Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Ryan on December 06, 2007, 06:50:34 pm
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I was going over one of my school books, and noticed a star marked "Sirius." I knew this was a system in freespace, so i went into my star chart book and found the systems Deneb and Capella. Capella should be visible to the northern hemisphere in january.
Anybody else notice these things? is there anything "odd" about the gravity about these systems? :)
Really, I just got a reason to pay closer attention in school.
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IIRC some of the names are fooled around with, though. IRL, Epsilon pegasai is Epsilon Erandi or something, IIRC.
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I pity you, foo! Epsilon Pegasi (orange supergiant about to die off) is a completely different star from Epsilon Eridani (nearby young orange main sequence).
The only stars on the FS map that aren't known by current astronomy at all are Ribos, Ikeya, Vasuda, and Laramis (though Laramis was mentioned as having been only recently discovered in 2335).
It's probable that Vasuda was a previously-known star that was renamed, and the same may be true with Ribos and Ikeya. Lots of stars don't have names at the moment, and are just known as HD 40491 or something equally hard to memorize.
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But the stars themselves have no correlation with their FreeSpace counterparts.
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My guess is that :v: just found a list of star names and ran with it, not really bothering to check if they were being at all accurate.
Example: Capella.
FS Capella: A yellow star appearing similar to Sol with at least one habitable world around it.
Real-life Capella: Multi-system of about six stars of varying sizes and colors that would make habitable planets all kinds of impossible.
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Example: Capella.
FS Capella: A yellow star appearing similar to Sol with at least one habitable world around it.
Real-life Capella: Multi-system of about six stars of varying sizes and colors that would make habitable planets all kinds of impossible.
Would it not be possible for Capella to have had 6 stars at a point in the FS2 universe? How many light years away is it? Seems Shivan's like blowing up stars so if it's far enough away we would still see 6 stars where the rest have already been forced into nova.
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Assuming shivans exist. :rolleyes:
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Example: Capella.
FS Capella: A yellow star appearing similar to Sol with at least one habitable world around it.
Real-life Capella: Multi-system of about six stars of varying sizes and colors that would make habitable planets all kinds of impossible.
Would it not be possible for Capella to have had 6 stars at a point in the FS2 universe? How many light years away is it? Seems Shivan's like blowing up stars so if it's far enough away we would still see 6 stars where the rest have already been forced into nova.
We only see one satar.
And in a system with 6 stars, having a habitable planet is night impossible.
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Well for one thing Capella is only 42 ly away, so there is no chance of it to have had 6...As for why we see only one, it could just be that every time you are in the system, they are alignned so you only see one.
Although the real reason is sloppy work on :v:'s part. As several of the systems are multi-star
Sirius - Binary star
Alpha Centauri - Trinary star (See the Opperation Templar missions from Multi player)
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Maybe Capella was originally some other system but was renamed Capella II for some reason. Then people started calling it just Capella instead of Capella II because it sounds more catchy.
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Meh....aside from the naming convention, real life star systems have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on FS2 systems..and voice-versa.
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And darn, I was looking at star systems for my campaign to try and make things accurate, but apparently that's overkill. Too late though, I already went through the work for picking things. So my system will be somewhat accurate: star will be matching to reality, and while we haven't found much in that solar system other than one planet that gets way too close to the sun in that system for life to exist, wiki Gods say that there's a better chance of terrestrial planets existing in that system then there is in Sol. So I get to have some justification for having people living on habitable planets in that system ^_^ Star is SAO 4737 / HD 17156 btw.
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I was going over one of my school books, and noticed a star marked "Sirius." I knew this was a system in freespace, so i went into my star chart book and found the systems Deneb and Capella. Capella should be visible to the northern hemisphere in january.
Wait, you said that you didn't know of Sirius, Deneb and Capella until that moment?!? :eek2:
Back on topic, :v: didn't pay a lot of attention when representing existing stars though I recall a cutscene with Bosch. There were two stars, one of which was much smaller than her sister. I though it was Polaris since the third star of that system has only recently been discovered. It could be Sirius, anyway...
