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Proliferation of twin stars in Sector Space?
captainhunter1
Member Posts: 1,632 Arc User
I've noticed that after the Sector Space revamp, the number of systems with multiple stars has doubled or tripled from the old version.
I was just wondering why?
Did the Star Charts template Taco and team used indicate that all these systems had binary stars? The one system that has me most perplexed is the Argelius system. In Sector Space it shows two suns, yet in the "Treasure Trading Station" mission space map, it has only one.
Was the decision made to add all theses extra stars to systems purely for artistic purposes? Or, again, was this something the Star Charts book said was there?
Thanks for any help on this.
I was just wondering why?
Did the Star Charts template Taco and team used indicate that all these systems had binary stars? The one system that has me most perplexed is the Argelius system. In Sector Space it shows two suns, yet in the "Treasure Trading Station" mission space map, it has only one.
Was the decision made to add all theses extra stars to systems purely for artistic purposes? Or, again, was this something the Star Charts book said was there?
Thanks for any help on this.
My consolidated list of game improvements for STO:
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
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In real life outer space, there are binary, trinary, quadrinary, and various other multiple star systems ALL OVER the place. They are much more prevalent than people realize. Same with red dwarf stars. MOST stars in the universe are dwarf stars. Star Charts correlates a lot of Star Trek's systems with real stars, and they do a pretty good job of getting the number and types of stars in those systems correct. Since we used Star Charts as our base, and they used reality as theirs, we ended up with a lot of multi-star systems.
Now, we updated Sector Space to match Star Charts. However, there are a TON of system maps out there, and we did not have any time to update all of them to also follow along with Star Charts. But we made the call that it was better to start moving in the right direction with Sector Space, rather than trying to match Sector space up to System maps, most of which have no bearing on canon.
Here's the Star Charts map: http://i3.minus.com/ixYp3Q3yg6Onw.jpg
On this map, the round things are stars. If it's JUST a dot, it's a single star. If that dot has a ring around it, it's a multi-star system. If that ring is solid, all the way around, that's binary. If the ring is split horizontally, that's trinary, if it's split into thirds, that's quadrinary, etc.
THEN each of those pieces (dot in the center, or portion of the arc of the ring around it) has a color. That color corresponds to the individual Star's Stellar Classification, using the OBAFGKM scale. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification)
We simplify reality a lot in our game though. In reality, those stars would be very far apart. When it's said that two stars orbit each other, they aren't doing so in a tight circle. They are separated by a lot, but simply held in a wide arc due to their gravity. When we talk about Vulcan or any other planet orbiting a trinary star system, in reality, Vulcan would be orbiting ONE of those stars, while that star orbits with the other two. We can't represent that very well in the scale of our game, so we chose to simplify things quite a bit for the purposes of representing the systems.
The Argelius System itself holds special interest for me for two reasons. One, it is a canon location (TOS episode 'Wolf in the Fold') which doesn't come across as binary star system (but hey, it was the 60's) or it could just be another 'artistic licence' that the Star Charts pulled (Nimbus anyone?). Two, it's a Foundry mission location of mine that I spent time describing the system in detail, and am now getting flack for it being wrong.
Thanks again Taco!
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
The bias might come from the bias for what kind of star systems are more likely to support life (at least the type of life Starfleet scientists easily recognizes).
Maybe in the Star Trek universe the majority of solar systems are "junk" and have little value?
My character Tsin'xing
infinite diversity in infinite combination
My character Tsin'xing
Some Scientists believe that Jupiter and Saturn are failed stars...
They just never achieved enough mass to ignite.
If things had gone differently, the SOL System could have been a Trinary Star System.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
For what it's worth, astrophysicists have accounted for every bit of matter in our solar system bigger than KBOs and comets that never left the Oort Cloud area. Ignoring the fact that you simply _cannot_ hide a star that close to us without our knowing about it (light, gravity), even _if_ the 'counterpart' theory supposedly hides this star directly opposite the sun from us (which would require that star to mass the same as the earth _and_ share our exact orbit), we'd still know about it due to its gravity _and_ the fact it would be a plain sight object to any probe that's left LEO.
