The codex screenshot for the The Dark Wheel - Which system is it?

JetsonRING

JetsonRING
I did not read every post in this thread but it would be remiss not to point out, that at no point I can see does it say the picture shown in the Raxxla/Dark Wheel post is actually the Dark Wheel.

The picture in the post could merely be "for illustrative purposes" and have absolutely nothing at all to do with the mystery. Not a clue, just a cool picture. o7
 
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Rexus

R
If they are putting out red herrings we are done - there is no way to find it or Raxxla in that case with so little evidence already. But Frontier's MO seems to have been quite deliberate about putting out clues before, so I'm not sure this is the case.

Also, triple elite - whilst the pinnacle of Pilot's Federation excellence no doubt, you two in here - also doesn't suit Frontier's MO. No way they would lock content into requiring all three types of gameplay, the usual suspects would rebel! Single elite, maybe.

As for baiting the Dark Wheel - it would require actual action from Frontier, which in light of recent events seems more unlikely than ever. However, as the Gnosis incident demonstrated, when poked severely enough they will make some kind of hamfisted response, so it just might work!
 

Eckee

Eckee
yelboc said:
Do we need a summary Dark Wheel thread which states the known facts, as we have for Raxxla? (aware that I probably got off topic here with this thread..)

YB
Click to expand...

I’m down for “The Darkest Wheel” :D It may be my second PMF, with first one being AXI ofc :)

Edit: Wrong quote but right person, whatever :D
 
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CMDR Woland92

CMDR Woland92
I think we need to put serious thought into whether Polaris fits with any of the tips and hints we’ve received through the codex and other sources.

Polaris was the prevailing theory prior to 3.3 whereafter everyone began trying to pick apart the astrophel hints.

There has to be something at Polaris. What about Titan? The moon? What hppened to Deimos? The Martian artifact? Is the answer already staring us in the face?
 

yelboc

yelboc
DANGER! Raxxla ~= Dark Wheel <honk> < honk> -alarms..

so easy to conflate these two things :) Astrophel => Raxxla

Martian Artefact is definately odd - and after that we managed to terraform Mars having failed before. But given its a small object, how does that work in game? Its one of the few things mentioned in the old lore that is also mentioned in game.

Is it something staring us in the face? Probably - I'm sure we'll all kick our selves when its sorted out..

YB
 
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yelboc

yelboc
I’m down for “The Darkest Wheel”
Click to expand...

thats two up..

Anymore for a punt at the player faction? Maybe PM is best, for plotting purposes :)

and FDEV playing ball? Isn't that what its all about? player defined story line and action? Why else did they put old Fliss in the codex (apart from hinting about the SD Dark Wheel) ?

They've given us so little to go on that maybe its up to us to provoke some more data points..

YB
 
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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
CMDR Woland92 said:
I think we need to put serious thought into whether Polaris fits with any of the tips and hints we’ve received through the codex and other sources.

Polaris was the prevailing theory prior to 3.3 whereafter everyone began trying to pick apart the astrophel hints.
Click to expand...
Polaris was associated with INRA/Thargoids in Frontier First Encounters.

It's not impossible that they've switched it to being The Dark Wheel - but it seems unlikely.
 

MrMarkusCZ

MrMarkusCZ
The galaxy map shows (in system info) two stars in Polaris but these are not red dwarfs. So at least in context of this thread I don't search for the Dark Wheel station there. In reality astronomers think there are 3 or 4 stars in Polaris aside from yellow supergiant (F7) and yellow-white dwarf (F6). Devs like be precise with real systems so very probably no strong red light source in this system.
 
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MrMarkusCZ

MrMarkusCZ
I'm still searching for 8th moon orbiting gas giant in systems with red stars with surface temperature not too much higher than 2000k under 1000ly from Sol. There is surprisingly high number of such planets without mapping tag (they are already discovered but not mapped using Detailed Surface Scanner). It keeps encouraging me to continue such random / brute force search.

P.S. If you do the same please use EDMC or upload your data to EDSM.
 

yelboc

yelboc
whilst exploring I have had M and T-tauri stars turned off, but proto stars turned on.

Therse report as T-tauri on the ship's console. They seem to have about the right colour profile..

8VxXbUO.png


In addition, I've noticed that Y stars are reported as is they were gas giants - i.e. not a new star but the next body, like A4, as opposed to B, and thus many will have 'moons' like A4H - this increases the search, sadly, but validates the codex picture.

YB
 

MrMarkusCZ

MrMarkusCZ
Tauri stars are too young and still growing (accepting more gas from environment). What is important for us is surface temperature. The Codex picture shows red dwarf like with very dark red (I really hope this is clue for us) so low surface temperature near of 2000 K. Only stars of type M (and Tauri) have such low surface temperature (K are orange, G yellow, F yellow-white).

