Newcomer / Intro Galmap highlighted stars

Mrrshal

Mrrshal
I have a question. There are highlighted stars on galmap. At first, I thought these are O and B luminous stars and usually they are, but there are any sort of diffirent objects with light halo around them, even Tauri stars.

Does anyone know exactly what these highlights mean or principle behind them?
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basically when you zoom out or turn stars off it is easy to see these white smoke points
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The object will have halo around it. It is usually O / B star/s, but also can be Black Hole, Tauri etc
Maybe it is like comets, turned off feature?:
Those objects have accretion disks? Stellar Forge simulates it but the effects themselves are disabled thus only visible on galmap?
 
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Chris Simon

Chris Simon
I think it's simply the fact that the filter "icons" (a dot of a particular colour representing your filtered quality (economy, star type, etc.) is layered OVER the actual star. So the stars that are really bright will have this halo emanating from "behind" the icon.
If you switch off the filters and look at the stars themselves in realistic mode (or whatever it's called, nobody ever uses it), every one of them has a halo, just some are more noticeable.
 

Mrrshal

Mrrshal
Chris Simon said:
I think it's simply the fact that the filter "icons" (a dot of a particular colour representing your filtered quality (economy, star type, etc.) is layered OVER the actual star. So the stars that are really bright will have this halo emanating from "behind" the icon.
If you switch off the filters and look at the stars themselves in realistic mode (or whatever it's called, nobody ever uses it), every one of them has a halo, just some are more noticeable.
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Absolutely not this.
Firstly, halos are all the same with out variation.
Secondly, Tauri stars and Black holes can have it too.
Instead of realistic mode, filter out all objects in map mode for example by selecting economy type in uninhabited space.
No one seems to know the answer anywhere. I will send a ticket to support.
 

Thatchinho

Thatchinho
They’re just a form of planetary neublae AFAIK.

Best place for the question is the Explorers section of the forum. Someone there’ll be able to confirm more authoritatively.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
I am summoned. :geek:

These "halos" are little tiny nebulae, visible from a great distance away on the galaxy map. They are generated differently to regular nebulae and planetary nebulae, in that they are generated as part of the star rather than as a separately named entity. And unlike other nebula types, they are completely invisible from within the system of the progenitor star. They're also all-but-impossible to actually see on the skybox even from neighbouring systems, even though they're visible even at maximum zoom-out in the galaxy map.

They represent what we see out there in the real-life universe. When you see a typical picture of a distant galaxy such as Andromeda, or the Whirlpool Galaxy, the "stars" within Andromeda that you think you can see in the picture aren't actually stars (except for the "foreground stars" that are a part of our own galaxy), they're patches of nebulosity made visible by a very bright star in the centre. You have to get a very, very magnified view of Andromeda to be able to make out individual stars in the distant galaxy - which is, of course, how they eventually figured out a hundred years ago that Andromeda and the other "whirlpool nebulae" were actually "island universes", other remote galaxies and not just nebulae within our own galaxy.

So I would conclude that they have been added to the ED galaxy purely to help make the ED galaxy map "look like a real galaxy" when zoomed out. In ED, the progenitor stars in the centre of these nebulae are usually young and hot - O-class, T-Tauris, Herbigs, in which case the halo represents a tiny reflective star-forming region. Sometimes they're dead/dying stars (black holes, Neutrons, Wolf-Rayets), in which case they represent a tiny emission/planetary nebula.

Of course, like other nebulae, they stand out like beacons on the galaxy map, and attract explorers and tourists like moths to a halogen lamp. I'm as guilty of that as anyone else; I often use them as targets or waypoints in my travels and in my sector survey transects. I've never found one that hasn't already been thoroughly explored.
 
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Mrrshal

Mrrshal
Sapyx said:
I am summoned. :geek:

These "halos" are little tiny nebulae, visible from a great distance away on the galaxy map. They are generated differently to regular nebulae and planetary nebulae, in that they are generated as part of the star rather than as a separately named entity. And unlike other nebula types, they are completely invisible from within the system of the progenitor star. They're also all-but-impossible to actually see on the skybox even from neighbouring systems, even though they're visible even at maximum zoom-out in the galaxy map.

They represent what we see out there in the real-life universe. When you see a typical picture of a distant galaxy such as Andromeda, or the Whirlpool Galaxy, the "stars" within Andromeda that you think you can see in the picture aren't actually stars (except for the "foreground stars" that are a part of our own galaxy), they're patches of nebulosity made visible by a very bright star in the centre. You have to get a very, very magnified view of Andromeda to be able to make out individual stars in the distant galaxy - which is, of course, how they eventually figured out a hundred years ago that Andromeda and the other "whirlpool nebulae" were actually "island universes", other remote galaxies and not just nebulae within our own galaxy.

So I would conclude that they have been added to the ED galaxy purely to help make the ED galaxy map "look like a real galaxy" when zoomed out. In ED, the progenitor stars in the centre of these nebulae are usually young and hot - O-class, T-Tauris, Herbigs, in which case the halo represents a tiny reflective star-forming region. Sometimes they're dead/dying stars (black holes, Neutrons, Wolf-Rayets), in which case they represent a tiny emission/planetary nebula.

Of course, like other nebulae, they stand out like beacons on the galaxy map, and attract explorers and tourists like moths to a halogen lamp. I'm as guilty of that as anyone else; I often use them as targets or waypoints in my travels and in my sector survey transects. I've never found one that hasn't already been thoroughly explored.
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Thank you very much for such a meaningful answer!

Can you say, what is the origin of your answer? From developers or general astrophysics knowledge? I myself am a space enthusiast for many decades but I am interested here in understanding how FDev builds Elite.

Is there connection on how comets are disabled? For example these are disabled accretion discs and other phenomena until FDev can visualize them meaningfuly in game? Or these are purely aesthetic component from the beginning?
 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
It's partly guesswork, and partly based on what their galaxy designer said. If you haven't yet seen it (and you have an hour to spare), check out Episode 1 of Discovery Scanner, where FD's astrophysicist consultant-designer explains how the Stellar Forge works.

I'm guessing these halo nebulae are purely "Aesthetics", rather than representing anything tangible intended for the game. Whether or not a star has a halo would be a simple yes/no switch, probably based on mass-code (mass-code h, quite high probability, dropping drastically for smaller mass-codes. FD did a lot of "try it and see" modelling, to get the Galaxy to "look right", so I'm guessing they'd have simply adjusted the "generate halo" algorithm in the Stellar Forge until the number of generated halos "looked right" to Dr Ross.
 
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