[deathfun]

They're two planets rotating eachother!

[Quanto]

Just to confirm for you guys. The Skybox renderer works



Just to point out though, I do recommend messing with your display settings and with photoshop/gimp, to ensure the elements that you want are the ones that get shown best.

[Retsof]

NICE!   I was wondering when someone would get around to this.

[watsisname]

Here's a random challenge for y'all:  Try to find the most Earth-like planet possible, in a procedural star system.  I.e, it should be as close as possible to 1 earth mass, 1g surface gravity, 1atm pressure, 288K temperature, etc.  Also should have life and, I suppose, blue skies and seas.  Having a moon-like moon would be a nice bonus, but extra eye-candy like rings or multiple suns are cool too.
(Yeah, there's a thread similar to this on the Space Engine forums, but it is more fun to find them yourself, methinks.)

I'm out of state for a while so I can't post my finds.  I did find a neat white-atmosphered planet somewhere in the LMC with very earth-like conditions, I'll share when I'm home again.

On a related note, I've been contemplating what the ranges of planetary conditions that humans could find 'habitable' are.  Specifically, what range of average surface temperature, gravity, and pressure can a planet have and still sustain permanent human settlement?

For pressure, I think a reasonable lower bound is about 0.5atm.  That corresponds to about 18000 feet altitude on our planet, just above the highest permanent human settlement.  Above that and you start getting into the 'death zone'.  I've no idea what the upper bound is -- all I know is various gases start to become toxic to us at higher pressures.  For now I'm going with 1.5atm but I wouldn't be surprised if the upper limit is actually vastly different.

Gravity:  Too high and motion is difficult, even a simple fall could prove fatal in high G.  On the flipside, low g is awesome, but too low and the planet can't hold a breathable atmosphere.  Perhaps 0.5 to 1.5g is a reasonable estimate?

Temperature:  Tricky.  288K for earth.  273K is freezing point of water, 373 is boiling.  I imagine it's feasible for the planet to have an average surface temp below 273 and still sustain liquid water and thus be habitable, though.  So I'll pull numbers out of my ass:  268 to 308K?  Ie, 288 +/- 20K?

And yeah, I realize this all assumes that the Earth's current conditions are actually the optimum for human life.  Perhaps they're not, but they're what we've evolved to live with.

What are y'alls thoughts?

[TwentyPercentCooler]

I've found one that was pretty darn close a few hours ago - 290K (is that a mean surface temperature?), about 1.1 Earth masses:0.98 Earth radii, something like 1.15g surface gravity. Distance from the star was quite a bit more than 1 AU; it was a newer and larger star than Sol.

The thing that I'd be most curious about is if Earth-like climate and weather patterns would exist, even if the planet is eerily similar. Having the same mean temperature doesn't really mean much. This particular planet didn't have a tilted axis of rotation, so no seasons. And even with a similar mass and density, it would be possible to have different crust material - more rigid crust material would cause some gnarly planetquakes. Would it have Hadley cells and a similarly stratified atmosphere? Thinking about all these details makes one realize how special Earth really is. A change in even the tiniest of details could have resulted in a very different planet.

[Thaeris]

I've not seen this video before on the Space Engine site before now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t3H6nPvC-PQ

...Dear Lord...

[Scourge of Ages]

Is it possible to create your own solar systems in Space Engine, and then use then to generate a skybox? Including customer planets with custom textures and stuff?

[redsniper]

No. At least not yet. If you're already making custom textures and stuff, you might as well just render a skybox in blender.

[watsisname]

You can in version 0.95.  I presume you still can in the new version but there is no guide for it yet.

Creating a star
Creating galaxies
Creating a planet
Creating custom textures for planets

[watsisname]

I've found one that was pretty darn close a few hours ago - 290K (is that a mean surface temperature?), about 1.1 Earth masses:0.98 Earth radii, something like 1.15g surface gravity. Distance from the star was quite a bit more than 1 AU; it was a newer and larger star than Sol.

That's a pretty good find!   Any chance you have the coordinates, or screenshots?

I think the closest Earth-analogue I've found so far is this one in the LMC.  A bit colder, almost identical air pressure, and 80% gravity.  And a big, close, inhabited terra moon to boot!  I'd love to vacation on this world.

