Mysterious star cluster | secret message? | Easter egg?

[Down To Earth Astronomy]

hello comanders

I have a small youtube channel and i was looking for a good place to go exploring for a video i'm working on. I came across from odd start formations that have been bugging me for some time. Here is a link to the video if you don't feel like reading this post

[video=youtube;tBShMpA3G6c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBShMpA3G6c[/video]

So i was looking around and not too far from populated space a came across a cluster of O-type start all named. S171 # (S171 2 , S171 3, S171 4, .....), the stars seems to be clustered up in small small groups of 4 -5 start. i counted 12 clusters in total and all of the cluster was on a straight line. To make this even more odd this line seems to be pointing towards populated space. Then i remembered i have seen something like this before. if you look in the eagle nebular you can see the same thing. This time all the stars are named like OJV2009 # and is clearly grouped in 11 groups. Again the groups is on a line pointing to populated space.

First i thought it was a effect of floating point in inaccuracies when the star positions was computed, but then the groups should be aligned with the x,y,z grid. Unless that stars have been calculated in cylindrical of spherical coordinates. But why isn't all the stars then clumped together like this, and why is both is the clusters inside a nebular?

What i have done is a took all the S171 stars and labeled them with the "group number" such that the group closest to populated space was group 1 and the last groups was number 12. then i ordered the stars by the end number, this gave me a sequence of number from 1 to 12 number. i have tried to convert this from base 12 to base 10 in many different ways but i haven't gotten anything useful.
I also noticed that s171 1 and s171 38 was missing from the list. I tried to use this a indicator of "begin new number" ( just like NULL terminated stings, just as an start instead of an end character.), but still noting meaningful.

The last thing i have tried is to plot the best fitting lines between through the two clusters and see if they cross... they don't, but it's not too far off. so a calculated the point closest to both line and had a look at the coordinates... still nothing... just empty space.

This is where i need you'r help. Do any of you have any good ideas how to decode this?
Do you even thing this is a "Hidden massage"?

 

[the100thmonkey]

No hidden message.

These stars are all drawn from real astronomical data. The lines seem to converge on Sol because that's where the telescope that found them is located.

 

[clavain]

Bit of old news I'm afraid. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ing-NGC-7822-Nebula-(It-s-Black-Hole-Paradise!)

Although feel free to share the secret message, as long as it is not the idea that when viewed from certain angles in-game NGC 7822 forms an arrow that points to the Formidine Rift, sort of. That's old hat too sadly. Might be worth checking the exploration forums and the like before declaring new discoveries.

Plus, you can be pretty sure that if a region has a non-procedurally generated name that appears on the Galaxy Map, like NGC 7822, someone has already been there. Now new procedurally-generated discoveries, lots of those to come.

 

[Belthize]

Very cool. If nothing else I learned about a tool I never knew existed. There were times I wanted something exactly like it does.

I agree with your suspicion that it may just be a stellar forge numerical anomaly. If they map stars in spherical coordinates from Sol then you could envision some form of error that is along a line pointing back toward the origin with a perpendicular component.

 

[Down To Earth Astronomy]

I did not know there was a thread already. thanks for letting me know

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Very cool. If nothing else I learned about a tool I never knew existed. There were times I wanted something exactly like it does.

I agree with your suspicion that it may just be a stellar forge numerical anomaly. If they map stars in spherical coordinates from Sol then you could envision some form of error that is along a line pointing back toward the origin with a perpendicular component.

Yeah it can be very useful

 

[markuslig]

No hidden message.

These stars are all drawn from real astronomical data. The lines seem to converge on Sol because that's where the telescope that found them is located.

Very much doubt this is real, if it is the observations are probably wrong... stars created in line columns, seems a bit weird

 

[Shadowdancer]

Very much doubt this is real, if it is the observations are probably wrong... stars created in line columns, seems a bit weird

The thing is, when you are looking at far away objects, you are looking at really small parts of the sky (edit: check out the "hubble deep field" which covers a "square" in the sky not even 0.06° diagonal producing "straight lines" of galaxies), so objects you find in one such observation would appear to be on a straight line when looking at them on any large scale. You get similar effects in places like the Orion nebula. If anything, those structures would rather mean that the procedurally generated stars around those places are nowhere near dense enough.

There is of course also the problem that we rarely know exact distances to those objects, so there's a huge fudge factor in the placement along those "observation lines".

 

[Down To Earth Astronomy]

The thing is, when you are looking at far away objects, you are looking at really small parts of the sky (edit: check out the "hubble deep field" which covers a "square" in the sky not even 0.06° diagonal producing "straight lines" of galaxies), so objects you find in one such observation would appear to be on a straight line when looking at them on any large scale. You get similar effects in places like the Orion nebula. If anything, those structures would rather mean that the procedurally generated stars around those places are nowhere near dense enough.

