Celestia Forums

I'm particularly interested in using Celestia to visualize exoplanets and extrasolar systems. I've searched and found threads referring to the extrasolar.ssc file, but as yet have not found any sort of 'home base' for those focusing on extrasolar activities, or tutorials on how to make the extrasolar data work for me. (I am also quite new, so I am sure there's a place I've not yet found).

Can anyone point the way? Is there any page out there that is a clearing-house for extrasolar Celestia talk or work, or a particular sub-forum here where discussion of it has been most prevalent or would be most appropriate?

My thanks,

- Heath

Heath,

Exactly what are your interests?
How would you want to use the data?

I expect most of the relevant discussion here would be in the "Physics and Astronomy" forum, although some are in the Developer forum. You can use the Forum's Search page to look for all the postings containing the word
exoplanet

Of course, there have been quite a few professional papers written analyzing the original data. arxiv.org is good public source of relevant literature.

Celestia's catalogs of exoplanets and associated stars are entirely the work of a single person. Grant Hutchison (who doesn't visit the Forum often) keeps them regularly updated using the catalogs described in the file. STC and SSC catalog files are plain text and can be read or edited with any text editor (e.g. Notepad or emacs).

The surface textures used in exoplanets.ssc, however, were created by "chaos syndrome" based on papers by Sudarsky, et al. See, for example, the forum post http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... 6094#76094

Selden; thanks for the info!

selden wrote:Heath,
Exactly what are your interests?
How would you want to use the data?

I am particularly interested in that area between knowledge and imagination. I am a hobbyist, but also being a librarian, I enjoy deep research. After reading some of the material in the Springer-Verlag 'Advances in Astrobiology' series and other papers, I doubt there will ever be a time again when I am not interested in just about every aspect of extrasolar systems.

I enjoy texturing, and am going to be trying some 'plausible retexturings' of various planets; first poor Pluto and Charon, blending the Hubble results with JPL's Seal & Rawlings imaginings and fleshing them out, and then moving on to Eris, Sedna and Quaoar. I had a hard time finding Eris, as it's still cataloged as 2003 UB313!

And then, onwards to the exoplanets, ideally blending in and updating any imaginings with new data and imagery as it is gathered. Pluto and Charon will be my tests for this strategy; from a fair distance they should look about the same as the Hubble shots; from medium range the Seal/Rawlings visualizations; and from close up my own textures becoming clear.

Celestia's catalogs of exoplanets and associated stars are entirely the work of a single person. Grant Hutchison (who doesn't visit the Forum often) keeps them regularly updated using the catalogs described in the file. STC and SSC catalog files are plain text and can be read or edited with any text editor (e.g. Notepad or emacs).

Right now I'd settle just for being able to navigate to one! I guess I should just crawl through the .ssc and type in some likely suspects. So far my attempts to do that using names of systems found in articles isn't working.

The surface textures used in exoplanets.ssc, however, were created by "chaos syndrome" based on papers by Sudarsky, et al. See, for example, the forum post http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... 6094#76094

I did see this thread; I will search for more discussion from the time chaos syndrome was working; eventually I'll likely try my hand at it. Once I can reliably navigate to them.

It's presumptuous to wonder aloud, but I almost wonder if the subtopic of Extrasolar Systems and Astrobiology will eventually warrant its own subforum here. It would allow the astronomy behind it all to brush shoulders with those of us equally interested in the texturing and imaging aspects. Eventually I'd love to be able to keep pace with the science, which would mean that mere hours after COROT images the surface of the first extrasolar rocky planet around a viable star, we'd have it visualized in Celestia...

- Heath

Heath,

If you're running Celestia on a Windows system, then you can use the menu "Navigation/Star Browser..."
One of its options is to list the stars with planets.

With any version of Celestia, you should be able to specify one of the names of a star with planets. If it's a star that's in the Hipparcos catalog, for example, you can type
<return>
HIP<space><number>
<return>
g
to visit the system. In general, stars defined only in the binary file stars.dat are not listed by the tab-completion code (there are too many of them), so don't give up because comparable names aren't shown while you're typing one of the names.

Otherwise, as you say, looking at exoplanets.ssc will reveal the planets and starnames that Grant specified, while exoplanets.stc defines the stars that don't have Hipparcos catalog numbers.

If the topic of exoplanets becomes popular enough, it might be possible to persuade someone to create a separate forum for it. At the moment, though, it does seem to be just a little too specialized a topic. I'd suggest adding appropriate comments to this thread as your investigation proceeds. That way they'll be relatively easy to locate.

You'd probably want to check out this thread which was when I was actively creating/maintaining the new texture system. BTW don't bother downloading the add-on in that thread: it is now incorporated in Celestia.

The philosophy was to make the textures generic and keep the download size small, rather than to make artistic masterpieces, since we don't actually have all that much data.

I'm currently planning another exoplanets add-on to incorporate some of the known multiple-star systems which aren't implemented, and include some astrometric data (e.g. Epsilon Eridani orbit). A previous attempt at this (not particularly comprehensive, and some of the data are now out-of-date) can be found here.

