[SPACE] Star Generation
 

I have been using the system generation rules in the space book, and decided to let you guys see the labors of my work. I started with the nearest starts to Sol and worked my way out, and currently have finished Barnard's Star. I claim no complete astronomical accuracy to what the real systems are as for stats, and have taken a bit of "artistic privilege" with a few of the systems. Basically what I did was went to wikipedia and found out roughly what type of star it was, and put together some stats using the rules in Space. It is pretty painful to stat out each star, planet and moon, but having nothing else better to do at work, its time well spent. My wiki is a work in progress, and I have basically no limit to how many systems I plan on statting out, but for now, I am going to work on the ones that are listed on my wiki and then work out from there. Anyhoo, enjoy (and feedback is ok too).

http://wiki.noventhehero.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Solid.

It would be nice if the splash page included what the stellar types are (E.g. G2V) and if there is a garden world present, instead of just the names for the different stars.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Aren't Proxima and Alpha Centauri part of the same multiple-star system? I would have thought you'd stat them up as Alpha Centauri A having one distant companion and one near companion.

Bill Stoddard

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Probably: but not for certain. The combined mass of the A-B pair is well-known, but there is uncertainty in the distance of their barycentre from Proxima, and uncertainty in the space velocities of the A-B pair and of Proxima. The upshot is that Proxima could be a distant companion of A-B, or it could be an independent red dwarf on a slow close pass. It could go either way when more precise measurements come in.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I know it isn't specified in the rules, but shouldn't the inner most planets of Sirius' white dwarf companion be cinders, assuming they survived at all?

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Probably. In our own solar system, Mercury, Venus, and Earth are going to be disintegrated, whilst the other planets will end up on wider orbits.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

The rules really don't handle white dwarfs at all. They will tell you that a star has become a white dwarf, but not its mass and luminosity when it does, and things go downhill from there. The planets of white dwarfs ought perhaps to be generated first around the star at its maximum luminosity in giant stage, then have their orbital radii and orbital eccentricities increased, their atmospheric masses decreased, and be chilled down to the temperatures supported by the luminosity of the remnant white dwarf. The loss of mass of the star and the effect of the passing planetary nebula outflows on the planets is not estimated.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

That's too bad. Sounds like it would make a good e23 book, maybe along with pages on pulsars, black holes and other "dead" stars. I even have a name for it: GURPS Space: Shadow of Dead Stars. :)

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

You tell me an easy way to do that and I'll impliment that. Right now, I just have my wiki-editing skills to go on and thats it. :) Right now I imagine that it is quite easy to navigate, since you click on the star, and it has the planets listed out and what type of planet each one is. If the planet hasnt been statted out yet, then there is no data (but there will be eventually).

I would love to see more GURPS Space books to expand on the Space series beyond Spaceships.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I didn't find it hard to do white dwarfs. I generated the planets as of the condition of the solar system when the star was on the main sequence; then I looked at its two giant phases, figuring the temperatures of the planets that weren't simply engulfed by it, and the planetary types that resulted, and then at the temperatures they fell to when it reached its white dwarf phase.

It was more of a challenge figuring the effect of a distant second star on the temperature of planets orbiting a white dwarf.

Bill Stoddard

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I didn't mean anything fancy; just add text. E.g.

Gamma Pavonis (30.1 light years from Earth)

would become

Gamma Pavonis (F6V, 30.1 light years from Earth, Garden)

That click is a deal breaker for people that might want to use your sight to hand pick habitable systems. It's not just one extra click, it's a click and a scroll down, followed by a reasonable effort so as not to accidentally miss the possible Garden Planet in a list--repeat several times until you get lucky and find one with a garden world.

Don't get me wrong: your site is excellent. If you don't care about making it useful to people who just want to hand pick garden world systems--or at least find them at a glance--then I wouldn't worry about it. But right now you have only nine stars; if you think you might want to add this information to the "Star Systems" listing, I'd add it now rather than later.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I'm not quite sure I want to single out systems with garden planets generated, since I mean, on Gamma Pavonis itself, there are 8 other planets there with different uses. I mean, some people will see Alpha Centauri B and think nothing about the planets, but about the asteroid belts that have better than average mineral wealth.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Then mention that too. The long term problem is that if you roll up systems you end up with lots of M stars with nothing interesting orbiting them. If you then can see on a (by then) much longer list of stars which 10% are worth clicking at that will be a significant help.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I see where you are going with this, but the fact remains that I am not creating a list of stars that are of "interest." I am statting out the stars that are progrssively further away from Sol :).

