It's only 128 ly away from Sol, so it must be in the bubble. Just curious to know if the stellar forge has managed to predict the recently discovered 'Super Earth' ?
Anybody been to K2-18?
- Thread starter Phoenix_Dfire
- Start date
Not every star in the real-world galaxy has made it into the ED galaxy. TRAPPIST-1, for example, had to be added to the ED galaxy because it was too small and dim to have made it into the catalogues used by FDev, despite TRAPPIST-1 being only 40 LY away. K2-18 is another red dwarf star, but three times further away, so it too has not been added to the game. "K2-18" is, of course, a catchy shorthand name created for the media release, and not its actual star catalogue number - which is "2MASS J11301450+0735180".
So the question is not, "Did the Stellar Forge predict the planet" but rather, "Did the Stellar Forge predict the star itself?". The Stellar Forge did in fact predict a star in the approximately correct place as TRAPPIST-1(though it was a brown dwarf, not a red dwarf), so it was easy for FD to edit that system to become TRAPPIST-1.
So, is there a star in the right place for K2-18? It ought to be somewhere in the vicinity of Pomeche, though I think Pomeche itself isn't quite in the right place. I'll have to just pop over to Sol and see if I can find a better match...
So the question is not, "Did the Stellar Forge predict the planet" but rather, "Did the Stellar Forge predict the star itself?". The Stellar Forge did in fact predict a star in the approximately correct place as TRAPPIST-1(though it was a brown dwarf, not a red dwarf), so it was easy for FD to edit that system to become TRAPPIST-1.
So, is there a star in the right place for K2-18? It ought to be somewhere in the vicinity of Pomeche, though I think Pomeche itself isn't quite in the right place. I'll have to just pop over to Sol and see if I can find a better match...
Okay, there are three good stars that might make a good substitute for K2-18: the Mbutia, Gunavidji and Wen Bosnja systems; Mbutia is closest to the correct position, as far as I can triangulate; Gunavidji is a better match for the star class. All three stars are inhabited red dwarf systems, with Alliance mining colonies. Unfortunately, the exact position for K2-18 appears to be in a void where there are no stars. Mbutia is 121.7 LY from Sol, so at slightly closer distance than current estimates for K2-18. I'm off to get screenshots of the three systems now.
Okay, here are the three candidate systems:
Mbutia: there's a couple of large HMCs here, but no water atmospheres, and the largest, planet number 6, is 2.15 earth-masses, a quarter of the size of K2-18b, in an orbit that's slightly closer to the star than K2-18b is, so it's too hot to be in the star's Goldilocks Zone.
Gunavidji: just one planet in the system, a large frozen HMC "rogue planet" that's on a wildly eccentric orbit (eccentriicity factor 0.7111 easily qualifies as a "cometary" orbit) thousands of Ls across, with a thin helium atmosphere - definitely not a candidate planet.
Wen Bosnja: a binary star with a brown dwarf companion (so probably disqualified on that basis alone), with just a string of tiny dragon-spittle HMCs barely a third the mass of Earth, all in cold, slow orbits far outside the Goldilocks Zone. Terrible match.
So all up, Mbutia is easily the best match of the three. It should perhaps be pointed out that Stellar Forge doesn't like creating such large Waterworlds in M-class star systems; it tends to put tiny rockyworlds around them or, more commonly, just a string of iceballs. That planet in Gunavidji is unusually large, for an M-class HMC; mainly because it appears to be a captured "rogue planet".
Mbutia: there's a couple of large HMCs here, but no water atmospheres, and the largest, planet number 6, is 2.15 earth-masses, a quarter of the size of K2-18b, in an orbit that's slightly closer to the star than K2-18b is, so it's too hot to be in the star's Goldilocks Zone.
Gunavidji: just one planet in the system, a large frozen HMC "rogue planet" that's on a wildly eccentric orbit (eccentriicity factor 0.7111 easily qualifies as a "cometary" orbit) thousands of Ls across, with a thin helium atmosphere - definitely not a candidate planet.
Wen Bosnja: a binary star with a brown dwarf companion (so probably disqualified on that basis alone), with just a string of tiny dragon-spittle HMCs barely a third the mass of Earth, all in cold, slow orbits far outside the Goldilocks Zone. Terrible match.
So all up, Mbutia is easily the best match of the three. It should perhaps be pointed out that Stellar Forge doesn't like creating such large Waterworlds in M-class star systems; it tends to put tiny rockyworlds around them or, more commonly, just a string of iceballs. That planet in Gunavidji is unusually large, for an M-class HMC; mainly because it appears to be a captured "rogue planet".
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Unfortunately, it’s not in the game.
Maybe it’ll be added in a subsequent update, but there are several real-world stars that are absent.-CMDR Ex