The codex screenshot for the The Dark Wheel - Which system is it?

Me noob: is that a baby star in front of a big star?

It could be a Class L or something.
However, if we're looking at the back of the station, stations usually face the thing they are orbiting, so it seems likely that that is a moon or tiny planet.
If the station is orbiting a moon of a gas giant, then presumably the gas giant is outside the frame somewhere.
 
I returned to old picture where I tried use filters to better see the planet. Is that top-right part ice cap? I thought it is just light on camera objective effect but the station is front of it.

zyzBhxp.png
 
MrMarkus, wasn't the lens flare type effect you see in the screenshot and on anything bright now added after the rendering changes? That would suggest it is recent if so - I considered this point a little before starting.
 
Closest 8th moon orbiting gas giant I could find was at 217 Ls in a system with red dwarf (M-type):
YWIQLQV.png


For reference, this is another system with orange giant and a moon (8th) orbiting gas giant at 1329 Ls:
MEiQBX4.png


If we are looking at system with red dwarf, moon must be under 100 Ls, possibly even 50 Ls from star.
 
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I searched EDSM for all stars with temperature < 2300k with an 8-moon Gas Giant in the same system.

Spreadsheet up: Google Docs Spreadsheet Link

I'm still going through it. It lists size (radius) and temp of the star.
The best fit to the picture would be a Red Dwarf or Red Giant with temperature 2000k or less and the moon under 20 ls.
That only matches to 1 system, which is in the center of the galaxy: Wepooe GP-E c1293
It's unlikely that's it, but there's 8 other systems where the moon is 30-100 ls from the star.

None of the stars on the list are Super Giant, and the biggest T or M star is only 0.5 the radius of earth.
I excluded brown dwarfs and black holes.
 
I searched EDSM for all stars with temperature < 2300k with an 8-moon Gas Giant in the same system.

Spreadsheet up: Google Docs Spreadsheet Link

I'm still going through it. It lists size (radius) and temp of the star.
The best fit to the picture would be a Red Dwarf or Red Giant with temperature 2000k or less and the moon under 20 ls.
That only matches to 1 system, which is in the center of the galaxy: Wepooe GP-E c1293
It's unlikely that's it, but there's 8 other systems where the moon is 30-100 ls from the star.

None of the stars on the list are Super Giant, and the biggest T or M star is only 0.5 the radius of earth.
I excluded brown dwarfs and black holes.


Can you share the spreadsheet as a download link?? Trying to open it on my phones browser crashes it lol. Dunno if anyone else is having that issue.

Got the Google docs app ready for easy viewing, however it ain't opening within the app.
 
It could be a Class L or something.
However, if we're looking at the back of the station, stations usually face the thing they are orbiting, so it seems likely that that is a moon or tiny planet.
If the station is orbiting a moon of a gas giant, then presumably the gas giant is outside the frame somewhere.

Big pic inside, 5-armed station (old concept?):

og-image.jpg
 
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Regarding pictures and distance and flare..

I've been experimenting with the free camera settings - if you change the zoom to 4x, the flare on the star is much more pronounced. In addition, it makes things look closer together as I mentioned before .

I haven't come across a suitable star to show what I mean, but some of the 'you must be <20ls' might be different if you zoom right in. I got quite impressive flare off a normal M type which didnt look flared at all on normal view..

Also further cropping in of the image will provide a more pronounced distance compression - like using a telephoto lens :) The original codex image isnt particularly hi-res so may have been a crop of a hi-res screen shot.

I'll try and get a screen shot next time, but its worth experimenting with - all the recent shots above look like they are at the default 1x zoom which is quite wide-angle.

YB

PS as useful background here's Dave Braben explaining how the ED world is generated, in particular about the mass distribution in systems:

https://youtu.be/iTBvpd3_Vqk
 
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Regarding pictures and distance and flare..

I've been experimenting with the free camera settings - if you change the zoom to 4x, the flare on the star is much more pronounced. In addition, it makes things look closer together as I mentioned before .

I haven't come across a suitable star to show what I mean, but some of the 'you must be <20ls' might be different if you zoom right in. I got quite impressive flare off a normal M type which didnt look flared at all on normal view..

Also further cropping in of the image will provide a more pronounced distance compression - like using a telephoto lens :) The original codex image isnt particularly hi-res so may have been a crop of a hi-res screen shot.

I'll try and get a screen shot next time, but its worth experimenting with - all the recent shots above look like they are at the default 1x zoom which is quite wide-angle.

YB

PS as useful background here's Dave Braben explaining how the ED world is generated, in particular about the mass distribution in systems:

https://youtu.be/iTBvpd3_Vqk

Also 600, 700 ls distance is sufficient for giant stars.
 
Also further cropping in of the image will provide a more pronounced distance compression - like using a telephoto lens :) The original codex image isnt particularly hi-res so may have been a crop of a hi-res screen shot.

