Astronomy / Space Gaia14aae, 730LY away in the Draco constellation.

Guywired

Guywired
Found this gem: http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2015/07/amateur-astronomers-spot-one-billion-star

It is a two-star system known as a Cataclysmic Variable, where one super dense white dwarf star is stealing gas from its companion star, effectively cannibalizing it, and both stars have lost all of their hydrogen.
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More in the link.


Edit to add:
The two stars are tightly orbiting each other, so a total eclipse occurs roughly every 50 minutes.
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Are there any astronomical features in ED which move THAT fast?
 
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Syntherios

Syntherios
Guywired said:
Are there any astronomical features in ED which move THAT fast?
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From my experience, I don't think celestial objects actually move in ED. I've seen binary star systems where the two stars' atmospheres are literally scraping against one another but are completely stationary. I imagine two stars that close together would have orbital times of only minutes, but I've actually sat there and watched and there's no movement to speak of. I hope I'm wrong or stupid because that seems like a massive oversight for a game that simulates a realistic cosmos. Gravity exists. Things move.
 

Guywired

Guywired
Yeah, almost as soon as I typed that out I realized that I hadn't actually witnessed any astronomical movements in the game.
 

edd

edd
Syntherios said:
From my experience, I don't think celestial objects actually move in ED. I've seen binary star systems where the two stars' atmospheres are literally scraping against one another but are completely stationary. I imagine two stars that close together would have orbital times of only minutes, but I've actually sat there and watched and there's no movement to speak of. I hope I'm wrong or stupid because that seems like a massive oversight for a game that simulates a realistic cosmos. Gravity exists. Things move.
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The orbital period for a test particle at the surface of the Sun is about 3 hours. It scales as r^3 / M - M is the total system mass so for a pair of stars it goes faster, but r can be much bigger than that of the Sun.

W Ursae Majoris is a contact binary and a bit of a classic - it has a period of 8 hours.

I think a period of minutes would be very fast for such a system and I think you'd struggle to find examples that quick.
 

Syntherios

Syntherios
edd said:
I think a period of minutes would be very fast for such a system and I think you'd struggle to find examples that quick.
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Still, I have yet to see any celestial bodies in ED move at all. I don't know, maybe I'm severely overestimating the expected orbital speed.

A binary neutron star system would be a good place for observations... Has anyone discovered such a system?
 
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