How to find red Carbon Stars (not orange ones)?

malenfant

M
Is there a way to figure out if a Carbon Star is going to be deep red in colour (like an L Dwarf) from the galaxy map? Spectral type or something? I've found some MS and CN and S stars (a whole bunch of them close together, surprisingly!) and they're all just orange giants that look like big K V stars, and I'd really like to find the red ones because they look way more impressive.

Two of the type S stars I just found today were orange. I know that the dark red ones exist - HD 49368 was also an S star and that was red (see attached screenshot) and those are the kind I'm looking for. Am I missing some way to find those here?

25_HD49368_S_Giant_359320_20170201221200_1.png
 

malenfant

M
After digging around a bit, I think it might be down to the surface temperature of the star. The only red ones I've encountered so far - HD 19419 (type C) and HD 49368 (type S) - both had surface temperatures less than 2000 K. For that matter, I also found a WC (Carbon Wolf Rayet) star that was red and under 2000 K.
 

Jackie Silver

Jackie Silver
Qohen Leth said:
I would guess that those red ones are handcrafted. I never heard of a PG red carbon star so far.
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I think that's the case.

malenfant said:
After digging around a bit, I think it might be down to the surface temperature of the star. The only red ones I've encountered so far - HD 19419 (type C) and HD 49368 (type S) - both had surface temperatures less than 2000 K. For that matter, I also found a WC (Carbon Wolf Rayet) star that was red and under 2000 K.
Click to expand...

Yes. It shouldn't be possible for a Wolf Rayet to be that cool, but proc-gen ones can appear with all temperatures from very cool - in which case they will look like a giant brown dwarf - to very hot. So far as I know, all the proc-gen carbon stars fall onto a narrow curve and they are all moderately hot, so no proc-gen carbon stars will appear that shade of red.

Though you never know... :)
 

malenfant

M
Jackie Silver said:
Yes. It shouldn't be possible for a Wolf Rayet to be that cool, but proc-gen ones can appear with all temperatures from very cool - in which case they will look like a giant brown dwarf - to very hot. So far as I know, all the proc-gen carbon stars fall onto a narrow curve and they are all moderately hot, so no proc-gen carbon stars will appear that shade of red.

Though you never know... :)
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Yeah, that bugged me about the WC star, it should be has hot as the other W stars - though that was a proc-gen star in the NyeaJeau sector. I'll be a bit miffed if all of the proc-gen carbon stars are all above 2000K, those deep red ones look very cool. And as far as I know looking for Carbon stars is the only viable way to find Red Giant stars too (is there any other way to find those?)
 

malenfant

M
EtherealCereal said:
D'you use realistic mode on the galaxy map when you're looking for giant stars? If not I'd highly recommend it.
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No I usually use map mode. I'll give that a go though - I'm in a dense area of stars so maybe some will jump out at me that way. Do they actually look larger, or are they just brighter?
 

EtherealCereal

EtherealCereal
malenfant said:
No I usually use map mode. I'll give that a go though - I'm in a dense area of stars so maybe some will jump out at me that way. Do they actually look larger, or are they just brighter?
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They're much larger. Here's an example.

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Regular main sequence M class.

edJcRdn.jpg


M class red giant. The icon for the red giant is considerably larger in realistic mode. It might be where I am but it took me 5 seconds to find this red giant after switching to realistic.
 

malenfant

M
malenfant said:
Thanks for the tip, EtherealCereal, I will check that out! :)
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I did try looking at the realistic star map but it's pretty tedious (plus those damned brown dwarfs show up as red circles, which doesn't help when looking for the more circular giants).

I wish they'd just put in a way to search for "Giant" in the description...
 

Pirin

Pirin
malenfant said:
I did try looking at the realistic star map but it's pretty tedious (plus those damned brown dwarfs show up as red circles, which doesn't help when looking for the more circular giants).

I wish they'd just put in a way to search for "Giant" in the description...
Click to expand...


Everybody would use this option and all such stars would be tagged long time ago. So if your goal is to find an undiscovered giant, be happy this option is not implemented :)
That said, finding giants in Core area is more than easy. Just opened the star map at a random location in Core and found F I, A I, K II and M III giants in less than two minutes. You just need to sarch in the right place. M III in particular are abundant in that area.
 

malenfant

M
I've now scanned a total of 29 carbon stars (mostly in the past few days, I found a dense clump of MS, CN and S stars!), and none of them were red. The only two I've found under 2000K (so are therefore red) I've found were HD 14919 and HD 49368 which are near the bubble and presumably hand-made. The others range from 2750K to 3664K and are therefore orange.

I'm kinda miffed by that. I feel the handmade ones are somewhat misleading for what we'd find out there. :(
 
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