Celestia Forums

I was plugging Celestia on a newsgroup, describing my fumbling attempts at manual navigation. I suggested some methods. (e.g., learn how to get back to Sol from Deneb and Betelgeuse, and you're pretty much set.)

Someone suggested that actual star-travelers would probably use PULSARS as navigation markers. God's GPS system. Line up two or three, and you'd know where you are.

SO . . . it might be neat to put in an optional object: Pulsars. They'd appear as a little blinking blue circle.

Indeed, the plaques on the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft have the position of our Solar System marked against a collection of pulsars. It was done so that any spacefaring entities chancing upon these craft could find where it came from. I think in reality by the time these spacecraft have moved the many light years from us so that a map is needed, the stars and pulsars will have moved in their own orbits and the map will be out of date. Sigh...

Pulsars are tiny and remote, so visually they appear very faint from most places in the galaxy. They are best detected by radio. That's how the first was found in 1967. But some are bright enough to appear like ordinary faint stars (e.g., the Crab pulsar). These ones tend to be younger and still inside their supernova remnant nebulae (ah, the nebula problem again... ). As to what the pulsar itself looks like, that needs a lot of thought. Apart from the basic neutron star itself, there are extras like the magnetic polar beams, the plasma corona and possible 'starquake' cracks on its surface. Their appearance is a lot more open to speculation and imagination than ordinary stars and planets.

I would have thought some pulsars might be bright enough to be in the original Hipparcos survey. However, two pulsars are known to be accompanied by planets: PSR 1257+12 and PSR B1620-26, but they aren't yet included in the Celestia Extrasolar Systems list. I guess this means the pulsars didn't make it through like ordinary stars.

See http://www.jtwinc.com/Extrasolar/mainframes.html for more info on those planets.

I hadn't thought of the associated nebula at all. (Celestia needs nebula anyway! Even if they're flat-backed "props!")

I was thinking of a "radio source overlay" that would show pulsars, and perhaps other radio-objects.

I have always found those two systems intensely interesting if for no other reason than the interpretations of Lynette Cook
http://extrasolar.spaceart.org/extraso3.html

I've been thinking that after comet tails have been implemented there may be some way to use the same effects to create pulsars and possibly their planets in a way shown in Cook's paintings. Would be cool.