A brown dwarf (or any variant of the planet-x lunacy) could not hide in our solar system once Urbain Le Verrier used gravity to accurately predict the existence and location of Neptune. In fact, the very fact that Neptune was discovered that way guarantees the impossibility of a 'counterpart' star or any other large mass in our solar system.
Well, sort of. You're right in that it's mostly a matter of mass in objects made of mostly hydrogen. Starting at perhaps double Jupiter's mass, you're getting into the lower bound of what astronomers call a Brown Dwarf. At about 8% of our Sun's mass, an object made of mostly hydrogen will have enough mass to be a star.
I guess it comes down to what you're willing to call a 'failed star'. One person's failed star is another person's gas giant with ambition.
One idea with the planet-X/Nibiru thing is that it could have an orbit eccentric enough that it takes over a century to complete a single orbit. If it was on the way out of the system when we started looking for planets we wouldn't have seen any gravitational interactions.
And don't tell me the idea is preposterous.... it already happened. Sedna's orbit is ~11,400 YEARS. It is quite true that Sedna's closest approach to the sun is outside Pluto's orbit, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that another similar object could pass closer to the sun.
My character Tsin'xing
Predicted to within 1 degree of where Neptune actually was when it was first observed.
Remember that the Nibiru 'prediction' necessarily had Nibiru coming close enough to Earth to topple it on its axis, and the basis for that prediction, according to Nancy Lieder, were verbal warnings (no math, of course) by a philanthropic alien species who would allegedly (according to Nancy) have _realtime_ conversations over message board postings, but only to her, so that we would have time to buy the end-of-world survival gear she happened to be selling.
This time, with emphasis.
Overall, Nibiru isn't an argument I'm very interested in having. Nancy Lieder was wrong then. She still is. Her claim was only wildly implausible before the late 1700s, but she was born in the wrong century for it to be even remotely possible.
To actually post on the thread topic, with our recentish understandings on how common exoplanets seem to be, and how common binary star systems are, I've been thinking about the sort of planets I'd expect to see around them.
There are, apparently, three possible classes of stable orbit around a binary star system. The first, the simplest, has a planet orbiting the barycenter of both stars. This sort of orbit is necessarily very wide. I suspect that a rocky terrestrial would probably be beyond the habitable zone as far as liquid water is concerned. I haven't been on Andoria's surface to see what's depicted yet, but the Andorians might live on such a world: one that receives little enough energy from the stars for water to freeze in the middle of its tectonic plates , but perturbed enough in the changing gravity to fuel ample volcanism (for its violent and liquid oceans) in between. Tatooine from that _other franchise_ would also be such a world. Far enough out to have no volcanism, but receiving enough energy from its sun to keep what little surface water it has from condensing naturally.
The second has the planet circling the higher mass star in a perturbed-yet-stable elliptical orbit that passes between both stars. Such a planet would be small and very close to its parent star. Mercury-like, too small to hold an atmosphere except the violent blasting it's taking from solar winds, and almost certainly not habitable except _maybe_ in the case of a tidally-locked planet, where the permanent night side would be perpetually very cold. And dark.
The third has the planet circling both stars in turn in a sort of 8 pattern, passing between the stars. This orbit is perturbed as all-get-out but, mathematically, a stable orbit is possible. Just unlikely. I wouldn't expect planets that have this orbit to have much chance at habitability, but if the stars were somehow far enough apart to let the planet be anything _other_ than a Mercury, the seasonal changes would be rather horrific. *chuckle*
What this means for STO, though, is that planets around our binary systems would almost necessarily have to be in the first class of orbits, except very possibly Nukara, which might plausibly exist in the third.
/ Heh, don't get me started on the Dewa III/Mol'Rihan exploration mission.
A planet circling only one star in a binary system might not have as much trouble as you think - it depends on how far apart the stars are from each other and how heavy the stars are. At some point, the energy coming in from the second star will not contribute significantly to the overall temperature of the planet circling the first star. Say, if there was a second sun within 10 AE or so, I think Earth would still be habitable - it would only gain 1 % more energy than the lone sun is currently delivering. That's not insignfiicant (16 ° C average surface temperature might rise to 19 ° C average surface temperature), but it certainly is within the range of life to form.