Btw I found today this beauty undiscovered only 855ly from Sol. It has nothing to do with Dark Wheel but I am still pretty happy with it :)
P2OKKTv.png
 
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yelboc

yelboc
Very pretty - the thin ring is certainly unusual, and the almost gold colouration - very nice trophy in your catalogue..

Getting back on thread.. I was interested more in the designations. If the codex image is of a brown dwarf which is our ''gas giant', then the picture is more likely possible. If its the primary star, then a gas giant wont be that close, but the 8th body could be that close to a dwarf or proto star.

YB
 

Rexus

R
If they somehow stretched the definition of "gas giant" to include a non-primary cool red dwarf or hot brown giant (or other star type around 2000K) it would open up the possibilities a lot. But it pretty much invalidates the only clue they have given us - next we might have to search moonmoons or eighth planets.

Perhaps if a 2000K brown dwarf looks like the screenshot it might be an option for extending our search? The codex descriptions at least mention these are borderline gas giants.

As I mentioned before, I was able to extend the search specifically to non-primary stars since they might get closer to eighth moons, but it is troubling... in multi-star systems they are usually well away from the moon. If the star orbits the primary star elliptically or the gas giant occasionally transits close to the orbiting star the shot would be possible, but this might be a rare event so we'd never know if it were possible when visiting the system or inspecting its data.
 

MrMarkusCZ

MrMarkusCZ
I visited R Doradus where is red giant (type M) with very low temperature 1,866 K. First look can be promising but there are huge differences. I compared it to pictures of common red dwarfs and giant has texture applied right way - size of giant is visible on it. Another difference is star corona - corona height and structure is same as in case of red dwarfs - corona height is not relative to the star size. I recommend we disqualify giants and super giants from search.

cR5Kae3.jpg


Now that brown dwarfs. Type T are too low surface temperature (violet) but type L can do it. We need look for type L with high temperature. I will take this as my next task to do in the game.
 
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MrMarkusCZ

MrMarkusCZ
It was fast. This is the hottest L type found in EDSM database. It is in LOrionis-SOC 13 and has surface temperature 2,141 K. I visited it right now and the game still visualize it with texture for type L. I think we can disqualify L type stars now too.
heCmZmz.jpg
 
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Rexus

R
Great set of observations as always, MrMarkus. It looks like good grounds to discount large star sizes.

This means we are left with the question of how a moon can get that close to a body with 0.4-0.8 solar masses. Maybe this is so unusual a situation that if we find it we've found the station.
 

yelboc

yelboc
Looks like the in game visiuals do not match the colour temperature chart (courtesy of the university of Wiki...)

PlanckianLocus.png


At 1500 degrees it should be red not violet..

Many of the pixels in the original image are yellow and some are white. A weighted sum of the colours in that image (after excluding the non star parts) approximate to somewhere about 2400 on this line, once you navigate the sRGB -xy conversions etc. (another topic learned from these puzzles :) - colour is complicated.). But if the graphics don't match the temperatures, then this is not a useful fact :(

Its the flare that seems unusual, but is that due reflection in the cockpit glass?

Sorry for another dead end,

YB
 
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Xaintly

Xaintly
MrMarkusCZ said:
I visited R Doradus where is red giant (type M) with very low temperature 1,866 K. First look can be promising but there are huge differences. I compared it to pictures of common red dwarfs and giant has texture applied right way - size of giant is visible on it. Another difference is star corona - corona height and structure is same as in case of red dwarfs - corona height is not relative to the star size. I recommend we disqualify giants and super giants from search.
Click to expand...

Are we sure about corona scaling? Here's a youtube video about visiting VY Canis Majoris, the biggest Red Supergiant. It looks like you can still see corona features 10k ls out.

I posted to the Raxxla thread assuming the star was a Red Giant or Red super giant.
I flew towards a Red Dwarf, Red Giant and Red Super Giant to try to replicate the picture.

The Red Super Giant stars I checked had textures visible >1000ly but were still a little small on the screen (I know the giants vary in size).
The Red Giant and Red Dwarf stars I flew toward only had visible textures at about 20 ls and they weren't anywhere close to the codex screenshot size until about 10-15 ls.
I personally don't think I've seen a gas giant so close to an M, but apparently it is possible.

Stellar Class M is the coldest (and reddest) of the main-sequence stars. It is broken down into M0 (yellowest) to M9 (reddest, around 2000k temperature). I flew to some M9s and the color seems pretty close to the screenshot. M8 seemed too orange still.

I'm not sure how Tauri stars work.

You can see what classes of stars will be in a system without visiting it; on the galaxy map just look at the info tab with a system selected.

I did a search of EDSM for Red Giants or Red Super Giants with gas giants having at least 8 moons. There were 41 results in the galaxy.
Only one was a Super giant, and none were class M9. I checked the 10 closest, mapped & flew around the 8th moons and didn't find anything.
There is only one M9 super giant within ~5000 ly of sol; HD 25725. I flew out to check but it doesn't have any gas giants.
 
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MrMarkusCZ

MrMarkusCZ
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