UY Scuti

askavir

askavir
It would be great, not only UY Scuti but all the other missing hypergiants would be added at some point. Given that FD has already hand corrected some systems in the past, it's not unreasable to hope this might be the case as well. There are also several hypergiants that are a lot smaller in the game than their estimated sizes in RL.
 
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Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
It can't be easy trying to get all this in game at the moment, given that they've released this ED not long after Kepler and now TESS have been tasked with searching out objects beyond the solar system. There's going to be a lot of rewrites if they're to keep up with reality. Don't see why they'd have a problem with UY Scuti though. Isn't that way outside the bubble?
 

Spaceman Si

Spaceman Si
Sysmon said:
Could be because they are variable stars? Not sure there are any of those in the game.

:D S
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This seems quite likely to me. I did a survey of NGC 1817 a few months ago, partly because it's a cluster I've always liked, partly because it is awkward to get to, and a large part because it is home to over 26 variables; 16 Delta Scuti types and 3 possible Gamma Doradus types. However, having visited every single star in the cluster in ED, there was nothing strange or remarkable about any of them, and they were all K class (I am discounting any proc-gen stars in the vicinity) - the variables I expected to find would have mostly been in the A or F class.

So is it possible that for whatever reason, Frontier deliberately omitted variable stars?
 

Vandaahl

Vandaahl
Spaceman Si said:
So is it possible that for whatever reason, Frontier deliberately omitted variable stars?
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What I read about UY Sct is that it's not certain where it is. Early estimates (based on the spectrum modeling) say its roughly 10000 ly away from earth, while new direct parallax calculations seem to show a distance of only 5100 ly. Dunno if that has anything to do with it not being 'there'.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Frontier can add variable stars - any star with a name beginning with two capital letters - including VY Canis Majoris - is a variable star. They simply haven't programmed in any variability.

The main issue is this: the way the Stellar Forge works, they simply cannot add new stars to the game, without deleting the entire galaxy and replacing it with one that looks almost, but not quite, the same. The reason is the way the procedurally-generated stars are made.

First, the "mass distribution" of the galaxy is laid out, generating the spiral structure. Then, the hand-placed stars are added to the galaxy; the mass needed to create those stars is "condensed" out of the locally available stellar mass. Any "leftover" mass once all the hand-placed stars have been generated is used to create the procedurally-generated stars.

They can, however, substitute a star for another hand-made star with exactly the same mass. When they added TRAPPIST-1 to the game, they took a procedurally-generated brown dwarf star that was already in the game and destroyed it - they turned it from a brown dwarf to a small red dwarf, and rearranged the planets. But the mass of the "new" star had to remain exactly the same as the old procedurally-generated star, to avoid the galactic apocalypse.

They can't do that as easily for UY Scuti; it's a supergiant, with estimated 7-10 solar masses. The Stellar Forge simply doesn't generate random stars like that, to sacrifice; proc-genned stars of that mass in any class are scarce. UY Scuti should be about 5100 LY away, roughly in the direction of Colonia (less than 1000 LYs, roughly south-west of Omega Mining). At that distance in the ED galaxy, you're on the edge of a spiral arm, between the Scutum-Sagitarri Conflux and the Sagittarius Gap - so I don't think there are many candidate stars heavy enough in that area. And it's on the direct line to Colonia, so the area is quite thoroughly explored by now - so deleting the entire sector of exploration discoveries just to add UY Scuti isn't going to be a popular move.

Now, to the question of why it wasn't added in the first place. Back when the galaxy was created in 2014, nobody had ever heard of UY Scuti - it was just one other variable star in the Scutum constellation, nothing to write home about. The research into the size of UY Scuti was done in 2012 but the results hadn't hit the popular science press. Everyone back then was raving about VY Canis Majoris as "the largest known star in the galaxy", so that's why VY Can Maj is the largest star in the ED galaxy. More recent research has since downsized VY Can Maj, putting UY Scuti in top place. Curiously, the same fate may await UY Scuti; preliminary results from the Gaia 2 survey indicate that UY Scuti may be much closer - and therefore much smaller - than originally estimated. So it may turn out that VY Can Maj is the "largest star in the galaxy" after all.
 

Spaceman Si

Spaceman Si
Vandaahl said:
What I read about UY Sct is that it's not certain where it is. Early estimates (based on the spectrum modeling) say its roughly 10000 ly away from earth, while new direct parallax calculations seem to show a distance of only 5100 ly. Dunno if that has anything to do with it not being 'there'.
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So it's a star suffering an identity crisis? ;) :)

Ahem. Sorry...

