Neutron Star close-up screenshot?

Rymdmannen · Nov 2, 2015

Hey there,
I'm out on my first exploration trip in a Hauler, found a neutron star and decided to see how close I could get, not really thinking about what to expect.

At 0.16Ls heat started to build up and I was afraid it would skyrocket if I went closer so I turned around.
The neutron star never got bigger than the usual dot you see for distant stars in a system.
I didn't want to lose my exploration data.
Even though I'd only visited some 60 systems the last few evenings, it would still be a waste of time to die and lose it all.

So this is what I did:
[video=youtube;rbb3f0ezfIE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbb3f0ezfIE[/video]
Call me a coward, but the surface temperature was reported as ~7.2 MILLION degrees K, so I was a bit nervous about getting too close...

Since neutron stars supposedly have a radius of about 12km, I can understand I didn't see much of it at 0.16Ls distance (48000km).
So I started wondering if anybody actually ever got close enough to see more of it than I did (and live) ?
Maybe someone did a suicide video cap run into a neutron star?

Will it ever be more than a dot, even when you crash into it?
Or will you just be turned into plasma before you reach it even if you travel at 2011c ?

Varrag · Nov 2, 2015

I remember seeing a vid on youtube (can't find it now) where some dude managed to get a close up glimpse at neutron star. What he did was to initiate jump to another system using path which led him very close to neutron star during the countdown.

It looked like white dwarf, IIRC. Same texture.

snake42069 · Feb 17, 2016

I was curious about the same thing, so i googled it. I think i found the vid your talking about, only it was on reddit, not youtube.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/31jwyk/this_is_how_neutron_stars_look_up_close/

excalibus · Feb 17, 2016

yeah i have had trouble too getting close to NS, I did jump into a system that basically had a black hole at the entry point and immediately got emergency dropped (with zero throttle from before the jump)

but the picture in front of me was breathtaking

for some reason the forum won't let me upload the pic even after drastically scaling it down :/

Torquemada · Feb 17, 2016

Out of curiosity, I got as close as I could to a NS in supercruise, then left my DBX's engines on and went for a pint. I came back to this:

Turns out you can't get any closer the normal way, although there's a couple tricks I want to try to circumvent that.

snake42069 · Feb 22, 2016

As for black hole systems, you can no longer slam into them on entry (unless your above 30.0 km/s). Instead, a really awesome effect happens. When i went to my first black hole, when i jumped into the system full stop i was so close, i was literally pulled through the thing and spat out the other side. So i just kept accelerating and i received NO DAMAGE whatsoever. I wasnt even E-Dropped.

Senik · Feb 22, 2016

Varrag said:
What he did was to initiate jump to another system using path which led him very close to neutron star during the countdown.

I've always meant to try this. I guess I should have assumed someone else already did. They still didn't really get close enough to see good details though; it was still washed out in white from the HDR lighting effects.

If FDEV had a sense of humor, they would have used David Braben's press photo as the texture for the star. Just his smiling face, spinning around tirelessly, beaming endless waves of searing radiation upon unwary explorers across the universe. That's how you do a proper easter egg.

snake42069 · Feb 29, 2016

Senik said:
I've always meant to try this. I guess I should have assumed someone else already did. They still didn't really get close enough to see good details though; it was still washed out in white from the HDR lighting effects.

If FDEV had a sense of humor, they would have used David Braben's press photo as the texture for the star. Just his smiling face, spinning around tirelessly, beaming endless waves of searing radiation upon unwary explorers across the universe. That's how you do a proper easter egg.

That would be an interesting easter egg, if neutron stars were rare. There are thousands of them, and there are several clusters of neutron stars within 10 ly's of each other, which would render this easter egg too excessive.