[Bryan See]

Just a while ago, University of Bern astrophysicists Esther Linder and Christoph Mordasini proposed the structure of Planet Nine, whose inferred from pertubations on the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn and faraway objects last January. It's some kind of super Earth with an internal heat source, but at a frigid temperature of 47 K.



As I said, it was a setting for one of the missions of my mod Shattered Stars. Once I get my hands on the Sol starfield source files Herra Tohtori using for the Blue Planet (especially with the Milky Way image used in the latest November 2015 update), I'll add in this planet, and some moons.

And I bet any Shivans, the First Order's Starkiller Base, the Authority and the GRW aliens will be found around there.

[The E]

Okay, so it's actually not what this planet looks like. Linder and Mordasini made inferences based on our current understanding of planetary formation in solar systems; Given that and knowing the limitations of our telescopes led them to this hypothetical model. Which, you know, could be correct, but could also be entirely wrong. Either result would be exciting.

As I said, it was a setting for one of the missions of my mod Shattered Stars. Once I get my hands on the Sol starfield source files Herra Tohtori using for the Blue Planet (especially with the Milky Way image used in the latest November 2015 update), I'll add in this planet, and some moons.

So you're going to make one pixel on the entire starfield a shade less black? Because that's the most you could see of this planet until you're practically in orbit around it.

And I bet any Shivans, the First Order's Starkiller Base, the Authority and the GRW aliens will be found around there.

You're going to lose that bet.

[Bryan See]

Okay, so it's actually not what this planet looks like. Linder and Mordasini made inferences based on our current understanding of planetary formation in solar systems; Given that and knowing the limitations of our telescopes led them to this hypothetical model. Which, you know, could be correct, but could also be entirely wrong. Either result would be exciting.

Yeah, Konstantin Batygin and Mike E. Brown, discoverers of Planet Nine, has one more evidence to support the theory that Planet Nine does exist. According to a new slide by Michelle Bannister at the SETI Institute at the end of last March, this new faraway object was silently announced, placing firmly on where "it should be". I think it's safe to assume that this thing emits infrared radiation when it is cooling, and can be easily detected by infrared telescopes. Until then, it's still theoretical at least, according to NASA.

As I said, it was a setting for one of the missions of my mod Shattered Stars. Once I get my hands on the Sol starfield source files Herra Tohtori using for the Blue Planet (especially with the Milky Way image used in the latest November 2015 update), I'll add in this planet, and some moons.

So you're going to make one pixel on the entire starfield a shade less black? Because that's the most you could see of this planet until you're practically in orbit around it.

Yes. Naturally. Using the latest Blue Planet art for Sol starfield background sources.

And I bet any Shivans, the First Order's Starkiller Base, the Authority and the GRW aliens will be found around there.

You're going to lose that bet.

Just kidding.

[The E]

Yeah, Konstantin Batygin and Mike E. Brown, discoverers of Planet Nine, has one more evidence to support the theory that Planet Nine does exist. According to a new slide by Michelle Bannister at the SETI Institute at the end of last March, this new faraway object was silently announced, placing firmly on where "it should be". I think it's safe to assume that this thing emits infrared radiation when it is cooling, and can be easily detected by infrared telescopes. Until then, it's still theoretical at least, according to NASA.

If it could be easily detected, we would have done so already. Linder and Mordasini's model assumes a surface temperature of just 37 degrees Kelvin above the galactic background; as IR sources in the night sky go, that's pretty low. They also looked at whether or not our current telescopes could detect it, and the answer is a resounding no. Not even WISE can see this thing (assuming of course that Linder and Mordasini's assumptions are correct). The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope might be able to, but it's not finished yet.

BTW, here's the paper: http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/forth/aa28350-16.pdf

[NGTM-1R]

Since Mike Brown is near and dear to all of our hearts at Palomar (we even have the Mike Brown Memorial Telescope, and he's not dead yet), allow me to lay some stuff out.

The planet has not yet been imaged. There is debate over whether it can be. Most observatories are in the business of taking 15-30 minute exposures at this time to avoid having to image through more than 1.2 or so air masses. The figure quoted here to maybe reach detection minimums with the Wide-Field Infrared Camera is 5-8 hours, like we were doing glass photoplates again. And assuming we could separate it from the starfield; its orbital period if it exists is likely on the order of 170000 years and long enough that detectable motion over the course of a night (or even several nights) is simply not likely.

At the moment we have no idea of the planet's composition or anything else about it because nobody's taken a spectrograph either. What we have is the motions of Kuiper Belt objects which appear to have been disturbed by the gravitational pull of a large object. This is not thin evidence, relatively speaking, because that's exactly how we found Neptune. But pretending we know anything about the planet until we have an image and a spectrograph is pure tomfoolery.

[Mongoose]

whose inferred from pertubations on the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn

This is flat-out wrong; Cassini's chief investigator has said that there have been no unexpected inconsistencies observed in Cassini's orbit.

[Nuclear1]

Well, this was...interesting.   

Once I get my hands on the Sol starfield source files Herra Tohtori using for the Blue Planet (especially with the Milky Way image used in the latest November 2015 update), I'll add in this planet, and some moons.

Space Engine makes the skybox images:

http://en.spaceengine.org/

GIMP to touch up the skybox images:

https://www.gimp.org/

HT's seamless skybox model to apply the images as textures to:

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=67899

Just because I'm a nice guy.

[Scotty]

Wow, welcome back.

[Nuclear1]

Wow, welcome back.

Glad to be back.

[Herra Tohtori]

The original HTSB starfield is based on the Tycho/Hipparcos star catalogue visualization (version 2) that is or was available at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio / Goddard Space Flight Center pages, but at the moment the site seems to be down and I have no idea if that's just a momentary problem or if they have been brought down entirely.

The source file I used was, if I recall right, this: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003572/TychoSkymapII.t5_16384x08192.tif

It is unavailable at the moment in that address but maybe you can find it elsewhere on the internet, it's the 16384x8192 resolution TIF version.


EDIT: looks like the site has simply moved to http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=3572, the high resolution version of the file is available directly at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003572/TychoSkymapII.t5_16384x08192.tif


However I did edit the levels, saturation etc. somewhat to produce the basic HTSB version that was delivered with the AoA Director's Cut, and was subsequently used as the basis for most Sol starfields including those with planets.  My WIP files (Blender settings) for that have evaporated during a few HDD crashes, so I can't help with that more.

Newer version of the Earth skybox uses source textures from Space Engine, with multiple layers to get it looking how I wanted it to look. I couldn't get it to look the way I wanted with a single render, so each layer pretty much had to be rendered with custom settings, and it was a huge pain in the arse. While the end result was pretty good I don't know if I would want to use Space Engine to do it again any time soon.

The big advantage with Space Engine, though, is that you can set the time and place and you'll automatically get more or less correct placement of celestial objects - the Sun, the stars, the planets and their moons. But the process of switching through different settings, making sure the camera angle doesn't change, and rendering each element separately at high resolution, and then checking that it actually rendered correctly and loaded the texture properly instead of changing to lower MIP maps because of the field of view settings... yeah. Lots of potential in that program but really annoying to use for more complex work.