As far as I know campaign creators pay attention on existing stars. Backgrounds created with LS' nebulae(available with the package itself) are based on real parameters of luminosity and mass. In Warzone SCP we have used new star bitmaps to match realistic parameters, etc. etc.
Maybe Capella was originally some other system but was renamed Capella II for some reason. Then people started calling it just Capella instead of Capella II because it sounds more catchy.
Good point. That system could have been named after a person since Capella is a surname...but I wonder why Wolf 359 and Ross 128 kept their old names. No reference to "nicknames" of any sort.
We only see one satar.
And in a system with 6 stars, having a habitable planet is night impossible.
You can't be sure of it. Mass and luminosity are various. The distance is also various. You can have most stars close to the biggest one. In that kind of environment there could be habitable planets.
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Maybe Capella was originally some other system but was renamed Capella II for some reason. Then people started calling it just Capella instead of Capella II because it sounds more catchy.
The most simple solution IMO.
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You can't be sure of it. Mass and luminosity are various. The distance is also various. You can have most stars close to the biggest one. In that kind of environment there could be habitable planets.
Maby. alltough the chances for that are really, REALLY small.
The most simple solution IMO.
Either the stars have been re-named or they have no bearing to real starts.
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You can't be sure of it. Mass and luminosity are various. The distance is also various. You can have most stars close to the biggest one. In that kind of environment there could be habitable planets.
Maby. alltough the chances for that are really, REALLY small.
Well, I have never seen a system composed by multiple stars of considerable dimensions. It doesn't mean it couldn't exist, but...I think that systems with one big stars and one or more little sisters are more common than "super clusters of stars".
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Good point. That system could have been named after a person since Capella is a surname...but I wonder why Wolf 359 and Ross 128 kept their old names. No reference to "nicknames" of any sort.
Wolf 359 at least is quite heavily used in fiction under that name. Changing the name would simply result in it having a less identifiable name.
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Good point. That system could have been named after a person since Capella is a surname...but I wonder why Wolf 359 and Ross 128 kept their old names. No reference to "nicknames" of any sort.
Wolf 359 at least is quite heavily used in fiction under that name. Changing the name would simply result in it having a less identifiable name.
That's why "nicknames" and "official" names are needed to make everything more realistic. Wolf 359 might have an alternate name its citizens gave it.
Enif is called "Epsilon Pegasi", only the GTVA outpost in that system uses the "original" name. There's a complete lack of dialogues about systems' names in FreeSpace. Whoever lives in Wolf 359 must not like that name... :nervous:
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Well, Wolf 359 is apparently the worst assignment a Terran can recieve...Sorta the Boondocks of Freespace
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Well, I have never seen a system composed by multiple stars of considerable dimensions. It doesn't mean it couldn't exist, but...I think that systems with one big stars and one or more little sisters are more common than "super clusters of stars".
I was more refering to the problem with a stable orbit any planet in such system might have. The gravity fluctuation in such a system would be huge indeed...and a planet with a unstable orbit would have extreeme atmospheric conditions (or no atmosphere).. . chances are, a planet around several suns is either getting drawn towards the sun(s) or has already become a part of the sun.
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Good point. That system could have been named after a person since Capella is a surname...but I wonder why Wolf 359 and Ross 128 kept their old names. No reference to "nicknames" of any sort.
Wolf 359 at least is quite heavily used in fiction under that name. Changing the name would simply result in it having a less identifiable name.
I don't think so with all due respect. The only time in fiction i've heard of W359 was ST:The Next Generations' Best of Both Worlds and the Shatnerverse novels. Correct me if i'm wrong :)
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...in a system with 6 stars, having a habitable planet is night impossible.
No it isn't. That's like saying that in a solar system of 8 planets it's nigh impossible to have a stable orbit solution on the habitable zone.
Considering the one example of a habitable planet, that indeed happens to be the case. It's a coincidence of relatively low probability, but then again there might be corresponding amount of solar systems with multiple bodies where there is no possible stable orbit on habitable zone, and the ones that do eventually happen to produce life on the planet on habitable zone.
