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Well, I guess it's time for me to step into the Addons game
Back then, I considered myself incapable of making addons and thus, contributing to Celestia's content. But this all changes now.
I'll be making a few addons, fictional or realistic, just to express my creativity, and to populate certain system that are not given any mentions
That being said, I'll start with black holes, and I may work mostly on black holes because they are my favorite objects in the Universe.

So, without further ado, I present to you my first ever black hole addon, and my first ever proper addon: Terminus!

About Terminus:
Terminus is a fictional black hole that I made for a concept story I am not finished with, but I may be fleshing it out. Terminus is a 5 Solar Mass black hole, and thus, among the smallest black holes. But it is rapidly growing, and is quiet active in its consumption of matter, thus making it a microquasar. Sometime in the near future, the Theosophos Civiliation, one of the major groups of humans from Earth who escaped Earth after the Sun became a red giant and consumed it, arrived at a stellar system, and Terminus just so happens to be among the nearest objects. Thanks to their nano digistruction technology, and some genetics, they flourished and became an empire in the system itself.

Initially relying on Hyperfusion reactors, it was discovered that even they could no longer supply the empire's growing energy need, and as such, the empire looked for ways to find a suitable source of energy. The physicists of the empire suggested that the nearby black hole, initially cataloged as Lafuentenaria X-15 as a possibly infinite source of power for many digits of years, and as such, they plan to make a giant Black Hole Power Generator the size of Jupiter to cover Lafuentenaria X-15, make it undergo super-radiant scattering and use its power to give energy to the empire, and thus satisfying their energy needs.

The name Terminus came about because at some point, the empire solved the Information Paradox, and decided that Lafuentenaria X-15 should also be the ultimate archive of everything under the Sun(Or under the universe, rather), and so they dumped all their information there, copies and all, and installed the most powerful AI in history to be its "curator". Initially named BIAS or Black Hole Infinite Akashic Searcher, it adopted the name of "Terminus" after being pulled to the singularity, and with all the information pixels surrounding it, gained singularity awareness, and decided that all things must end and return to the Singularity once more. It also considered itself as the Black Hole, rather than the AI inhabiting it at the singularity, stating that it wants to end all things and return them to the Singularity because it claims that "It is the nature of black holes".


Of course, many of the things in there contradict physics, and in real life, the Information Paradox isn't solved yet. but bear with me on this one. Also, don't ask me how the Theosophos Empire evaded all the accretion disk particles, jet particles and radiation in making the Black Hole Power Generator. I haven't fleshed it out yet.

Well anyway, here it is:




Credits to SVision for allowing me to use his data from his released addons to make Terminus possible, and for encouraging me to make Terminus better. You're truly the best at making Black Holes, and I am willing to learn more from you soon. Thank you for making this black hole addon possible!

Note: I removed the initial release version, and while I posted the current version in this topic, in order to not confuse would be downloaders, I'll reupload the current version here to replace the initial release version.

We always need more Black Hole addons!

Anthony_B_Russo10 wrote:We always need more Black Hole addons!

Yup we do! However, I also need to refine my own skills as well, since my black hole making skills are still inferior to SVision's for the moment. But I am doing my best

Nice! I haven't downloaded it yet though.

Yesterday, the initial addon release was revealed to have several errors, which I didn't notice but SevenSpheres did. He pointed it out to me, and I tried to fix it but to no avail. Thankfully SVision came and found out the problem relatively quickly, and fixed it. As such, I'm grateful to give him proper and due credit as I unveil the fully fixed and official version of Terminus:

In real life, this may be impossible, due to the current physics of compact stars. However, this is a hypothetical black hole that is absolutely only 1 solar mass. If such black holes exist, they would be the smallest black holes ever, not counting the micro black holes. Well anyway, here it is:

Addentum(February 9, 2020, 6:32): I forgot to give credit to Vision on this one when I made this post. So, I'll say it now: Thanks to Vision for his awesome models and textures which I have used to the best of my ability and understanding on these black holes. They're awesome, as always

Lafuente_Astronomy, I notice that the stars in some of your screenshots are rendered as large, fuzzy circles. If you remember I had a...long discussion...with Anthony about this in the Discord, and eventually found out that this is caused by using an outdated render path ("Basic" or "Multitexture"). You can cycle through render paths with Ctrl+V (you want "OpenGL 2.0"). In Celestia 1.7.0 the old render paths have been removed, so this is no longer a problem.

That said, good work on these addons! The accretion disk of the Solar Mass Black Hole is now the brightest thing in the sky...

SevenSpheres wrote:I notice that the stars in some of your screenshots are rendered as large, fuzzy circles. If you remember I had a...long discussion...with Anthony about this in the Discord, and eventually found out that this is caused by using an outdated render path ("Basic" or "Multitexture"). You can cycle through render paths with Ctrl+V (you want "OpenGL 2.0"). In Celestia 1.7.0 the old render paths have been removed, so this is no longer a problem.

