A Partial Starchart of Visible Stars in Virgo

MiloGreenRanger

M
I am wondering if there have been efforts to compile starcharts of the stars visible from Sol in-game. I recently explored some tinfoil theories that led to spending time identifying exactly which stars are rendered in Virgo.

I created the following chart that I wanted to share. This is an inverted screenshot from Sol that I then annotated.

Have others done this? I know that almost all of these visible stars are explored, but I'm curious about the charts themselves - matching the rendered sky against star names.

For example, Mystery Star C does not seem to have a real-world counterpart and I haven't been able to identify it in-game.

o7

The chart:
Virgo_annot_3.png
 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
I've done it, for the much smaller and simpler constellation of Scutum:
ZzRUGo4.jpg


The major stars of Scutum all appear to be there, in more or less the correct locations (though one of the ones to the west of Gamma seems to be further south than it should be). There are a few "extra stars" like the one way up in the top-left corner, but I can't tell if they're proc-genned extras or catalogued stars that were either omitted from the Wikipedia star chart or appear brighter in ED than they "should" be.
 

MiloGreenRanger

M
That's nicely done. Were you able to match them to their names in ED (e.g., able to visit)? I've found the ED names are not always a direct match to the real world.
 

MiloGreenRanger

M
Thanks Eahlstan. The HD index is pretty reliable (it also worked for IQ Virgo). Apparently I didn't notice that the Wiki list also had different catalog designations... I was pretty tired at that point. So well spotted.

The in-game names are:

F - HR 4478 (HD 101112)
G - LTT 4389 (HD 102634)
H - HIP 58002 (IQ Virgo or HD 103313)
I - HR 4580 (HD 104005)
J - HR 4591 (HD 104356)

I've updated the chart in the original post.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
MiloGreenRanger said:
That's nicely done. Were you able to match them to their names in ED (e.g., able to visit)? I've found the ED names are not always a direct match to the real world.
Click to expand...

The seven ones marked with the yellow Greek-letter Bayer designations are all in-game, under those names (Alpha Scuti, Beta Scuti, etc). I didn't look up the others.
 

marx

marx
That reminds me, the test systems aren't in Virgo's direction, are they? (Assuming they're still in the game, that is.)
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Haven't been to Alpha Centauri in a while now, but the three near-Sol test systems are still easily visible from there. I don't think anyone's ever definitively spotted them from Sol.

There must also be several other "guest stars" in the skies of Sol: the procedurally-generated stars that happened to be created within visible-sight-range of Sol. Duamta is the brightest and closest example, a procedurally-generated F class star only 10 LYs from Sol - about the same distance as Sirius or Epsilon Eridani; Duamta is in-between those two stars in brightness, so should be clearly visible as a bright naked-eye star from Earth. I'm not sure which constellation Duamta is interrupting, but it's got to be there somewhere. Mildeptu is the next-brightest, a class G star 14.5 LYs away.

There are others within the 20 LY sphere that might or might not be proc-genned; the only way to tell the difference between a re-named proc-genned star and an IRL catalogue star that had been re-named is to look at the star's description in the system map and see if the game gives a "catalogue ID" to the star. But these days, you need to have actually visited the system in order to see the system map.
 
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MiloGreenRanger

M
I don't know which were the test systems. I suspect the imposter guest stars are procedurally generated, but that means we can only use their position in the Sol sky to track them down.

Some visible stars are several hundred lightyears away. Why do you refer 20ly? Was that the extent of the test area?
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
20 light-years is the limit of the list of (inhabited) stars in the vicinity of Sol that Inara generates, which was easiest for me to check. And 20 light-years is about the limit that most procedurally-generated stars would be clearly visible at. The Stellar Forge creates procedurally-generated stars out of the "leftover" mass, once the mass of real-world stars is subtracted from the mass-distribution cloud. With so many real-world stars to account for, there's not a lot of leftover mass to create large stars from. Duamta and Mildeptu are anomalously large; most of the proc-genned stars within 20 LYs of Sol are small: K, M or brown dwarf, whih are likely to be either invisible or very faint at that range.

But yes, those "guests" of yours in Virgo could easily be proc-genned B-class stars over 500 LYs away. The Cross of Suppression is caused by algorithms in the Stellar Forge that prevent these bright stars from spawning any closer to Sol, specifically to avoid the problem of too many bright "guest stars" in the skies of Sol.

The "test stars" are star systems that are invisible on the galaxy map, but are visible while actually playing the game. We know one of them is named "SingleLightTest". You can read about them in this old thread. But given how bright they appear to be from nearby systems, I think we can remove them as suspects for the Virgo anomalies as the anomalies are too faint.
 
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