The Quest To Find Raxxla

electro

electro
Jorki Rasalas said:
An unknown body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus???????


Mmmmmmm!!!

“2060 Chiron /ˈkaɪərɒn/ is a small Solar System body in the outer Solar System, orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2060_Chiron


I’ve already posited that Chiron might be , but then why doesnt it show on scans? Maybe its the Omphalos Rift? 🧐
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Sadly I have been at the point where 2060 Chiron should according to stellarium. And no .. there is nothing there.. my guess is that EDs orbits are not correct in direction or in time. Something is very wrong in ED... even the Raxxla search is buggy :mad: and with that my Raxxla search ended
 
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yelboc

yelboc
Yes, checking orbits of the planets in Sol themselves some time ago, they didn't match Stellarium's positions at any date I could find. Stellarium's modelling is sophisticated. They use VSOP87 which should give 1 arc second accuracy over the interval we are considering for the major bodies. Things like Charon, we're pushing even Stellarium's accuracy by 3307.

VSOP model - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The models in E: D are, I think quite simple ellipsoidal models with no adjustments for multi-body interactions, which is not surprising really.

Stellarium also accounts for the motion of the galaxy, something which is not modelled in E: D at all, so the skybox in E: D wont match Stellarium accurately either. Elite has the star positions as they were in the year 2000, apart from nebulas which are as per 1950

[edit: must say I prefer the other VSOP :) ]
 
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Han_Zen

Han_Zen
yelboc said:
Yes, checking orbits of the planets in Sol themselves some time ago, they didn't match Stellarium's positions at any date I could find. Stellarium's modelling is sophisticated. They use VSOP87 which should give 1 arc second accuracy over the interval we are considering for the major bodies. Things like Charon, we're pushing even Stellarium's accuracy by 3307.

VSOP model - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The models in E: D are, I think quite simple ellipsoidal models with no adjustments for multi-body interactions, which is not surprising really.

Stellarium also accounts for the motion of the galaxy, something which is not modelled in E: D at all, so the skybox in E: D wont match Stellarium accurately either. Elite has the star positions as they were in the year 2000, apart from nebulas which are as per 1950

[edit: must say I prefer the other VSOP :) ]
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I don't think orbits in ED are even elipsoids. They are just circles. The circular orbits are of centre to mimic an elliptic orbit, but the shape is circular.
 

Frankymole

Frankymole
yelboc said:
Stellarium also accounts for the motion of the galaxy, something which is not modelled in E: D at all, so the skybox in E: D wont match Stellarium accurately either. Elite has the star positions as they were in the year 2000, apart from nebulas which are as per 1950

[edit: must say I prefer the other VSOP :) ]
Click to expand...
Actually, they are where they were when observed in 2000 (or whatever star catalogue observations were used), but being thousands or tens of thousands of LY away, they're already thousands of years of space velocity away from where they are now, in real life.
 

Frankymole

Frankymole
Jorki Rasalas said:
An unknown body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus???????


Mmmmmmm!!!

“2060 Chiron /ˈkaɪərɒn/ is a small Solar System body in the outer Solar System, orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2060_Chiron


I’ve already posited that Chiron might be , but then why doesnt it show on scans? Maybe its the Omphalos Rift? 🧐
Click to expand...
Um, "possibly a dwarf planet with a measured diameter of 200 km" - such small bodies are not in ED, hence why many of the moons of Jupiter and the asteroids are not present (even the big ones).
 

Han_Zen

Han_Zen
Zieman said:
Wrong.
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Are you sure? I'we never seen any ecliptic orbits, except in Sol and a few other inner core systems. These are probably hand coded.

The proc. gen. systems all seem to have circular orbits, even when they are way of center.

This could of course be just the visuals of the orrery and that Sol has more small bodies, that makes it look that way. They could be slightly elliptic, without it being obvious.
 

Han_Zen

Han_Zen
Jorki Rasalas said:
Are you sure? What is the reference source for that statement?
We know comets are in-game though not visually represented. How big are comets? I’d be surprised if they were larger than 200km diameter.
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The minimum size for planets (moons) in ED, seem to be about 135km radius (137km are the smalest found). Smaller rocks seem to require an instance, like a cluster or a ring.
I think there are known bodies in Sol with a radius larger than 135km, that haven't been implemented.

According to Wikipedia, 2060 Chiron may have a radius as large as 135.69 km.

I think the missing Boy ID in Sol is Halley's comet though. It's confirmed and even searchable. Perhaps we get to see it, when the engine is ready to handle smaller bodies?
 

Zieman

Zieman
Han_Zen said:
Are you sure? I'we never seen any ecliptic orbits, except in Sol and a few other inner core systems. These are probably hand coded.

The proc. gen. systems all seem to have circular orbits, even when they are way of center.