I think tidally locked planets (locked to the star= might also be an interesting topic - how would such planets really look like? Assuming they are heavy enough to support an atmosphere, wouldn't that suggest strong winds, as the hot air moves to the colder area and exchanges heat?
The "dark side" might be dark, but it might not be as cold as expected - at least around the terminator. And the region around the terminator might be very volatile, but also have a lot of energy, which could help support lifeforms. What kind of life? could there be "wind-powered" life-forms, that have some kind of turbines and use the power to move across the surface to get into nutrient rich areas?
For this class of orbit, the stars would almost certainly have to be relatively far apart. But for the planetary orbit to be stable, the near star has to utterly dominate the gravity of the far star. That means some combination of a large mass (near) star, small mass (far) star, small mass planet, and proximity to the near star. Apparently the combination of circumstances where the planet doesn't get ejected is somewhat constrained. It's unlikely for any such planet to be anything but a small, scorched, atmosphere-less (or near enough) rock.
Mercury and Venus are near enough tidally locked as to give us a pretty good idea of what would happen at both extremes.
Mostly only if the planet had an atmosphere to diffuse radiated heat. In Mercury's case, even at the terminator, if you're in the sun, you have the same problem you have if you were, say, sharing Mercury's orbit. If you're in the shade, even _local_ shade, you're dealing with deep space cold. Or both, if you were, say, half in and half out of the shade. At best, the soles of your feet could be comfy (if you found a spot where the low angle of the sun and ground conduction balanced out radiation of heat into space.)
A Venus-like is another story altogether (which I _think_ is too massive for the second class of stable orbits). The thing that makes Venus strange is how dense its atmosphere is. Even the night side is hot enough to melt lead. Here, the best bet is probably the inflatable city in that cozy pocket of air pressure and temp about 50kms up. Normal earth air would float quite readily there, with enough buoyancy to support a self-sustaining city, inside the air bag, in some comfort. If we could only get one there.
The problem with planets as small as Mercury, or even bodies as large as our Moon and Mars, they're still too small to hold much of an atmosphere. Mercury and our Moon only have an atmosphere of hydrogen at all from what sticks around (temporarily) from solar winds. Both are detectable, but basically negligible. Mars has a thin one mostly from volcanism, but loses it to space almost as quickly.
Category 2b: The planet orbits the smaller star and the smaller star has a wide and reasonably circular orbit around the larger star. In this case, there are two possible ways to have the planet be habitable.
Cat 2b1: The planet is far enough from the larger star to get most of it's light from the small star. This of course would mean the orbit around the small star would be rather small, and the small star probably a red dwarf, but those have a habitable zone too.
Cat 2b2: The combined energy from both stars adds up to enough to make it habitable even if neither is adequate on it's own.
Cat 2c: The planet orbits the larger star in that star's habitable zone, and the smaller star is too far away to be a problem. This is easier than you might think. If Jupiter and Saturn were removed and a red dwarf added to the solar system to replace them... we'd barely notice any difference to the conditions of Earth. Why? Because a red dwarf gives off far less light than the sun, AND it would be much farther away. Jupiter orbits at ~5.46 AU. At that range a red dwarf would be a bright speck. And the farther out the smaller star orbits the less effect it would have.
My character Tsin'xing
Have they? That's part of why I mentioned Sedna. [/quote]
Mostly yeah. You can confirm a pretty good estimate of the mass of our solar system through its interactions with our neighbor systems. As I understand it, what's not accounted for in our solar system has been debated/debatable, but it's looking increasingly likely that the 'many pluto-like KBOs' notion is the right one. Since we've been finding so many and all.
According to the discussion/article about a paper I read several years ago (I think on Universe Today, but I'm not sure, it might have been BAUT), the three possibilities I listed were the only ones mathematically solved/solveable to have orbits that would not eventually eject a planet of any size in question.
The problem is that a second star of any size _will_ perturb a planet's orbit. A wide, elliptical orbit around a binary star pair is the most likely, followed (distantly) by the figure-8 (but the possibilities of habitability were considered remote), followed somewhat by a very restricted solution for a planet orbiting a single star of a pair, and IIRC, that required one massive star, one small/distant star, and a small planet pretty close in to the massive star.