EDIT: Maybe something like this could be accomplished by some kind of mouse-over effect where it shows you what are in the orbits when you mouse-over on the main page, but I dont really see any practical way to do a quick peek that would make anyone happy, myself included.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

A significant number of GM's and players want to know if a star system has a habitable planet--any other interests are frequently a distant second. (This is why GURPS Space has rules to generate planets and star systems that assume at the outset that a garden planet is present.) I assume, since you're making your significant efforts available to all, you'll want to make it as user friendly as reasonably possible. I assure you that most people would like to know at a glance which of those star systems have garden planets. For some people, it will be more important than its distance from Earth. E.g. some people will just drop them into a campaign and won't care what real star it's based on.

Is your intention is that people "purchase the entire album" and not just "buy a few singles"?

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Actually, the intent was to share what I have done, and keep doing what I was doing :) (since selling what I had done would be explicitly against the Creative Commons license :P). I am doing it like this since I am making a TL 10 setting and what I was doing was what I had in mind for the setting. I may create some generic garden-based systems later on, but not until I have expanded to the nearby stars from about 20 light-years from Sol. Once I have that done, then I will branch out.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Got it. But, you also said:
My feedback is that fewer people will enjoy if they have to access each system in order to find the 10% - 20% they find useful. Of course, you don't owe anybody anything and what you've delivered thus far is definitely cool.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Is this:

http://wiki.noventhehero.com/index.p...h=garden&go=Go

adequate?

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Hey, that's perfect!

If I might make a further suggestion. If I get to a planet via a link following a search, I can see all the planet info just fine. However, there is no link from that planet page that takes me to the planet's parent-star-system page.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

How did you take account of the effect on the planet's orbits when the central star lost 10% to 60% of its mass in its supernova explosion?

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Noven,

I love the wiki, particularly since I'm in the prep stages of a TL 9 Space game and I was not looking forward to stating out nearby systems.

As for the detail, sure putting info on the main page would be nice, but it seems to me you are already handing a TON of information to any and all who want to use it. Folks should say thanks for the hard work, leave requested feedback and then not dwell on it if said feedback is declined. I say anyone out there too lazy to click and scroll a few times to cherry pick info, isn't that determined to find the desired information.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Work has been ongoing on my wiki and I started thinking about something: is there some website that can tell me how far (lets say....) Kruger 60 is from Alpha Centauri? I know how far both are from Sol, but if someone was in a different system and was going to another, I am drawing a blank on how far they are from each other. Something cool like this is neat and tells me (but is rather useless since it only covers systems within 10 light-years from Sol) what I need to know, but not how to compare 2 distances from each other.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

What positional data to you have in your star list?

If you have X, Y, and Z co-ordinates it is just D = SQRT {(X2-X1)^2 + (Y2-Y1)^2 + (Z2-Z1)^2}.

If all you have is right ascension, declination, and parallax you'll have to do a bit of trigonometry.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

The only hard data I have is how far each system is from Sol unfortunately.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

When I get home, I am going to open up Celestia on my computer (I forgot that I even had it installed!) and see if it can tell be the distance between stars. Its a pretty amazing program from what I have done with it, however my experience is limited with it. If it can tell me the distance between 2 stars, I will be using the heck out of it from now on heh.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Of course it does. Just open the "Navigation"-"Star Browser" then "Go To" the required star and press "Refresh". Voila.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Excellent. I'll give it a shot when I get home. This will make short work of any navigation questions that hypothetically might come up.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Just to let you all know, Celestia is totally awesome. Kruger 60 is 17.038 light-years from Alpha Centauri. I recommend the program to anyone that has a Space game going on.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

You meant the red giant phase, right? (since white dwarfs don't go supernova)

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

Wow. I just constructed SCR 1845-6357, and its weird. The brown dwarf in the system has a pretty nice Garden planet heh. All that a space traveler would need would be a breath mask since the atmosphere is a bit thin. I know that page 128 says that garden planets would never appear on brown dwarfs, so what goes there instead when the proximity to the star and system age makes a blackbody temp that gives a garden? I could use an ocean planet, but the roll and the age made it a garden.

http://wiki.noventhehero.com/index.p...845-6357_B_III

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I'm not sure whether it would be a garden planet. I mean, photosynthesis would have to work very differently there since most of the brown dwarf's light output would be in the infrared. I'm not a scientist, so I don't honestly know whether it would be scientifically possible.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I am just going to leave it as is until I can get something else that makes sense. Mechanically its fine since it was generated under the rules. I'll just chock it up to another quirk with Space.

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I did. I was thinking of the loss of mass to the formation of the planetary nebula in the red giant phase.

And you meant, of course, that solitary stars less than nine solar masses evolve into white dwarfs without going supernova. White dwarfs can go supernova if they are accreting material from elsewhere (Type Ia supernova).

Re: [SPACE] Star Generation
 

I know that, but I was thinking that they'd be far less chance of any planets forming around a binary with such a small separation.