In UY Scuti's case, that uncertainty seems more likely the reason it isn't in the game - it would be hard to model something that has that much potential error in it, as it might turn out to be in the "wrong" place, and then Frontier would have to teleport it on the galmap, which is probably not a good look ;)
 

Vandaahl

Vandaahl
Sapyx said:
Frontier can add variable stars - any star with a name beginning with two capital letters - including VY Canis Majoris - is a variable star. They simply haven't programmed in any variability.

The main issue is this: the way the Stellar Forge works, they simply cannot add new stars to the game, without deleting the entire galaxy and replacing it with one that looks almost, but not quite, the same. The reason is the way the procedurally-generated stars are made.

First, the "mass distribution" of the galaxy is laid out, generating the spiral structure. Then, the hand-placed stars are added to the galaxy; the mass needed to create those stars is "condensed" out of the locally available stellar mass. Any "leftover" mass once all the hand-placed stars have been generated is used to create the procedurally-generated stars.

They can, however, substitute a star for another hand-made star with exactly the same mass. When they added TRAPPIST-1 to the game, they took a procedurally-generated brown dwarf star that was already in the game and destroyed it - they turned it from a brown dwarf to a small red dwarf, and rearranged the planets. But the mass of the "new" star had to remain exactly the same as the old procedurally-generated star, to avoid the galactic apocalypse.

They can't do that as easily for UY Scuti; it's a supergiant, with estimated 7-10 solar masses. The Stellar Forge simply doesn't generate random stars like that, to sacrifice; proc-genned stars of that mass in any class are scarce. UY Scuti should be about 5100 LY away, roughly in the direction of Colonia (less than 1000 LYs, roughly south-west of Omega Mining). At that distance in the ED galaxy, you're on the edge of a spiral arm, between the Scutum-Sagitarri Conflux and the Sagittarius Gap - so I don't think there are many candidate stars heavy enough in that area. And it's on the direct line to Colonia, so the area is quite thoroughly explored by now - so deleting the entire sector of exploration discoveries just to add UY Scuti isn't going to be a popular move.

Now, to the question of why it wasn't added in the first place. Back when the galaxy was created in 2014, nobody had ever heard of UY Scuti - it was just one other variable star in the Scutum constellation, nothing to write home about. The research into the size of UY Scuti was done in 2012 but the results hadn't hit the popular science press. Everyone back then was raving about VY Canis Majoris as "the largest known star in the galaxy", so that's why VY Can Maj is the largest star in the ED galaxy. More recent research has since downsized VY Can Maj, putting UY Scuti in top place. Curiously, the same fate may await UY Scuti; preliminary results from the Gaia 2 survey indicate that UY Scuti may be much closer - and therefore much smaller - than originally estimated. So it may turn out that VY Can Maj is the "largest star in the galaxy" after all.
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And this indeed. Recently I saw a youtube footage about how stellar forge works, and its indeed all about mass distribution. There is a group of hand crafted systems, and there is mass. They indeed can't simply throw in a beast like that without consequence.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Frontier can and has added stars with high uncertainty in the distance measurement - almost all stars more than a couple dozen LYs away have a significantly uncertain distance. Frontier simply has to nail down the distance once it's added to the game - and then never move it, even if later research proves that the distance in ED is wrong. Because "moving a star" is twice as problematic as "adding a star", because you have changes to the mass-distribution in two different places, rather than just one.

Take Betelgeuse. Despite being a rather close and therefore well-studied supergiant star, the distance estimates to it are still quite variable: it's currently estimated to be somewhere between 613 and 880 LY away. That's good enough for Earthbound 2-D astronomers who just need to know where to point their telescopes, but not good enough if you're actually trying to fly a spaceship there. In ED, Betelgeuse is exactly 497.97 LY away from Sol - presumably they were working off older data, which said Betelgeuse was "about 500 LY away". But if later measurements prove that Betelgeuse is actually 778 LY away, too bad - in ED, it's 497.97 LY away, and it ain't moving.
 

Wobblin-Gobblin

Wobblin-Gobblin
Sapyx said:
Frontier can add variable stars - any star with a name beginning with two capital letters - including VY Canis Majoris - is a variable star. They simply haven't programmed in any variability.

The main issue is this: the way the Stellar Forge works, they simply cannot add new stars to the game, without deleting the entire galaxy and replacing it with one that looks almost, but not quite, the same. The reason is the way the procedurally-generated stars are made.