This could of course be just the visuals of the orrery and that Sol has more small bodies, that makes it look that way. They could be slightly elliptic, without it being obvious.
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Yes, I'm quite sure. :)

There's a parameter called "orbital eccentricity" in astronomical bodies' stats.
Most of planetary (and their moons) orbits in game are pretty circular (OE zero or near zero), but there are planets with OE well over 0.9 around, one famous example being "The World of Death":
Worldofdeath_elliptic_orbit.jpg

One other, (much) less famous, and not as extreme (OE less than 0.9), is this lone Ammonia World:
AW_elliptic_orbit.jpg
 

electro

electro

Jorki Rasalas

Jorki Rasalas
No, I think Han_Zen is right and the missing body is Halley’s Comet, which is searchable in the Galmap to Sol.
But does it show on the FSS scan??
Otherwise how do we find it? Since we dont know the current stardate for Sol’s planetary orbits (see previous page) we can’t get an approximate position from Stellarium to start a search. 🙁

Actually, are the other in-game comets (Pareco??) detectable via FSS?

Edit: I could imagine Halley’s Comet causing the merriment in DB’s voice when he said “but you don’t know what it is” !

Edit2: have we had any lore about size of bodies the FSS can/can’t detect??
 
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CMDR Davanix

CMDR Davanix
If Halley's Comet goes by earths visibility that means we would see the comet (from earth technically) in around the year 3336 as it was last seen in 1986 and has been spotted near every previous approximate 75 years before then, Judging the way the storyline progresses in Elite if it is tied to Raxxla it makes sense when we see it ;) :ROFLMAO:
 
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Jorki Rasalas

Jorki Rasalas
But we see NO in-game storyline related to appearance of Raxxla, indeed we have NO appearances! Just some abstruse and contradictory information (which may or may not be valid clues or red herrings or total fluff) in the codex about Raxxla and TDW (an organisation that supposedly can be joined but in 7 years there is no evidence anybody has had success in this) and several FD statements that Raxxla is indeed in-game, but we don’t know what it is, and nothing said about reality of TDW.

As I pointed out a while ago John Harper, author of “And Here The Wheel” said in his blog “Raxxla itself, the mystery, who's rumours and sightings seem to ebb and flow on a 50 year cycle and we're approaching that 50-year peak”, but this does appear to be instead a reference to the start timeline of the various versions of the game

1984 Elite set in 3120
1993 Frontier Elite 2 set in 3200
1995 Frontier First Encounters set in 3250
2014 Elite Dangerous set in 3300

Doh, and you’ve distracted me from the heat pad on my right hand, ouch! 🙌
 
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Han_Zen

Han_Zen
Zieman said:
Yes, I'm quite sure. :)

There's a parameter called "orbital eccentricity" in astronomical bodies' stats.
Most of planetary (and their moons) orbits in game are pretty circular (OE zero or near zero), but there are planets with OE well over 0.9 around, one famous example being "The World of Death":
View attachment 275866

One other, (much) less famous, and not as extreme (OE less than 0.9), is this lone Ammonia World:
View attachment 275867
Click to expand...
The World of Death is an example of what I'm talking about. It is quite extremely eccentric, but the orbit does not look elliptic. It looks like a wheel, with an offset hub.
I would expect the shape of the orbit to be visibly stretched. It could be just the map that makes it hard to see. 🤷‍♂️
 

Han_Zen

Han_Zen
Jorki Rasalas said:
But we see NO in-game storyline related to appearance of Raxxla, indeed we have NO appearances! Just some abstruse and contradictory information (which may or may not be valid clues or red herrings or total fluff) in the codex about Raxxla and TDW (an organisation that supposedly can be joined but in 7 years there is no evidence anybody has had success in this) and several FD statements that Raxxla is indeed in-game, but we don’t know what it is, and nothing said about reality of TDW.

As I pointed out a while ago John Harper, author of “And Here The Wheel” said in his blog “Raxxla itself, the mystery, who's rumours and sightings seem to ebb and flow on a 50 year cycle and we're approaching that 50-year peak”, but this does appear to be instead a reference to the start timeline of the various versions of the game

1984 Elite set in 3120
1993 Frontier Elite 2 set in 3200
1995 Frontier First Encounters set in 3250
2014 Elite Dangerous set in 3300

Doh, and you’ve distracted me from the heat pad on my right hand, ouch! 🙌
Click to expand...
It would be a bit absurd if Raxxla was Halley's comet. The comet can be observed every day in RL, with the right equipment. It should not be hard to find.
From an ingame perspective we just have to accept that the sensors on and the visibility from our ships, are sub par.

The sensors can not detect smaller bodies. Looking out the window, its even hard to see the moon from earth. The windshield and the Remlock clearly messes with the way we see things. 😁
 

yelboc

yelboc
Frankymole said:
Actually, they are where they were when observed in 2000 (or whatever star catalogue observations were used), but being thousands or tens of thousands of LY away, they're already thousands of years of space velocity away from where they are now, in real life.
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Quite so. So ofc Stellarium tries to give you the view of the sky on earth at any date. It accounts for the relative motions of the stars in the star catalogues in order to adjust that view - if we were to try to go visit those stars, some of them may not even exist any more, and all of them would be in a different place than when observed due to the time light takes to reach us, not to mention the travel time at <c required to get there. Real navigation to distant stars would be quite a business.

Its amusing to think that our view of Sag A*, for instance is, based on light that left there well before the stone age, before man had even worked out how to use stone tools.

E: D quietly glosses over all this, and the stars are entirely fixed where they were observed from earth in y2000.
 
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