Odyssey and neutron stars, or the discovery of a new feature?

Hello, I'm Commander Ozzie J. Isaacs
I thought I'd open this thread here to inform you about a little discovery I made last Thursday.
In a nutshell, with landable planets that are in the system with a neutron star and this is also above the horizon, the temperature jumps back and forth between two temperatures at irregular intervals.

And be aware i´m German my English is not so good, I had this text translated by Google

On Thursday, August 12th, 2021 shortly before 11 p.m. I arrived in the Prai Hypoo ON-T d3-4 system .
There is actually nothing special about this system.
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A neutron star that is orbited by 4 planets, 2 of which still have a moon, and another companion star without planets. Since the planets 3 and 4 were terraformable, I scanned both, whereby the number 3 was also landable.

When I picked up the First Footfall I noticed that the temperature display jumps back and forth between 268°K and 410°K at irregular short intervals. I only noticed this because every few seconds the warning about high temperatures popped up and then disappeared again.

1.jpg

Here is a short YouTube video about it.
Then I landed on the other two landable celestial bodies.
The first is the moon around the innermost planet.

2.jpg


The second is the moon around the outermost planet.
3.jpg

As you can see, the temperature jumps from the innermost to the outermost planet decrease continuously.
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whether this behavior is already known, or whether this is something new and unknown. I had never heard of it before. But that doesn't mean anything, I've only been in ED since the beginning of June 2020.
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A few jumps further I found another neutron star with a landable planet.
There is the same effect here, only stronger. Temperature jump of over 300°K

4.jpg

After a few more jumps.
I wonder what's going on here. The maximum speed of the suits is about 750°K
Are you dead instantly, or do you have some time to get back to the ship?
Who wants to test it, I don't dare.
5.jpg


So I dared
: D


In the further course of my journey I noticed two other special features of this effect.
First, the effect goes very, very far.
At this moon, despite the distance of over 28.400LS, the temperature is increased from too cold to bearable.

6.jpg

Secondly, I have now found 2 systems in which a neutron star is accompanied by a red dwarf, these are known to have a very low temperature and therefore the habitable zone should be very close to the star.
Not so with these two red dwarfs, both had 7 planets each. Of which 6 were terraformable in both systems .

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and

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In this case, this aquatic world is over 4,000LS from the red dwarf, and this is the day side of the planet

20210814170144_1.jpg

Despite the great distance and the minimal starlight that the planets get, they are warm enough and terraformable.
The only effect in these systems that could provide the additional energy to heat them up enough, in my opinion, would be the radiation from the neutron star.
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So that's the current state of my research into this effect.
If you can confirm this effect or refute it, I would be happy to read your posts about it.





Greetings Ozzie
 
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There is a small addition.

The effect is based on the line of sight to the neutron star, i.e. if it is below the horizon of the planet it does not occur.
I was on a planet orbiting the second star of the system, I am standing in the daylight of this star but the neutron star 65,000LS away has not yet risen. Everything normal just one temperature.
As soon as the neutron star comes over the horizon, the display jumps again. Despite the distance of 30 ° K
 
Neutron stars can have huge "Goldilocks zones". In the case of your 7-terraformable system, the entire M-type star system is within the habitable zone. Stellar Forge calculates Goldilocks zones by a formula resembling simple addition, where the warmth from multiple stars is simply added together. As you point out, M-type stars are quite cool, so most of the warmth heating those planets is coming from the neutron star, not the M-type star.

Yes, it's not very realistic to consider the radiation emitted from a neutron star as "warmth", given that it's mostly x-rays and such. But Stellar Forge doesn't take into consideration the quality of the radiation, only the quantity.

None of the above is new to Odyssey. The only new thing is calculation of local temperature based on whether the sun is in the sky or not. I'm not sure if "multiple heat sources" are used in these calculations, but it seems the game is indeed calculating heat from the neutron star as the primary heatsource in these instances.

Calculating lightsources, on the other hand, is simplified: it simply takes whichever star is "the brightest" (calculated using Stellar Forge's algorithms and your current location), and uses that star as the sole lightsource. Light from all other stars is ignored; multiple suns do not cast multiple shadows in ED. Which can lead to some very odd "lighting", especially if the game decides that a black hole is the "brightest" object in your vicinity and thus decides to bathe everything in black "light", even though there are actual light-emitting stars nearby.

So if you're seeing odd unexpected effects with heating and lighting, I'd guess it's because you're receiving light from just one of the stars in the sky, but heat from multiple stars.
 
Not an astronomer but isint it likely that the temperature fluctuations are due to the neutron star jets fluctuations in direction and intensity transiently heating the planets. This would explain why the effect is not observed when the neutron star is below the horizon.
 
