Evolving Universe?

[Jupiter67]

I've been searching the galaxy map and I noticed I can't find a lot of the Kepler data set (the exoplanet hunter) stars. A lot of the stars in the Milky Way which Kepler observed can't be found in ED by any of their catalog names.

So I was wondering - does FDEV continually add to the ED galaxy? Or is it just fixed, the same galaxy as it was at launch 3 years ago? And will this ever change?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Dale Emasiri]

Updates are made on a fairly regular basis, though the naming of them may not be exactly the same as the Kepler data. We have some different names and perhaps the classifications of those stars might be different. Likely this is something to do with the amount of data that needs to be processed to create exact parity between the research data and the game's data. I will have to check with the development team themselves on this, but I imagine that this would be an astronomically (sorry, pun was definitely intended) large task for the team.

The most recent example I can give of game data being changed to reflect real world discoveries would be the Trappist-1 system - which has now been made to reflect that of the data provided by NASA.

 

[Ozric]

We have had many a discussion over the years about it at various points Michael Brookes came in to guide us in the right directions, the best quote I could probably give you is:

This pretty much the case. Hipparcos and Gliese provided the main entries. For exoplanets we used the Kepler database, and nebula and star clusters were populated from SIMBAD using a variety of sources such as WISE, 2MASS, HD and so forth.

MIchael

It's worth bearing in mind as you're talking about Kepler, that the majority of entries after the ED galaxy was created won't be in there or maybe, as Dale says, if the star already had a name from one of the other catalogues. But the sheer fact that in the ED galaxy there was already a generated system just 1Ly away from where Trappist-1 was discovered, with an almost identical system setup, speaks volumes about the amount of work the team put into the Stellar Forge.

Another tip from me would be to frequent the Exploration sub-forum as there's always good discussions over there and for non Elite related musings there's an Astronomy forum in the Off-Topic area

 

[Factabulous]

Yes they change stuff - you can find Voyager still on it's way (though it's quite far out now )

Edit: I think it's still in Sol, so you may not have access to that yet Sol also had several minor planets added, if I remember correctly

 

[Jupiter67]

Great comments and suggestions! Very excited to jump back into ED tonight! Thank you!