There is of course also the problem that we rarely know exact distances to those objects, so there's a huge fudge factor in the placement along those "observation lines".

Well fist 0.06° is a huge size in astrophysics. Jupiter is around 40'' = 40 / 3600 = 0.1111° and I can easily resolve that with my backyard telescope. that being sad i know all to well how difficult it is to determine the distance to an object within out own galaxy. So if the two clusters in question is real stars (which they seems to be) it would explain why they are located as they are. Not because of numerical errors, but because the inaccuracies in the measurement of the distance. This would also explain why all the stars are of the same type (same age)

 

[Legacy_LuckyLuke]

Although feel free to share the secret message, as long as it is not the idea that when viewed from certain angles in-game NGC 7822 forms an arrow that points to the Formidine Rift, sort of.

It also looks like a wolf when viewed from another angle

 

[bitstorm]

The bigger mystery for me is why the density of these strips doesn't match the surrounding procedurally generated density.

I mean ED's supposed to have to have near the right number of stars thought to be in our galaxy, but these strips as always far more dense.

 

[Koen]

Here is an article about it from 1982 by H.E. Matthews.

And another from 2008 by M. Kun, Z.T. Kiss and Z. Balog.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Very much doubt this is real, if it is the observations are probably wrong... stars created in line columns, seems a bit weird

Ummm... Telescopes have a narrow focus; they "point" in a particular direction, which leads to the artefacts under discussion here. IT would take years, decades even, to map the whole sky in such resolution.

 

[Koen]

The bigger mystery for me is why the density of these strips doesn't match the surrounding procedurally generated density.

I mean ED's supposed to have to have near the right number of stars thought to be in our galaxy, but these strips as always far more dense.

It is just an observation artefact: we find more things in the directions we look in.

Edit: Hmm, rereading your comment: yes, perhaps the density of stars in the galaxy is higher than what FDEV Stellar Forge generates. On the other hand: if FDEV gets the density of generated stars right, adding observed stars makes the density in that region higher. Another possible explanation is that (from the 1982 and 2008 articles I linked to a couple of posts higher) it seems that this is a region of stellar formation.

 

[clavain]

It also looks like a wolf when viewed from another angle

Bad Wolf. ;-)

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

The bigger mystery for me is why the density of these strips doesn't match the surrounding procedurally generated density.

I mean ED's supposed to have to have near the right number of stars thought to be in our galaxy, but these strips as always far more dense.

Probably because if they did the surrounding proc-gen systems at the same density, we would have mini-galactic core navigation issues, because of too many systems in one area for the route planner to be able to deal with.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I did not know there was a thread already. thanks for letting me know

No prob, there are several on the observational issues described by others here as well if you poke around in the exploration forums.

 

[bitstorm]

It is just an observation artefact: we find more things in the directions we look in.

Edit: Hmm, rereading your comment: yes, perhaps the density of stars in the galaxy is higher than what FDEV Stellar Forge generates. On the other hand: if FDEV gets the density of generated stars right, adding observed stars makes the density in that region higher. Another possible explanation is that (from the 1982 and 2008 articles I linked to a couple of posts higher) it seems that this is a region of stellar formation.

AYe I spose there may be something in that, I mean you're probably likely to point a telescope at something dense.

I dunno still seems a bit fishy though.

 

[fennster]

Hmm, I liked the video, interesting.

Now ask yourselves, 400,000,000,000 star systems. What's the chances that would occur?

 

[Belthize]

Not sure I buy the observational anomaly line of reasoning. Telescopes have plenty good spatial resolution, what they lack is depth of field resolution. The pattern at best should be a series of discs separated by distance, not a set of lines separated by distance. It's possible it's an odd attempt at generating the trigger for these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_trunks

Personally it looks more like model anomaly than anything.

 

[Leadfoot]

I just completed an 8 week long mission to the Eagle Nebula (I recognize the Terracotta Soldier formation as I spent about two of those 8 weeks plowing through them). I believe that may be the left over of the Pillars of Creation. The clouds may have been blown away by a supernova some 1,000 years ago but the stars, being much more dense, survived the shockwave. At least, that would make sense to me, considering their unique formation.

BTW, take a look at the Orion nebula; another nicely set up formation of stars on either side of it. Looks like a firecracker went off inside the nebula.

 

[Shadowdancer]

This would also explain why all the stars are of the same type (same age)

Some catalogues are very specific in the type of star they're looking for, and would not list by-catch, so getting "weird" clusters of similar stars from those isn't too surprising. Later observations would then pick up those catalogues and refine measurements, which may help with the distance spread, but not so much with the type or clustering.