Not an astronomer but isint it likely that the temperature fluctuations are due to the neutron star jets fluctuations in direction and intensity transiently heating the planets. This would explain why the effect is not observed when the neutron star is below the horizon.
No, I couldn't see any connection yet, I already had some systems where the landable planets were distributed throughout the system, but the effect always occurred as long as the neutron star was above the horizon.

The streamer Down to Earth Astronomy looked into the matter in yesterday's live stream. He was able to observe the effect in a system with a companion star that is 365,000LS away from the neutron star. At this huge distance he still had a 6°K Temperature difference. His discovery beginns at 0:49:00min
 
About the video, on the first landing the neutron star is below the horizon, the temperature is constant at 639°K.
On the second landing, the neutron star is slightly above the horizon, the temperature jumps between 642°K and 744°K.

Video
 
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The last post on this topic was a bit longer ago.

Yesterday evening I came across a system that is perfect to test something again regarding temperature variations on planets in systems with a neutron star.

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Whereas in this system we have to do with 2 neutron stars, which orbit each other. The distance between them is about 80LS.

These two neutron stars are orbited by a single landable planet.
I then landed on this planet to look at the temperature variations due to these 2 neutron stars.
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As you can see on the following pictures you can now see 3 different temperatures.
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Where the highest temperature prevailed the longest, the lowest temperature was by far the shortest, at least at the time when I was outside.
Here is a short Video about it.

Due to the high temperatures, my explorations were very limited in time.
 
Not an astronomer but isint it likely that the temperature fluctuations are due to the neutron star jets fluctuations in direction and intensity transiently heating the planets. This would explain why the effect is not observed when the neutron star is below the horizon.

One of the peculiarities of the Stellar Forge is that it seems to treat all radiation as heat, so while you would probably get a big hit of gamma radiation and not a lot of infra-red from the NS rising above the horizon, that ionizing radiation is treated purely as heat so you get a big hit of heat the moment it appears, the jets are irrelevant to the issue here I think, you are on a planet and it gets in the jet it's treated just like being in space in the jet, you don't have much time to live! So you get an instant hit of heat and not at all gradual as would actually happen with IR as the NS rises above the horizon.
 
In the Stellanebula Discord I also reported this discovery.
Earlier I raised the question, how ED calculates this, is the highest temperature a combination of the radiation of both stars, or is this only from the strongest radiating one.

Then I posted this picture, with the data of the two neutron stars.
aZrWKKp_460s2.jpg

A short time later Cmdr. NI6H70WL a squadron colleague said he might have a solution.
This was his calculation: 1535 minus 826 is 709 divided by 4.4 is 161. The difference from 826 to 974 is 148. That's just 13K difference. I think the first value is star C the second is B.

To the 13° difference then the following occurred to me: the 13° could be also the basic temperature of the planet, there is also a black hole in the system, and in systems where only a black hole and planets are, these have mostly still so around the 10-20°K.
 
Ich antworte absichtlich auf deutsch sonst wird das lost in translation.

Die zwei systeme mit neutronensternen sind gar nicht so selten. Die ns haben eine habitable zone die sehr weit draußen ist, stellenweise über 100k ls. Hier ist es zwei mal so dass der andere stern genau in dieser habitablen zone seine runden um den hauptstern dreht. Somit sind auch alle planeten in dieser zone und tadaa es sind alle mit atmosphäre tf. Ich hab sowas schon zig fach gesehen, lange vor odyssey.
Das spiel bezieht seit immer schon die habitable zone aller sterne in betracht ob ein planet tf ist oder nicht. Das mit dem licht ist ein problem der engine, es gibt pro system immer nur einen stern dessen licht für die planeten dargestellt wird. Somit sind die tf planeten optisch für uns zappenduster, real wären sie in gleißendes licht getaucht. Das ist also eine technische limitierung der engine.
Was du jetzt entdeckt hast macht die sache komplexer. Wieso sind die temperaturen auf der tag seite zyklisch anders? Es ist möglich dass du da einen bug gefunden hast und der tag nacht unterschied passiert ständig asynchron zur realen eigenrotationsperiode der planeten. Oder das hat was mit neutronensternen zu, was wir bis dato noch nicht gesehn haben, weils noch kein odyssey gab. Schau dir das mal auf der nachtseite an, wenn du die möglichkeit hast auf einem mond eines gasriesen, wo der mond im schatten des gasriesen ist u definitiv kein licht haben kann.
Oder das spiel wechselt ständig zwischen temperatur mutterstern u temperatur hauptstern. Wär dann immer noch ein bug weil die strahlung dann nicht adaptiv berechnet wird. Oder doch u anzeigebug etc.
Auf jeden fall is da der wurm drin. Mach ein ticket :)
 
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