Yeah. I'm using an older version of Celestia 1.7.0, and I'm just gonna wait for the next snapshot, if ever onetwothree releases it. Also, just to be sure, have you checked it for any displaced objects? I did a checking myself, and it appears that all objects are in place but I could be missing one.

SevenSpheres wrote:That said, good work on these addons! The accretion disk of the Solar Mass Black Hole is now the brightest thing in the sky...

Thanks You! As for the brightness, It's because by default, Vision's objects have a brightness of -1 if you check the files, and I just so happened to have placed it around 4.26 LY, almost the same distance as Alpha Centauri. We wouldn't exactly know how a real black hole would look like from that distance, since the nearest one is around 3000+ light years. I'll just keep that as it is, since I would consider it a microquasar

Lafuente_Astronomy wrote:Yeah. I'm using an older version of Celestia 1.7.0, and I'm just gonna wait for the next snapshot, if ever onetwothree releases it.

Wait...you're seeing the fuzzy stars in 1.7.0? Since 1.7.0 only has the OpenGL 2.0 render path, this seems to be a new bug.

Lafuente_Astronomy wrote:Also, just to be sure, have you checked it for any displaced objects? I did a checking myself, and it appears that all objects are in place but I could be missing one.

Everything's fine in this one.

SevenSpheres wrote:Wait...you're seeing the fuzzy stars in 1.7.0? Since 1.7.0 only has the OpenGL 2.0 render path, this seems to be a new bug.

Yup. That's in my 1.7.0.

SevenSpheres wrote:Everything's fine in this one.

Phew. I guess I can continue making new ones

Off topic:
SevenSpheres, I only notices that bug in the one arc posted to the discord that broke when in Celestia.

And that black hole is cool Lafuente!

Anthony_B_Russo10 wrote:And that black hole is cool Lafuente!

And as such, I intend to continue making more. Thanks a lot

Added after 8 minutes 12 seconds:
A hint for my next release. Could you guess what that is?

The members over at Discord have guessed it correctly: It's Cygnus X-1!

This is my third addon, and FIRST ever real black hole addon. It suits it perfectly because Cygnus X-1 is the first object that was suspected of being a black hole, and is the first object to be accepted and confirmed as such.

Credits to Martin Charest (Cham) For Version 1 and Luigi C for Version 2, especially for the data on the barycenter and the objects in question. Credits to Vision for his awesome models and textures that I managed to make compatible to the best of my ability and understanding with the data of the original addon, and all its components. As always, thank you for your encouragement. And credits to SevenSpheres for pinpointing to me a minor error which has since been fixed! Thank you all!

Cygnus X-1 looks much better with Vision's models! Also, a last-minute fix suggested by me removed this bug, so that's another improvement!

SevenSpheres wrote:Cygnus X-1 looks much better with Vision's models!

I agree! Vision really made his own models and textures best suited for black holes. And I'm thankful he allowed me to use his assets in making my own black holes. If Vision's the Black Hole Master, then I'm his student, learning how to make black hole addons so that one day I'll be a Black Hole Master myself

SevenSpheres wrote:Also, a last-minute fix suggested by me removed this bug, so that's another improvement!

As always, the community should help one another when making addons for Celestia. Thanks for your help!

Allow me to release 2 different black holes in one post

1: The Black Hole A0620-00.
A0620-00, also known as V616 Mon, is the nearest black hole to us, at an estimated distance of either 3000 LY or 5400 LY. I use the nearest one, and as such, its distance in Celestia is 3000 LY. If we are to use the high end however, then we would have another black hole competing for the title of nearest black hole in the object called GRS 1124-683. A0620-00 is a binary system with the black hole being the primary, and the secondary being a K5 V main sequence star, that has been elongated due to the gravitational pull of the black hole. What's not to say that it is actually accreting and feeding material off from the star in an act of cosmic cannibalization? If we are to explore the galaxy in the future and develop warp-drive engines, if ever, then this black hole can become our stepping stone to understanding black holes further from up close.



2: The Black Hole Cygnus X-3.
This black hole was suggested to me by Gurren Lagann in the Discord Server, and until he mentioned it, I didn't even knew it existed! Anyway, Cygnus X-3 is a distant "twin" of Cygnus X-1, being around 24135.57 LY away from us, I said "twin" because they are both in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan, are part of binary systems, their companions are very hot blue stars(Or in the case of Cygnus X-3, a Wolf-Rayet star.), and they themselves, are around almost the same mass range, at around 14-16 Solar Masses, though Cygnus X-3 is the less massive of the 2. As such, both of them have seemingly similar appearances, and there is little variation between them.