Your other few possibilities are certainly possible geometric arrangements, but apparently didn't work out mathematically. That said, I'll freely admit I made no attempt (nor would if I could) to verify the math. As far as STO's concerned, it's probably not that important.
I still want to noogie someone, hard, over the profoundly wrong science officer comments on the discover Dewa III/Mol'Rihan quest. *rueful chuckle* If I was allowed to suggest rewrites to some of those....
My character Tsin'xing
Not a star. I agree both are massive balls of mostly hydrogen, both have gravity, and the equations are the same. But they're classified differently for a reason and the distinctions are important. How a second star and a gas giant behave in a star system are slightly different, too, and that difference matters to what might and probably can't be habitable.
But that's entirely been my point earlier. There probably _isn't_ a massive object like a brown dwarf or gas giant in or beyond our KBO belt (off in the Oort Cloud somewhere, or even beyond) because neither the best-fit gravitational model we know of for our solar system, nor our interactions with neighboring systems in our galaxy doesn't predict the existence of one. They _could_ be wrong - certainly, they'll be improved - but it's unlikely that they're very wrong. They're sufficiently predictive for confidence, here.
Yes, all this is true, but what I'm saying is that the math (apparently) shows that a large mass planet can't have a stable 0-shaped orbit around a single binary star without getting ejected outright or the orbit perturbing enough to eventually collide with that star. Let alone form at all. If there _is_ a stable orbit of that type that has been mathematically shown to exist, or observed to exist, it's a recent development and I've yet to hear of it. The only stable orbit I know of that has been mathematically shown to be _possible_ for an 0-shaped orbit through a binary pair is a small rocky-terrestrial-massed object very close in to the red giant of the pair, in a relatively limited set of circumstances.
Think of it this way. Both a close-in gas giant, or a second star, moves the barycenter of that solar system. The gas giant even if close in, isn't likely to move the system's barycenter very far. A star, by definition being much more massive than a gas giant, has a proportionally greater effect. And if the companion star is close enough in (inversely to the square of the distance), or sufficiently massive in its own right, it can move the barycenter outside of the high-mass star itself.
That has a profound effect on orbits. Far enough out, a planet will orbit the barycenter of the star pair in a great big ellipse, but basically treat the whole thing like a single point source of gravity (or near enough to not matter much). The vector force of gravity will always basically be towards the barycenter (or, again, near enough to not matter much). The perturbations of there actually being two stars won't be much worse than having tides of a sort, because the distance term at apogee and perigee is so much more significant. I'd expect that, given long enough, there'd be some resonance between the shape of the orbit and that of the stars around the barycenter.
If you're much closer in, and the stars are close together, the actual gravity term vectors will vary wildly depending on where you are in that orbit. This is why, for close-in star pairs, the figure-8 orbit is far more likely. Between the stars, you'll have part of the orbit where each star's gravity basically counter-acts each other. The planet, briefly, is getting ejected from the system before being recaptured by the other star's proximity.
For stars that are further apart, and a smaller planet that is much closer in and orbiting only the large star, the planetary orbit will basically be an ellipse. The lower-mass far star's gravity term will be overwhelmed by the high-mass near-star's gravity term. It'll just bend the orbit a bit. Here's the thing, though: All other terms being equal, gravity is (inversely) proportional to the _square_ of the distance, but only (directly) proportionally to individual masses, once each. Changing the distance term has a far more profound effect than changing only one of the mass terms.
One last thing, then I'd like to move on, if possible. The second and third class of orbits I've been describing, as far as I'm aware, have never been _observed_, only shown to be mathematically possible. They are, however, far more likely to be _observable_ using current techniques and technology for finding exoplanets.
Pluto-Charon's system with their four other very-low-mass moons in a wide orbit is a pretty slick local example of the first class of orbits around close binary stars.
Alpha Centauri has been studied for existence for exoplanets a lot because it's so close.
The two main stars(A and
Proxima orbits the pair at a ridiculous distance(15,00 au or .2 ly)... it's thought to have an orbital period of 500 millennia.... not 500 years, 500 millennia. Proxima likely has a tiny habitable zone, but anything there would have minimal impact from AB.
My character Tsin'xing