Interesting High-Eccentricity Planets - Add Yours

Heavy Johnson

Heavy Johnson
High Eccentricity bodies (eccentricity > 0.9) are interesting because of their crazy orbits. These bodies will pass very close to their parent bodies (usually stars), and be going very fast when they pass, making for great shows if you're landed on the body. They then will fly far out (relatively) before diving back in.

This thread is for anyone to add the interesting high-eccentricity bodies you find. Add photos of and details of why they are interesting!

If you want to go looking, a good place to start is EDAstro's spreedsheet for landable high-eccentricity bodies. You can also use this calculator to determine the nearest approach of the body to the parent, and how fast it will be going at the time.
 

Heavy Johnson

Heavy Johnson
Body: Ceeckia TD-Z d1-0, A1
Type: Metal-rich
Landable: Yes
Parent: F-class star
Nearest approach: 3.73 light-seconds
Most distant approach: 96.6 light-seconds
Period: 10.7 days

Only 1200 ly from Beagle Point. With an orbital period of 10.7 days, it should provide an interesting show if you hit it at the right time on your trip to or from Beagle Point. 20 geological sites.

nnZ3OIMh.png
 
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Syke Jr

Syke Jr
Now that I've seen this thread I've been looking out. Exactly how rare are they? I've never seen eccentrity over 0.08 and while that planet might have been a little drunk (eh? eh? :p) I wouldn't exactly call it an interesting find.

I would love to find a ringed world like this. Might even get into the GMP if its period was small enough and view crazy enough.
 

Heavy Johnson

Heavy Johnson
Syke Jr said:
Now that I've seen this thread I've been looking out. Exactly how rare are they? I've never seen eccentrity over 0.08 and while that planet might have been a little drunk (eh? eh? :p) I wouldn't exactly call it an interesting find.

I would love to find a ringed world like this. Might even get into the GMP if its period was small enough and view crazy enough.
Click to expand...

You can start by looking at the spreadsheets for bodies with ecc above 0.999 and the landable bodies ecc above 0.9 !
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Syke Jr said:
Now that I've seen this thread I've been looking out. Exactly how rare are they? I've never seen eccentrity over 0.08 and while that planet might have been a little drunk (eh? eh? :p) I wouldn't exactly call it an interesting find.
Click to expand...

Your first indication that something is weird is from the FSS - because extreme-eccentricity orbits are almost never on the same plane as the more well-behaved planets. So a planet that made you search for it in the FSS, scrolling all over the place looking for it because it wasn't "in line", is a good place to start.

Another clue is an "out of place" planet. A HMC in "last place" in a solar system mostly made of iceballs and gas giants is probably a "rogue planet", and rogue planets almost always have high eccentricity.

Younger star systems tend to have planets in less stable orbits, so check out protostars - Herbigs and T Tauris - as well as O and B class stars, as they too are usually "young".

Finally, planets don't tend to go solo - they form in families. So a single planet all by itself is likely to be the result of a catastrophic event in the (simulated) distant past that destroyed the rest of its family and gave the lone survivor an eccentric orbit.
 

Heavy Johnson

Heavy Johnson
Sapyx said:
Your first indication that something is weird is from the FSS - because extreme-eccentricity orbits are almost never on the same plane as the more well-behaved planets. So a planet that made you search for it in the FSS, scrolling all over the place looking for it because it wasn't "in line", is a good place to start.

Another clue is an "out of place" planet. A HMC in "last place" in a solar system mostly made of iceballs and gas giants is probably a "rogue planet", and rogue planets almost always have high eccentricity.

Younger star systems tend to have planets in less stable orbits, so check out protostars - Herbigs and T Tauris - as well as O and B class stars, as they too are usually "young".

Finally, planets don't tend to go solo - they form in families. So a single planet all by itself is likely to be the result of a catastrophic event in the (simulated) distant past that destroyed the rest of its family and gave the lone survivor an eccentric orbit.
Click to expand...

Just to be clear, we don't know if Stellar Forge does any of this type of simulation at all. In fact, there is some data to suggest it does not.
 

malenfant

M
I came across this one by chance while exploring some brown dwarf systems - a Class I GG orbiting a L dwarf companion. The GG has an eccentricity of 0.9875 and a semimajor axis of 0.22 AU, so its distance varies between 0.43725 AU and only 0.00275 AU (about 1.375 ls!). Unfortunately when I got to it (30/6/19) it was near the aphelion of its orbit and i'm just passing through, but if anyone is in the area (way out in Hawking's Gap) in about 50-60 days it'd probably be pretty interesting! The exclusion zone of the L dwarf is at 0.78 ls (I know because I just smacked into it :) ) so a ship tagging along for the ride should be able to get a nice view of the L dwarf as the gas giant swings by! (no moons to land on, unfortunately).

136113


136116
 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
Heavy Johnson said:
Just to be clear, we don't know if Stellar Forge does any of this type of simulation at all. In fact, there is some data to suggest it does not.
Click to expand...

Just stumbled upon this quote from Dr Ross, in the Q&A following the DS1 livestream:

Paige Harvey said:
3) Does the game allow for any catastrophes? Novae, rogue-planet ejection or capture, system collision?

During the generation stage, rogue-planet events and collisions are taken into account. However, these are historical and not visual effects. When you arrive in the system, you only see the results of those effects on the resulting stable system.
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I would interpret that as saying that it certainly doesn't model it from a specific perspective, in terms of "the rogue planet came through here, the other planets were here, and this is what happened to them". It's all just very general, probability-cloud stuff, which the Stellar Forge then uses to create the look of a "disrupted in the distant past" star system. High eccentricity orbits, along with high orbital inclinations, are the result.
 

BradHann

BradHann
Doesn't quite reach the lofty heights of >0.9, but with a such a long orbital period I'll assume it gets pretty damn far away from the star.

p4CnUaW.jpg

I couldn't even get the entire orbit to fit into the orrery view.

9XdOq2f.jpg
 

malenfant

M
Handy formulae:

Perihelion distance = (1-e)*SemimajorAxis
Aphelion distance = (1+e)*SemimajorAxis

So BradHann's planet goes between 2.57 AU and 36.4 AU - roughly the equivalent of going between the asteroid belt in our solar system and Pluto's (average) orbit.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Since we're resurrecting this thread... :LOL: Here's one I prepared earlier...

43pQzvz.png

Syn4Jbh.png


As usually happens with such high eccentricities, the orbital line in the orrery is distorted into a polygon at the far end.
 
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Brizky

Brizky
Gas giant with very high .9968 eccentricity. Don't sneeze on it, or it will go parabolic.

Aphelion is about 49 AU; and 0.079 AU at perihelion.

I question how it retains that atmosphere during closest approach.


151992


Here I flew out to roughly the furthest point in the orbit to see what that was like. The answer was: really boring, but you can see me on the orrery down there and the sun at the top, 24000ls away.

151996
 

malenfant

M
It's a Neptune-sized gas giant and at closest approach it'll be whizzing past the star pretty quickly, so it should be fine holding onto that atmosphere.
 
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