That only applies if you then blow up the now-cropped image to the uncropped size. If the natural image size after cropping matches the size of the area set aside in the codex for the image, then the perspective won't change. If the cropped image actually had to be shrunk to fit this area then it would end up *less* compressed. That said, if the brain interprets the image as a full screen image (or crop) that as been squeezed into the available space then maybe it counters all of this - have no idea.
 
I returned to old picture where I tried use filters to better see the planet. Is that top-right part ice cap? I thought it is just light on camera objective effect but the station is front of it.

I think the lens flare overlays the station too - the station is lighter to the right of the top arrow than to the left of it.
 
I flew towards a Red Dwarf, Red Giant and Red Super Giant to try to replicate the picture.

The Red Super Giant stars I checked had textures visible >1000ly but were still a little small on the screen (I know the giants vary in size).
The Red Giant and Red Dwarf stars I flew toward only had visible textures at about 20 ls and they weren't anywhere close to the codex screenshot size until about 10-15 ls.
I personally don't think I've seen a gas giant so close to an M, but apparently it is possible.
A gas giant that close to an M dwarf would be rare but possible - but I don't think it could stably have eight (or more) moons. So it must be some sort of giant star, in that case - which makes searching potentially much easier, as red giants and supergiants are much rarer!

It sounds like you may have been looking at some very small red giants - there is a "cross of suppression" heading due N, S, E and W from Sol which suppresses normal generation of high-mass and high-luminosity stars, so you get some which say they're a "red giant" but are actually just the size of a normal "red dwarf". If you check an actual large red giant, the textures should be visible from much further out than 10-20 Ls. (Indeed, you shouldn't be able to get as close to it as 20 Ls)
 
How do you search EDSM with specific query like surface temperature? I couldn't find out how.

You can't on edsm.net, but you can download their stellar body data, import it into your own database, then do searches off that.
It looks like their stellar body data is not available for export right now, it was 13gig when I imported it in Mar-2018.

https://eddb.io/api

I don't have a more recent export.
 
A gas giant that close to an M dwarf would be rare but possible - but I don't think it could stably have eight (or more) moons. So it must be some sort of giant star, in that case - which makes searching potentially much easier, as red giants and supergiants are much rarer!

It sounds like you may have been looking at some very small red giants - there is a "cross of suppression" heading due N, S, E and W from Sol which suppresses normal generation of high-mass and high-luminosity stars, so you get some which say they're a "red giant" but are actually just the size of a normal "red dwarf". If you check an actual large red giant, the textures should be visible from much further out than 10-20 Ls. (Indeed, you shouldn't be able to get as close to it as 20 Ls)

Oh nice! I didn't know about the suppression. The red giants I checked were pretty small. The spreadsheet is only filtered by <2300k temperature, and there are 2 red giants in it, both pretty small also.

I used my AspX HUD to measure stars & apparent size at various distances last night.

A star is the full width between the center dot and the left/right vertical bars (the ones that say 'primary' or 'secondary') at a distance of D = 11.5 R where R is the solar radius and D = distance away in light-seconds.
So Sol (solar radius of '1') should take up the width from the dot to the bar at about 11.5 ls, and the full width from bar-to-bar at half that = 5.75 ls.

I'm also looking for an orbis station with 2 rings so I can take some measurements of the ring size when the rings are in the ratio shown in the codex.
All I expect to get out of it is maybe a ratio of size/distance to gas giant. That might help if the gas giant was scanned but the moons weren't added to EDSM.

Watch... after all this, we'll find that FDev just photoshopped a cool-looking red star into the background of the wheel to make a good image.
I have yet to find a star that's as red as the one in that image, and I've visited some with a temp of like 500k.

Near the Pleiades: 2MASS J04414489+2301513 - temp of 508k, tiny Red Dwarf with radius 0.09 . The star has a red haze effect that is bigger than the star itself.
Near the bubble: Teegarden's Star (temp 1172), Groombridge 34 (temp 1396). Neither are very red.
 
What about elliptical orbits? In the some point planet may be extremely close to the star. For example (for example only! Planet haven't any moons) you may look at Lesath A 1. Very uncommon elliptical orbit with very close distance in the "periapsis"

qiPd6Vi.jpg
 
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Alexium67, this occurred to me as well. But there is no way of filtering for elliptical orbits based on the system data (which only includes orbital relationships, not distances or position). The only way to tell is to visit the system in game. So we are back to needle-in-haystack searching if this is the case.

Worse still, if the shot is based on an unusual orbital conjunction (for example, one which only occurs once a day or once a month), then indeed it might as well be Photoshopped - the chances of someone visiting it at the right time to spot the pictured alignment would be minuscule.

I'm starting to fear this might after all be a permit locked system and earmarked for the filler events in the game's recently announced maintenance phase. The discovery of the Dark Wheel might make for an all too tempting story arc for a Frontier-led player event, rather than something we can discover on our own through normal play. Reading between the lines and looking at how sparse such content is in game, I can't help but think a substantial body of content (DW/Raxxla) wouldn't be left idle for years until player discovery, but rather would be used at a Frontier-appointed time.
 
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