The thing that I'd be most curious about is if Earth-like climate and weather patterns would exist, even if the planet is eerily similar. Having the same mean temperature doesn't really mean much. This particular planet didn't have a tilted axis of rotation, so no seasons. And even with a similar mass and density, it would be possible to have different crust material - more rigid crust material would cause some gnarly planetquakes. Would it have Hadley cells and a similarly stratified atmosphere? Thinking about all these details makes one realize how special Earth really is. A change in even the tiniest of details could have resulted in a very different planet.

Oh yeah, there are probably many important parameters to determine how habitable/comfortable a planet would be for us beyond the three main ones of temperature, pressure, and gravity.  Probably the most outrageous omission -- the presence of liquid water!  (Though Space Engine seems to only put life on oceania's and terras, and as far as I've seen all terra's have at least some surface water).  Atmospheric composition and structure is another big one.  For example, we require oxygen for respiration, and an ozone layer to protect us from solar UV radiation.  Axial tilt, orbital period, and eccentricity determine the seasons.  Plate tectonics has enormous implications for the evolution of life and climate.  A magnetic field helps protect the atmosphere from erosion by the solar wind.  The biosphere and food-web are important.  Climate/weather patterns can't be ignored, either.  And I'm sure there's still a lot I've missed.

The formation of Hadley cells and other modes of atmospheric transport is quite interesting.  The basic concept is that differential heating causes a pressure gradient across a planets surface, and winds flow to try to equalize this gradient.  If the planet is rotating, then these winds are deflected by the Coriolis Force.  Hadley circulation occurs when the planets rotation axis is nearly perpendicular to its orbital plane (Earth's is 23.5°; close enough)  In these cases heat must flow from the equator to the poles, but rotation causes the winds to be deflected and the circulation breaks up into discrete cells.  There are 3 such cells (in each hemisphere) on earth.

A planet can have other types of atmospheric circulation, too.  If the planet is tidally-locked with its sun, then warm air rises over the sub-solar point and flows toward the night side, cools, and sinks, with cooler flow returning along the surface.  Space Engine actually demonstrates this fairly well with the rendering of a massive cyclonic system on the day-side of many of its tidally-locked worlds.  They look pretty cool.

If a planet's atmosphere is very thick then it becomes more efficient at transferring heat.  This causes the whole atmosphere to rotate around the planet, sometime rotating faster than the planet itself.  Venus is an example of a planet with such a 'super-rotating' atmosphere, and as a result the temperature difference between the day-side and the night-side is fairly small.

I am also curious about the prospect of life-bearing worlds in multiple-star systems.  There are many of them in Space Engine, and I personally find them fairly believable, but I haven't seen much actual research on the subject.  (And of course there is as of yet no hard data, but it's fun to think about).

[redsniper]

You can in version 0.95.  I presume you still can in the new version but there is no guide for it yet.

Creating a star
Creating galaxies
Creating a planet
Creating custom textures for planets

Oh wow, I had no idea. That's awesome.

[Thaeris]

This chap has a really nifty series of short videos in which he tries to find random systems with planets that support life. Long sentences aside:

Episode 3, which left me with a childish grin I am by no means ashamed of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gRFRvQQgF8&feature=relmfu

Episode 4, which is also wonderful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmvyF6bx7SU&feature=relmfu

[Thaeris]

Well, darn.

I was hoping the other machine downstairs could run Space Engine, but that appears not to be the case. The Go 9100 only has 256 MB of video RAM, not the 512 perscribed as minimum needed to let the software run effectively. Everything else seems to be in order RAM and processor-wise, but, well, I guess that's just the way it goes...

[CKid]

I got to say, I love this space engine. The first time I tried it out, I was on for about 5 hours straight. The coolest thing I found so far is a neutron star. You have to slow down time just to see how quickly the star rotates. I have the music from Experience the Plants playing in the background, to add that little bit more of epicness.

[IronBeer]

--INCOMING TRANSMISSION.....
--VERIFYING SOURCE....
--SOURCE IDENTIFIED: EMERGENCY QEC BURST, EXPLORER IRONBEER
--DECODING.........DONE
--ANALYZING...........CORRUPTION DETECTED!
--REPAIRING.............................
--REPAIRS DIFFICULT.....................
--REPAIR COMPLETE, DATA INTEGRITY 99%
--DATA LUMP CONFIRMED: EXPLORATION LOG, EXPLORER IRONBEER
--CONCISE CONTENTS: 7,492 POINTS OF INTEREST
--AWAITING COMMAND
>>Filter data: "Most important points"
--ACKNOWLEDGED...WORKING
--MULTIPLE "INTERESTING" DESTINATIONS PARSED
--BEGINNING NONCONTINUOUS PLAYBACK...
+++entry begins+++
...
Day 641 of my exploration mission. As always, the Final Effect FTL drive is performing admirably. I'm tempted to see just what the maximum velocity it can deliver, but such a stress test will have to wait for another day. Remote sensors picked up a rather interesting gas giant system in my vicinity, so I moved in closer to check it out.