[Selden; I'm on OS X; but I've now gotten the hang of finding these worlds in the .ssc and bookmarking them once I get there. ]

chaos syndrome wrote:You'd probably want to check out this thread
which was when I was actively creating/maintaining the new texture system.

You make a great case for keeping the designs minimalist, both in number and form. And the glowing clouds on the night side took a moment for me to figure out, but they are truly brilliant! This is great work, & I'm honored to speak with you about it.

I admit to being drawn towards texturing as an imaginative exercise, which I already know will eventually draw fire. I figure I strike a balance; I'm not hard science, but I'm also not making Star Wars galaxy add-ons. Heh. Still, my defense is that merging speculation with the known data, always updating in the direction of the known, will be a goal for me.

Along those lines, I stumbled across an intriguing mystery while working on my Pluto.

'Pluto Central' hosted on shatters.net ... I call it a mystery because the resulting controversial Pluto texture is no longer found, and because I can't find the original heated debate. It looks from the small rendering that a blending of the Hubble albedo map and a speculative surface was what was carried out. So, it's good to know I am not the first. I'd love to be able to see the work, though.

Feel free to update to this thread as well, as you work on exoplanetary material; I will also.

Thanks,

- Heath

[Update: I've found at least one thread that goes all around the block on this question. Buried within is an intriguing idea; that one way to pay proper homage to the likely detailing of a world is to stick, in one's retexturing, to material found on those worlds we know of which are most similar. [In this thread, detailing Pluto with surface detail from Triton, as it's most similar to what we know of Pluto, is the example.] I can certainly get behind this idea. It opens interesting possibilities for extrasolar planets and the texturing of gas giants using material from our own solar system.]

[I myself don't disagree with the idea that the standard distribution should include the imagery available via science first and foremost. But, the filling-in of Mercury makes for an interesting piece of the puzzle.]

thread on Pluto...

- Heath

Heath,

I don't know if you've been to NASA's astrobiology site. It is chock full of great information. It's here -> http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/

Also, Astrobiology Magazine, linked through NASA is here -> http://www.astrobio.net/news/index.php

Also, Margaret Turnbull made a short list on the best bets for (relatively) nearby habitable stars. Her site is http://skye.as.arizona.edu/~turnbull/

Plus her paper is a very good read...
http://skye.as.arizona.edu/~turnbull/HabCat.pdf

buggs_moran wrote:I don't know if you've been to NASA's astrobiology site. It is chock full of great information. It's here -> http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/

Some great resources! I had seen but forgotten astrobio magazine. Thanks!

I have been working on an alternate 2k Class 1 Giant. It retains the color layout of the existing defaults made by chaos syndrome but adds cloud detail drawn from a 6k Jupiter.

http://www.wholesignal.com/celestia/exo1-mod.jpg

I am sure I will make these available when I have the whole set. My intent is to preserve all the color info in the originals and only pop the detail a bit using actual solar system reference.

I also finished an alternate asteroid.jpg texture, which is awaiting approval (and probably reclassification) in the Motherlode. This was done not so much for the benefit of asteroids as for the many and future distant objects which get textured with that tile by default (such as Eris, Sedna, and rocky extrasolars).

http://www.wholesignal.com/celestia/alt-asteroid/

The more I look at those mysterious blobs which are Pluto and Charon the harder it is to think of what in the world that high contrast may be. If the white on Charon is, say, ice... then what in the world could be so black? Uncovered rock? subsurface flash-frozen water? Who knows.

- Heath

hand's off. pluto's mine.

PlutonianEmpire wrote:hand's off. pluto's mine.

Heh.

A gift for you, then, My Liege. A LoK-preserving subtle crater-pocking of Pluto and Charon. (The Triton-blend version will take awhile.)

http://www.wholesignal.com/celestia/PlutoCharon/pluto-charon-lok-shaded-01.jpg

http://www.wholesignal.com/celestia/PlutoCharon/pluto-charon-lok-shaded-02.jpg

(I'll put them through the Motherlode later today.)

Happy New Year, Pluto. You'll always be a planet to me.


- Heath

Heath,

Your gas-giant cloud cover (posted in the Celestia pictures thread) looks to be a great start! One of the things that seem to be missing at this point are small swirls representing storms.

selden wrote:Your gas-giant cloud cover (posted in the Celestia pictures thread) looks to be a great start! One of the things that seem to be missing at this point are small swirls representing storms.

True enough. It's the rough form, but not yet detailed as i would like. Quite a bit of it is procedural, and I am going to see how much of the whorls I can coax out of that process first, but it will be slower going. Glad you enjoyed it, though. More to come.

- Heath

Very nice textures. I eagerly await their download into my computer.

Hungry4info wrote:Very nice textures. I eagerly await their download into my computer.

Thanks! Actually, the original alternate asteroid texture has not shown up on Motherlode, which has me hesitating to try and submit my other things yet. I may have mis-categorized it (Fiction) as it wasn't meant solely for Asteroids but for the extrasolar & Kuiper objects it textures.. at any rate, I may just make my packages available through this thread or something. Soon.

- Heath