First, the "mass distribution" of the galaxy is laid out, generating the spiral structure. Then, the hand-placed stars are added to the galaxy; the mass needed to create those stars is "condensed" out of the locally available stellar mass. Any "leftover" mass once all the hand-placed stars have been generated is used to create the procedurally-generated stars.

They can, however, substitute a star for another hand-made star with exactly the same mass. When they added TRAPPIST-1 to the game, they took a procedurally-generated brown dwarf star that was already in the game and destroyed it - they turned it from a brown dwarf to a small red dwarf, and rearranged the planets. But the mass of the "new" star had to remain exactly the same as the old procedurally-generated star, to avoid the galactic apocalypse.

They can't do that as easily for UY Scuti; it's a supergiant, with estimated 7-10 solar masses. The Stellar Forge simply doesn't generate random stars like that, to sacrifice; proc-genned stars of that mass in any class are scarce. UY Scuti should be about 5100 LY away, roughly in the direction of Colonia (less than 1000 LYs, roughly south-west of Omega Mining). At that distance in the ED galaxy, you're on the edge of a spiral arm, between the Scutum-Sagitarri Conflux and the Sagittarius Gap - so I don't think there are many candidate stars heavy enough in that area. And it's on the direct line to Colonia, so the area is quite thoroughly explored by now - so deleting the entire sector of exploration discoveries just to add UY Scuti isn't going to be a popular move.

Now, to the question of why it wasn't added in the first place. Back when the galaxy was created in 2014, nobody had ever heard of UY Scuti - it was just one other variable star in the Scutum constellation, nothing to write home about. The research into the size of UY Scuti was done in 2012 but the results hadn't hit the popular science press. Everyone back then was raving about VY Canis Majoris as "the largest known star in the galaxy", so that's why VY Can Maj is the largest star in the ED galaxy. More recent research has since downsized VY Can Maj, putting UY Scuti in top place. Curiously, the same fate may await UY Scuti; preliminary results from the Gaia 2 survey indicate that UY Scuti may be much closer - and therefore much smaller - than originally estimated. So it may turn out that VY Can Maj is the "largest star in the galaxy" after all.
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Perfect explanation! Thank you for this, Cmdr [woah] [up] o7 o/ o>
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Okay, after considerable effort, I believe I may have found a suitable location for FD to sacrifice, to create UY Scuti.

The first thing to do was locate where UY Scuti should be. So I flew to Sol, and found the Scutum constellation. It's in about the middle of this screenshot:
Mq9SN6C.png


Zooming in on the area in question (the external camera's zoom feature is excellent for this):
oxb4anW.png


And now let's put it side-by-side with a real-world starmap (borrowed from Wikipedia), and identify some stars. The location of Colonia is marked in green. The required location of UY Scuti, according to this website, is marked in cyan.
ZzRUGo4.jpg


Now, all we need to do is find a suitably heavy star about 5100 LY away that drops down on the Sol skybox in about the correct position. I have found one star that meets at least two of these criteria: Blae Drye LN-S e4-16. It's 5176 LY from Sol, in about the correct location. As I speculated above, there are no O-class stars or proc-genned giants in the area, but the target is a B0-class star, so ought to be heavy enough. Unfortunately, you can't tell a star's mass without exploring it, and I've never been there. It's not in EDSM either, though as I said it's right on the route to Colonia so it may already have been be explored by someone. That didn't stop FD from editing the TRAPPIST-1 brown dwarf, they simply put the brown dwarf's discoverer down as the discoverer of the TRAPPIST-1 planets.

So, those who wish to see UY Scuti added to the game: petition FD to have Blae Drye LN-S e4-16 changed into UY Scuti.
 
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n4p0l3on

N
speaking of which, what would fdev do if the Betelgeuse star goes kaput before the game server got shut down? would they just remove the star system from the game? can we even have in game supernova event? :D
 

GunnerBill

GunnerBill
Spaceman Si said:
This seems quite likely to me. I did a survey of NGC 1817 a few months ago, partly because it's a cluster I've always liked, partly because it is awkward to get to, and a large part because it is home to over 26 variables; 16 Delta Scuti types and 3 possible Gamma Doradus types. However, having visited every single star in the cluster in ED, there was nothing strange or remarkable about any of them, and they were all K class (I am discounting any proc-gen stars in the vicinity) - the variables I expected to find would have mostly been in the A or F class.