(Note: Nevermind the distance in the images of Cygnus X-3. It was corrected after I noticed that I accidentally overestimated the distance due to mistaking 7400 pc as being 7400 kpc.
Well, anyway, here they are:

Added after 2 minutes 55 seconds:
Once again, if there are any problems or bugs, let me know, and I'll do my best to fix them!

Addentum 1: Credits to pedro_jg for giving me the actual correct Inclinations and AscendingNodes for the two black holes. The files are now reuploaded with the corrections. I also gave small increases to the accretion disk components of Cygnus X-3, since the planar texture appears to have exceeded them, and it does not look good.

Addentum 2: Credits to SevenSpheres for letting me know that the correct Inclination and AscendingNodes data should also extend to the UniformRotation of all objects. As a result, the objects should be fully corrected now.

Addentum 3: Credits to SevenSpheres and LukeCEL for letting me know a problem with the ArgOfPericenter, and having it added to the UniformRotation block as MeridianAngle. All things, if ever, should be fixed by then. If there are any problems after this, I'll do a remake after analyzing the problem, and then learning new techniques on how to make my black holes and improving them. As such, I'll refocus on making more addons

Hello everyone! Sorry for more than a week of not having made any black holes. My classes went in the way, as well as playing World of Warships, but I do have some news for you.

In my research for more black holes for me to make in Celestia, I came across this catalog: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0067-0049/222/2/15/pdf

The paper, entitled "WATCHDOG: A COMPREHENSIVE ALL-SKY DATABASE OF GALACTIC BLACK HOLE X-RAY BINARIES" is a catalog that consists of black hole x-ray binaries that are present in either the Milky Way or Magellanic Clouds

So far, the paper, while stating that it had observed 132 such objects, it only presents a sample of 77 of them, which is enough for me to work upon, and some of them may already have been created either by me or SVision earlier, so the actual number of objects created may be fewer. Do remember, that the actual number of black holes in the Milky Way alone amount to some hundreds of millions, so this entire catalog is but a small drop of the total population. It will take some time due to the complicated nature of how SVision's black holes are arranged, but I hope that I can be capable of doing this task.

May you all have a good day

SVision also found and shared to me this catalog as well: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.0544.pdf

Well, using that and WATCHDOG, I will just make a unified and singular catalog using both of the catalog's data. That way, there will be a singular file for them. It also has some non-black hole X-ray objects as well but insofar as I'm concerned, I'll only deal with the black holes in the catalogs

Here are the first 4 black hole members of the WATCHDOG Catalog:
WATCHDOG 1:
WATCHDOG 2:
WATCHDOG 3:
WATCHDOG 4:

Alright! My first major black hole addon release in weeks, and the first supermassive black hole I've ever made: 3C 273, otherwise known as the first identified Quasar and one of the earliest objects to be identified as such.

Actually, I made this earlier but due to initial problems, I stopped working on it. However, thanks to Gurren's interest in creating the object, not knowing that I already did it, I gave him my file, and he made great strides in it. Then SevenSpheres came over and made more additional fixes to it, and as such, 3C 273 is at is fullest, as it should be. For reference, and to make use of the immense render distance limit of 100 GLY, use this commit here: viewtopic.php?p=143466#p143466

Credits to SVision(As always), for all the materials (textures, meshes, STC, SSC, etc) needed to make the black hole, Gurren Lagann for making the first fixes, and SevenSpheres for making the second fixes. But as always, any hidden bug or problem that is in the object can be notified and fixed by yours truly in a "third, fourth, fifth and so on" fixes





Well anyway, here it is:

Addentum 1:
Corrected the Temperature of the Black Hole to 0.00000000000000000936 K. Now that's more accurate

Addentum 2:
As suggested by SevenSpheres and TTarrants, I added a HIP index to 3C 273. I also gave it its correct Inclination, so that it is no longer 90 degrees, but is rather leaning at around 37.51 degrees, as it originally does. If you noticed, the jets are now absent, because I have given it the correct radius of 60 kpc, and somehow, it is not rendered as a result. This is just temporary, so do not worry. I have already sent SVision my concerns with the jet and I will await his reply soon. Once the solution comes out, I'll let you all know

Added after 7 minutes 11 seconds:
PS: Unlike my previous black holes, the "Accretion Disk" in the STC file is noticeably absent. It was actually a change by Gurren Lagann which I agreed with, because as noted by SVision in "Pictures From Celestia", the planar texture used for the disk is too "hard-looking", and thus, should be solved or fixed in a way. Here's what he said:

SVision wrote:Lafuente_Astronomy, well done
But then there's gonna be something to come up with a disc rendering...
You can see they're "hard". We'll have to think about how to fix it later .

I will await the newer and better planar textures for the Accretion Disks from SVision, and as such, once they are released, I will correct all my prior releases and this one with them, so that they would look much better and more realistic