Even more so, the planets themselves have moons on stable orbits. Jupiter has about 30 of them, I don't even remember the exact count any more, and at least four of them are so big they could be considered planets on their own.
Similarly, it is possible that six or even more stars could orbit each other, and have planets orbiting them without the other stars notably disturbing the orbits of the planets (and the moons around planets, and possibly even made satellites around the moons...). All it takes is that the distances between the six stars don't vary wildly. After all, distances in most multi-star systems are considerable. As an example, Alpha Centauri A and B are about 0.21 light years away from Proxima Centauri, which with very high probability is part of same system, ie. the stars orbit each other.
However, having six even sun-size stars (apparent diameter) on the sky of a habitable planet is nigh-on impossible. At the best you would have multiple full moon brightness stars on the sky and one or at max two day stars. Depending on the stars in question.
But it is possible. And with some probability somewhere in the universe it's actually happening, multiple times and many places. It's a big place you know. :nod:
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Capella Ha and Hb aren't going to be a problem. They orbit A and B at a distance of 11000AU, over a light year away from the main 2 stars.
Any planet orbiting Capella A would get knocked out of its orbit pretty quickly by Capella B. However since the two orbit each other it's possible AFAIK that a planet could obit both of them at a much larger distance. With two stars to warm it the habitable zone for humans would be much further out.
I've got no idea where stars 5 and 6 are. I've never seen any sign they even exist in any reference I've seen so far.
I don't think so with all due respect. The only time in fiction i've heard of W359 was ST:The Next Generations' Best of Both Worlds and the Shatnerverse novels. Correct me if i'm wrong :)
Well surely that's a big enough mention on its own. :D
There's a list here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#Wolf_359) though.
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I didn't say it was impossible did I? Just that's is far more unlikely than a habitable planet in a single-star system.
That said, I still find it kinda hard to swallow. If a planet orbits both suns, then it would have to be VERY far away from both of them, or would eventually end up pulled into one.
And if it's that far away, chances are it's gonna be a frozen wasteland with no atmosphere, even with 2 suns. We're taking distances far greater than that from our sun to Pluto after all. :blah:
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Well...they have found planets orbiting Pulsars
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I somehow doubt THAT planet is habitable...since well..you know what they say about pulsars and Gamma Ray bursts :P
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At one point I began integrating proper stars into the missions. These stars were made by m2258734a. Unfortunately, that fellow vanished long ago without completing the work. Most of the FSCRP Warzone features correct star systems.
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And if it's that far away, chances are it's gonna be a frozen wasteland with no atmosphere, even with 2 suns. We're taking distances far greater than that from our sun to Pluto after all. :blah:
You're talking about that kind of distance. Not me. :p
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/spitzer/spitzer20070329/?msource=mm032907&tr=y&auid=2515817
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Weeeelll... Just some interesting stipulations:
Radiation power weakens by square of the distance, ie. if you go to double the distance, you get one fourth of the power from the star.
This means that if you have a star with absolute magnitude of 25 Suns, the habitable zone would be about 5 AU from thestar - AND the habitable zone would be about five times as wide as the one around Sun.
That means that chances for having a planet on stable habitable zone orbit around two stars that orbit each other go drastically low. The stars would need to be orbiting each other very close to each other and be bright enough to support habitable zone at a distance that isn't too badly disturbed with the gravitational oscillations (also called tides by the way) from the rotating system of two gravitational bodies, but if that would work out, then the system could be stable. Assuming that no other star from the system will pass close by and disrupt everything.
The other possibility is more interesting one.
If you have a star that has 0.01 times the brightness of the Sun (ie. red dwarf), the habitable zone is found at about 0.1 AU from the star. That's a minuscule distance at solar scale; it would with very high probability allow a red dwarf in multiple star system to retain planets around it on stable orbits; some could be on the habitable zone.
Same applies to all multiple star systems with stars (like Galaxies! we have a 100 billion star system right there!) at sufficient distance from each other - each star could, with more or less ease, have stable planetary orbits on the habitable zone. :p
...yes, I know that with multiple star system, the definition is that the stars all orbit a local center of gravity, ie. each other.