Rather pleasant looking blue orb, though they all start to look the same after a while.

Poking around in the local system shows three relatively massive moons- they're old, too. Hm.... well here's something interesting. There's an high concentration of carbon mon/dioxide in the atmosphere, with a good fraction of inerts, but right about no oxygen. There's just about nothing on the surface that I can see, but.... yep- that was a shard of some unnatural alloy. Somebody used to live here, but it looks like their atmosphere burned up. Shame. I'll pass this along to the archaeologists.


+++next entry begins+++

Why did I even bother coming here? The punishing radiation? The half-melted planets? I remember when we first tossed a probe with a QEC into a black hole and got a look inside- I was there, and it was the first and only time I got kicked out of my neural interfacing with Reign of Steel. I got off lucky with recurring migraines: a full third of my colleagues went mad on the spot, three outright went braindead from their ships' neural backlash, and another twelve committed suicide. Decent people shouldn't think about what happens beneath the event horizon- it's that simple. Lunacy and I must be locked into some metastable mutual orbit....

+++next entry begins+++
Not the greatest picture, but the coordinates are logged so I or somebody else could come back. The off-camera white dwarf is really messing with the lighting here and washing out the nearby brown dwarf, but it probably is keeping that ocean planet livable. I dipped down for a surface look and I have to hope sentient life doesn't emerge on the eternal bloody twilight of that world. There's no way they'd be anywhere near well-adjusted, and in my many years as an Explorer, I've seen sentients on some crazy worlds.


+++next entry begins+++
Day 644, and we have a nice normal life-bearing moon for a change of pace.

Probably a bit warm for most of the Covenant of Man, but a little solar shading should fix that right up.


Have we ever actually shaded a moon lit by binary stars? No matter, I'd wager the engineers would just be itching to try and make it work. Logged. I'll pass this along with the rest of my log whenever I return.

+++next entry begins+++
Day 645. Just like that, and I'm at the edge of the Large Magellanic Cluster. It was absolutely no challenge for the Final Effect drive, and the energy demand was almost nil. Most impressive; I'm starting to believe the claims that the drive could do nearly infinite superluminal speeds. At any rate, I just stumbled across an incredible trinary system with three lifebearing worlds. This first one orbits the primary star, and Reign picked up some surprisingly formidable-looking combat starships.

Snap a nice picture and move on. No reason to harass the locals when they're armed to the teeth, especially when it looks like a conflict is actively ongoing.

Reign, can you check if this is the biggest terrestrial storm on record? Oh, it's number two? Well, still worth logging, especially considering that colossal polar cap. Can't imagine any spaceships launching from THAT planet anytime soon, but stranger things have happened.



Let's get another look at that cap. And a little perspective on our gorgeous home galaxy.

Aaaand here we have the home of the other belligerent party. Pretty nice place, if hot, though that gas giant would be a strategic handicap in a system-scale scuffle like this. The other guy can just sneak in the giant's "shadow". That said, these guys will have NO shortage of hydrogen...... I'll hazard a close look at one of their ships.... yep- fairly basic fusion drives. They'd be stupid not to.



When they get them, their night skies must be just amazing. They get to see the Small Magellanic Cluster.....


...the Large Magellanic Cluster...


...and our own glorious home galaxy.

+++next entry+++
Day 646 and I've already whipped through the Triangulum galaxy. The Final Effect drive astounds me only more with each passing hour. That itch to find its ultimate limits is growing harder to ignore...

This dinky little rock might be one of the most important things I've found. It's basically a 44 km-diameter lump of nulltronium. This is reason enough for me to head back to Earth with my logs, but I feel something I can't explain driving me ever further onward. There's something I've gotta do, and I can't risk frying my ship by using the QEC. If something happens to me, it'll go off, and I'm probably boned anyhow. It's a win-win! Unless I'm dying, in which case it's technically a wash.

++next entry+++
This is a stupid idea. I am doing a stupid thing, but I might as well see it through now. 500 kiloparsecs in a matter of seconds. It's true: the Final Effect drive has near-zero practical limitations. With that in mind, I know what I must do.


