INSANELY CLOSE pass of a neutron star!

malenfant

M
Holy heck that was the most terrifying thing I've ever done... but this might be ED history in the making!

I came across a millisecond pulsar that was extremely close to its companion (names redacted because I haven't handed it in yet - but the orbital period is only 3.5 hrs, orbiting about 4ls from the centre of its companion F V star!) so I thought I'd go take a look. But as I approached I realised that I could get closer than normal to the neutron star. REALLY CLOSE.

The first pic is as I was coming in - the neutron star at this stage is 3.9 Mm away (ludicrously close) and you can see it has a horizontal lens flare just like a white dwarf at this distance! Heat is still manageable here at about 57% (despite the proximity of the F V companion - I was coming in at an angle such that the NS was between me and the F V star but then I wanted to actually see what the NS looked like so I moved to pass it on the right so it was visible against the background of space):
359320_20190923221925_1_edit.jpg


At this point I thought to take a video to record this just in case... and this is a still from the video as I kept getting closer - I am only about 700 km from the neutron star here!:
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My closest approach was actually only 578 km - at this point though I had to get out in a hurry because the heat suddenly spiked hugely here (fortunately I had a heat sink and survived the experience!) - but I was still in supercruise and still hadn't hit the exclusion zone! So I possibly could have got even closer if I was truly suicidal :)

I have no idea why this is happening here - maybe the NS is so close to the companion that its exclusion zone has collapsed? Either way it ain't normal - but while it was utter madness, I somehow survived the experience! As to where it is... I'll reveal that (and the video) when I hand in my data (sorry!) - I'm in the middle of nowhere though so it might take a while...
359320_20190923225251_1.jpg
 
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malenfant

M
I'm not crazy here right... I don't think anyone's ever got that close to a neutron star before? (Monde de la Mort is a white dwarf so that doesn't count). It's has been a holy grail for me to see what an NS looks like up close so I'm amazed that this has happened! I'm just hoping it's not a bug caused by an update or something...
 

Orvidius

Orvidius
Yeah, as I was saying in the GMP thread, it's really a shame that the journals don't record the exclusion zone radius. It would be very cool to see if their size can be influenced by having a smaller gravitational sphere of influence, due to the proximity of the other star.

Pretty cool!
 

malenfant

M
Starsong said:
It seems all neutrons have gotten an exclusion zone decrease - I got to about 900km of one.
Click to expand...

Really? Hrm. I didn't get a chance to check a solo NS last night to see if it was unique. Wonder if that's something they snuck in to the September update... what about WDs and Black holes? Anyone checked those?

(either that or the update broke something...)
 

Orvidius

Orvidius
Wow, I might need to fly out to some and see. If this is changed across the board, it might be part of the "make life easier for newbies" thing. Either that or they want us to be able to experience the blinding brightness of them up close, like we sort-of can with WDs already.
 

GrandAdmiralThrawn

GrandAdmiralThrawn
Uh, seems I need to abort my brown dwarf surveying and check on a few neutron stars!

As for black holes, I don't know much about what they're supposed to be like, but the closest I got was ~40km, and that was a black hole with over 3M☉. I was already IN the exclusion zone at that point though, so I travelled inwards about 100km or so with thrusters... But there is a YouTube video of a guy who flew right through a cool blackhole with no harm done, so those are a bit weird anyway.

FDev should really simulate gravity for stars, stellar remnants and brown dwarfs in my opinion...
 

JonathanBurnage

JonathanBurnage
Repped for flying dangerously and living!

Also I agree - if they’ve changed the exclusion zone to be that small it’s almost impossible to get killed (although I’m sure some will manage it). The old drop limit used to be about 0.13ls, or ~39,000km, so it seems to have shrunk by a couple of orders of magnitude. Too much easy mode for my liking.
 

Maolagin

M
Starsong said:
It seems all neutrons have gotten an exclusion zone decrease - I got to about 900km of one.
Click to expand...
Exclusion zone or drop zone? NS boosting the last couple of days I haven't noticed the yellow circle (SC drop zone) being smaller than it usually is. The exclusion zone stops you from getting any closer in normal space, and seems to usually be just a little smaller than the drop zone.
 

malenfant

M
Oh well. There I was thinking it was something awesome and unique and instead it seems they just arbitrarily did it to dumb the game down :(.

(honestly, I think people really have to actively make an effort to get themselves killed in a NS jet, I've never had any trouble boosting from them at all. "Fixing" a problem that doesn't exist like this is really overkill.)
 

GrandAdmiralThrawn

GrandAdmiralThrawn
I had an occurence just recently, where I entered a neutron star jet cone the way you should: At a very shallow angle pretty much at the end of the cone. This particular neutron star - only one for me so far to do it this extremely - yanked me around so much, I suddenly had the star right in front of my sights. It took me almost 10 seconds to point my ship away from it and finally get out of the jet. I survived this, because I usually reduce my throttle to zero as soon as I enter the cone, and I tend to enter them at pretty low speeds too.

Not sure how rare this is, but it seemingly can happen. I still don't agree with this change though. I just visited a Neutron Star out of curiosity, and I got really close as well, much closer than I should've been able to.

You did discover this first though, it seems.

Edit: I got cold feet much earlier than you though. ;) Here's a screenshot, once again with artifacts...

elite-197-ns-exclusionzone.jpg
Just shy of 7000km... when accelerating, the exclusion zone appeared to be pretty small still, so likely <1000km.
 
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GrandAdmiralThrawn

GrandAdmiralThrawn
Does anybody know anything about the actual cone shape near the star? Are the cones really as thin as they appear visually and get really thinner than the star itself? I'm thinking of piloting a ship into the exclusion zone in normal space to get as close as possible.. while packed with heatsinks.. But if I hit the jet even when approaching the star's equator, it's likely gonna be more than a little bit dangerous...
 

Orvidius

Orvidius
That's a good question. Since there's sort-of an "inner" and "outer" cone, it makes me wonder if the outer one is simply an additional radius, or a proportional one. The difference would play right into your question. This is probably best experimented with near a base, after selling any exploration data you might have.
 

malenfant

M
I raised it in the Issue Tracker anyway, it seems when I mentioned it on twitter they weren't actually sure if it was a bug or not (sounds like a typical useful QA response really...)
 

Random Providence

R
This is cute. A few weeks ago I calculated magnetic exposure limits for approaching pulsars/magnetars, just to see if Elite’s exclusion zones were “safe”. Using a limit of 0.5 mT, I concluded I’d want to stay at least 0.4 ls from a typical pulsar and 4 ls from a magnetar. Closer than that and you can expect your electronics to fail, and your nervous systems, and eventually your basic chemistry as your atomic nuclei deform into spindles. 💀
 
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