This (http://www.arachnoid.com/gravitation/small.html) is an interesting toy. Try out the Four-mutual orbit - if each were a star, each could have planets around them, and each of them could have moons on stable orbits. If the mentioned orbits were close enough to the star, that is.
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There's a list here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#Wolf_359) though.
Hey! That page mentioned Giordano Bruno! He lived not so far from here(eat this, Dysko!) ;7
There's an error...
Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War, computer game. A player character is assigned to fly support in the "remote Wolf 359 system" if a certain mission is failed.
It happens in FS2, not FS1.
In the PlayStation game series Colony Wars (1997), Alpha Centauri was the first star system to be colonized outside of our own solar system.
:nod:
But there's nothing about FreeSpace and Alpha Centauri...
Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War, computer game. Despite being an unpopulated system, Gamma Draconis plays a central role in the Galactic-Terran Vasudan Alliance's second war against the xenophobic Shivans.
Descent: FreeSpace - The Great War?!? Meh...
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That means that chances for having a planet on stable habitable zone orbit around two stars that orbit each other go drastically low. The stars would need to be orbiting each other very close to each other and be bright enough to support habitable zone at a distance that isn't too badly disturbed with the gravitational oscillations (also called tides by the way) from the rotating system of two gravitational bodies, but if that would work out, then the system could be stable. Assuming that no other star from the system will pass close by and disrupt everything.
Capella would require a large distance but only because Capella is so bright, less massive stars might not require such a large distance. Both A and B are more than 50 times brighter than the sun. According to this site (http://www.stellar-database.com/Scripts/search_star.exe?Name=capella) the distance for the habitable zone for each component on it's own would be over 7AUs. Far enough that tidal forces wouldn't be as much of a problem as they would be closer in.
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Interesting...very interesting.
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Yes, if the brightness changes by multiplier of N, the distance to habitable zone changes by multiplier of N^½, or Sqrt(N).
A star 50 times as bright as Sun would indeed have habitable zone at about 7.1 AU, and it would be 7.1 times as wide as the zone around Earth's orbit as well.
Although when considering habitability, you might want to consider the longevity of the stars as well. Giants burn bright and fast, they can have lives on the magnitude of millions of years, whereas Sun-sized stars can hold on billions of years. That means there's not much time for life to evolve. Colonization might be the only viable source of life for planets around a giant or supergiant.
Dwarves, on the other hand, can heoretically burn stable for tens of billions of years, possibly even hundreds of billions of years (but since the universe is not even that old, there's no empiric data about that old dwarves). The oldest observed star is a yellow dwarf like our sun (yes, it's a dwarf) and it's about 13.2 billion years (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070510_oldest_star.html) old, whereas the universe itself is clocked at 13.7 billion years... That's some mighty old star, eh?
The problem with the dwarves, though, is that the habitable zone is often so close to the star that any planet there would be tidally locked... :blah:
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Yeah but I wasn't talking about life evolving around Capella, simply it possibly being suitable for human life when we arrived there. :)
If I was talking about life starting on a planet I wouldn't be talking about habitable zones or any of that nonsense. That stuff only applies when we talk about planets suitable for us to live on without any kind of special protection/equipment/genetic engineering.
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It always is possible...I figure it depends on how the Suns orbit eachother
That said, does the gamma ray burst from pulsars have any max range?
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I never said the Planets that the planet's they found around Pulsars would be habitable, i merely said that they found them
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I wasn't implying you did... I was just expanding upon it for discussions sake :p
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Dunno why people bother thinking about bright stars.. given that essentially all stars are actually red or brown dwarfs - IIRC according to current knowledge - with only small minority of stars belonging to class K 'or better'. And we don't even know the true amount of the brown dwarfs ATM - as unlit stars are kinda difficult to detect.
Although when considering habitability, you might want to consider the longevity of the stars as well. Giants burn bright and fast, they can have lives on the magnitude of millions of years, whereas Sun-sized stars can hold on billions of years. That means there's not much time for life to evolve. Colonization might be the only viable source of life for planets around a giant or supergiant.