+++next entry+++

This is surely a sight not meant for the eyes of Man. 7.74 billion parsecs from the Milky Way, and the galaxies just... stop. Telemetry indicates some galaxies near the edge here, but this one seems more "fringeward" than any of its comrades. This must be the place I'm being drawn towards.

+++next entry+++

God in heaven... Christ... Allah... Buddha... anybody. This can't be right. The angle is right- this galaxy isn't actually at this corner, it's the perspective I've got. But this, this corner. What the hell is this!? Is the universe a cube!?
(deep breaths)
Ok... ok... I'll be fine.... just... gimme a sec.
This place, I feel like there's some cosmic fulcrum here, drawing me in. And I don't really know why I still care, but I've come up with a name for this place: The Shores of Eternity. I'm just going to fly where I feel I should go, though I can't shake the feeling that I'm only rushing towards gibbering madness and some unspeakable cosmic horror.

+++next entry+++

Here. There's something here, calling to me. This ....Final Outpost.
Oh- I'm literally being hailed! Um, damnit. I can't actually understand the message, even plugged into Reign. Can you backburner that, hon? Great, you're a peach!
In the mean time, darling, we've got a date with the abyss.

+++next entry+++
I've always wondered: what lies beyond the edge of the universe? Literally nothing, a continuous and empty frontier that can be pushed ever outward? Some jagged edge that annihilates any foolish enough to try and leave reality? Or perhaps some psychotic oblivion, some insane space between the planes defying any description?
Today, I will find the answer to that question. All systems are at 99% operation, the emergency QEC is primed. One way or another, this mystery will be unmasked today!

There's no light pollution here- space here is so empty that this star is just on its own.

+++next entry+++
****, ****, ****, ****. Ugggh, lordy, my head... gaaah.
(retching) Goddamnit, I forgot just how much migraines sucked.
--AUTODOC INDICATES PAINKILLERS AND VASOCONSTRICTORS ADMINISTERED
That's kinda better. Now I need to figure out what in the hell happened, see if the Reign of Steel will reboot, and see if I actually *can* do anything about this situation.

Yep. There's nothing. Looks like it was Option A: there's something between Jack and **** once you "leave the universe". Sensors started wigging out at around 40 gigaparsecs from the Shores of Eternity, but I managed to hold a telemetry lock out till around 100 GPc. Not too long after that line, everything just went dead, and I got kicked from my interface- argh, hurts just remebering that. Optics are the only thing working, and they might come in handy... in about 300 billion years. Sod it, I'll crank up the magnitude limits and exposure: if anything's out here, I jussst might be able to see it.


Wait a minute. What's that? That isn't an optical signal.... oh, God- has it spotted me or something?


Oh, ****. I don't like this. I'm definitely not alone out here, and I'm definitely not safe... Sarah? Why am I thinking about *her*, of all things, now? What do you mean I'm not thinking about you? AND WHY AM I TALKING TO YOU? LEAVE ME ALONE! IT WASN'T MY FAULT! I HAD TO STOP THEM! PLEASE, DON'T-

--NOTE: AT THIS POINT, MASSIVE EM INTERFERENCE WAS DETECTED ON PASSIVE SENSORS, REACHING A PEAK JUST BEFORE THIS LOG IS CUT


--NOTE: NO COMPREHENSIBLE COMMUNICATION WAS DETECTED FROM EXPLORER IRONBEER FROM THIS POINT ONWARDS. THE LOG ENDS 32 SECONDS AFTER RECORDING THIS IMAGE. SANITIZING THE AMBIENT EM ENERGY RESULTED IN THE FOLLOWING AUDIO FILE, MAKE OF IT WHAT YOU WILL: >>Link<< (OOC: This is a download link because I couldn't find a decent audio hosting site)

--PLAYBACK TERMINATED

[Luis Dias]

That was an amazing post.

[General Battuta]

'QEC' technobabble makes me nerd mad, real nerd mad

[redsniper]

Shores of Eternity. Cool name for a galaxy or coolest name for a galaxy?

... and then Ironbeer was the Transcendant.

[Luis Dias]

'QEC' technobabble makes me nerd mad, real nerd mad

Just shut down your brain a little will ya.

[FlamingCobra]

-snip-
Speaking of which, green atmospheres?  GREEN ATMOSPHERES!

-snip-

So that's Venom.
this earthlike planet looks great right outside of Triangulum.