So is it possible that for whatever reason, Frontier deliberately omitted variable stars?
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From Wiki: "UY Sct is a dust-enshrouded red supergiant[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UY_Scuti#cite_note-vanloon-13"][13][/URL] and is classified as a semiregular variable with an approximate pulsation period of 740 days"

Unless you hang around for 740 days you are not going to see anything right?

Of course other variables may change more quickly but still...
 
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Spaceman Si

Spaceman Si
GunnerBill said:
From Wiki: "UY Sct is a dust-enshrouded red supergiant[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UY_Scuti#cite_note-vanloon-13"][13][/URL] and is classified as a semiregular variable with an approximate pulsation period of 740 days"

Unless you hang around for 740 days you are not going to see anything right?

Of course other variables may change more quickly but still...
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That works for UY Scuti, but the Delta Scuti and Gamma Doradus variable types I went looking for in NGC 1817 have a much shorter variation time (a few hours or less for the Delta Scuti types, and around 1 day for the Gamma Doradus). That short period variation is what makes them useful "standard candles" for distance calculation, like Cepheids. There should be a noticeable difference in luminosity over a reasonably short period when in the system, and the star should change shape as the pulsations flux over it to create the luminosity change - that sort of thing would be awesome to see in the truest sense of the word :)

None of those variables seem to exist in the NGC 1817 cluster in ED though - I only found K class stars, and the variables should be in the A - F range. I couldn't see the variables catalogue ids in the cluster either. So it seems like putting them in was not something Frontier fancied implementing - I imagine the work involved in representing a variable of those types would be quite intensive, so I can't say I'm that surprised, but it would be great to see at some point :)
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
n4p0l3on said:
speaking of which, what would fdev do if the Betelgeuse star goes kaput before the game server got shut down? would they just remove the star system from the game? can we even have in game supernova event? :D
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No; as stated above, deleting a star is just as problematic as adding a new star. The best they could do is replace the red supergiant Betelgeuse with a supernova-remnant (black hole or neutron star), but the remnant would have to be exactly the same mass as Betelgeuse is in-game, otherwise all the problems I mentioned earlier about the galaxy being deleted would happen.

And no, they can't easily have an in-game supernova event, for three reasons.

One, there is no such thing as irreversible dynamics in the game. It is "dynamic" in terms of planets going around stars, moons and space stations going around planets, etc. But everything is running on rails, with the "trains" able to be run backwards and forwards for eternity; there can be no derailments. You can't have irreversible events like planets smashing into each other and leaving a giant debris cloud. And you can't have stars exploding.

Second, while FD can edit the galaxy (within the limitations proscribed earlier), they can't do it while players are online - they have to do it during a server shutdown. So again, the best you can hope for in terms of a "supernova event" is an announcement of an impending supernova at 0700 on Thursday. 0700 rolls around, and it's server shutdown time. Servers come back online, and hey-howdy-hey, the star has already exploded. So all the thrill-seekers wanting to actually watch a star explode will be disappointed.

Finally, a supernova or other galactic-scale dynamic event would reveal a major flaw in the game's design, one that cannot be easily overcome: the speed of light. In real life, the speed of light is rather slow, on galactic scales: if a supernova exploded 65,000 light-years away today, it would take 65,000 years for us here on Earth to see it. Betelgeuse could already have exploded 200 years ago, and we won't know about it for another couple hundred years. But in ED, if Betelgeuse exploded in 3305, the entire galaxy, from Sol to Beagle Point, would be able to see it, instantly, in 3305. And that would upset the astronomy-loving, space-simulation-playing realists, who would insist that an observer at Beagle Point ought to have to wait 65,000 years before they see it.

There is no "fossilized light" in ED. For example, you can't fly 2251 LY in the opposite direction to the Crab Nebula, turn around, and watch the supernova that Earth witnessed in AD 1054 happen all over again. It would be super-cool if you could, and you "should" be able to, but you can't, because the speed of actual light in ED is effectively infinite. If you looked through a telescope towards where the supernova should be, you would see the Crab Nebula, looking exactly the same as you would see it if you were only 10 LY away from it, only smaller.
 

Vandaahl

Vandaahl
Sapyx said:
So, those who wish to see UY Scuti added to the game: petition FD to have Blae Drye LN-S e4-16 changed into UY Scuti.
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Signed.

Oh and for Pistol Star as well, that one should be easier to find a place for as it is being dragged around by Sagittarius A :D
 
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