Dwarves, on the other hand, can heoretically burn stable for tens of billions of years, possibly even hundreds of billions of years (but since the universe is not even that old, there's no empiric data about that old dwarves). The oldest observed star is a yellow dwarf like our sun (yes, it's a dwarf) and it's about 13.2 billion years (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070510_oldest_star.html) old, whereas the universe itself is clocked at 13.7 billion years... That's some mighty old star, eh?
Downside is that the star system that old probably haven't got all the elements the 'life as we know it' would need. Iron and other heavier elements for example would probably be kinda scarce is that system... Given that their formation IIRC requires more than one 'boom' (in addition to the big bang) - and of course the time needed for the remnants of that star to begin to collect to a new star. As i remember it the timing is kinda problematic as too young stars systems haven't probably has enough time to develop life and the too old stars lack materials needed for the life to develop - again talking about the life as we know it though as heavier elements are kinda critical catalysts in organic chemistry i see those as mandatory for any life.
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Actually the star's alphabet notation is a criteria of their magnitude (their brightness). this way, you can find alpha centauris being the red giant in the centauris 3 stars cluster, while beta will be the less visible white companion to alpha and the extra star (the red dwarf) will be gamma. However, the stars are so close that to the naked eye, they form only one star: proxima.
You see, the arabic already named quite a few stars (as they hed great advances in astronomics), therefore instead of always using the nomenclatura, we name stars like aldebaran in the taurus, which is in fact alpha taurus, see? The same thing goes with known stars like betelgese or rigel in the orion, vega in the libra, capella, procyon, sirius (which is, as a note, the brightest star we can see, just 3rd in the most visible objects behind the sun and the moon), arcturus, etc...
I hope I have ... enlightened you? :lol:
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:wtf:
'K or better' was meant to reference stars of classes O, B, A, F, G, K... hence brighter being 'better'. Red dwarfs being class M and brown dwarfs being in M or even 'lower classes' like L or T.
And what exactly does the arabic names of the star systems have to do with anything? :wtf:
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quite simply because aldebaran, capella, rigel, sirius, betelgeuse and all those common names ARE the arabic names of the stars in origin?
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And how exactly is that relevant to star's spectral class?
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:wtf:
'K or better' was meant to reference stars of classes O, B, A, F, G, K... hence brighter being 'better'.
Oh, Be A Fine Girl...Kiss Me :lol:
quite simply because aldebaran, capella, rigel, sirius, betelgeuse and all those common names ARE the arabic names of the stars in origin?
Capella and Sirius are Latin names. Betelgeuse is the adaption of the arabic "Beteigeuze"(or something similar). Aldebaran might have had another name, too.
And how exactly is that relevant to star's spectral class?
Well, many names are straight references to the color of the star ---> its spectral class.
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Yes but what relevance does that have to this discussion?
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I don't know. I just wanted to say that many stars have Latin names...
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Well, is is on the subject of descussing the star's names and what they're like in RL and how they compare to FS
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We were also talking about their names. "Why do they call that star Wolf 359? No nicknames given by the habitants?". Read Snail's opinion about Capella. That might not be the Capella we all know :)
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Wolf 359 is 359th star in the Wolf Catalogue. Ross 128 is 128 in Ross' Catalogue...same thing for Luyten 726
Just like the Messier Catalogue of Galaxies and Nebula
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I know it, the point is that whoever lives in a planet called <insert surname+insert number> should use an alternate name. Even Capella might be a "nickname" used to replace a possible "Capella II" or something like that.
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Maby nobody could think of a good name :p
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Well, Wolf 359 is apparently the worst assignment a Terran can recieve...Sorta the Boondocks of Freespace
Nope, thatd be dubhe or mirfak :p
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Well, Wolf 359 is apparently the worst assignment a Terran can recieve...Sorta the Boondocks of Freespace
Nope, thatd be dubhe or mirfak :p
You mean Tau-Sigma.
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no worst assignment is to a black-hole system like Cygnus X-1