable lightshow ravaging through the skies does not necessarily make me too happy