Celestia Forums

I thought I might try using Celestia to have a look at the Pistol Star from a hypothetical Pluto in orbit around it
(not that such a planet would have time to form);
from here
http://www.tim-thompson.com/bright-stars.html
I got the visual absolute magnitude (high estimate) as -10.4
and the bolometric absolute magnitude as -13.3;
making a model of the star using the bolometric figure first (which includes UV) I got a temperature for Hypothetical Pistol/Pluto of 5500K;

then making a model of the star using the visual absolute magnitude I got the apparent brightness as magnitude-34.53, much brighter than the Sun as seen from Earth...

I don't know how reliable these figures are, as the Celestia simulator does all the calculations itself; but it looks good; the closest stellar type in this program is class O so that is what I described it as.
The diameter of the Pistol star is said to be about 2AU so Celestia has got that about right; how accurate is the simulator at these excessive values I wonder?

the files;

810000 "Pistol Star"
{
RA 265.75 #approx
Dec -28.8153
Distance 15575.51 #too close, but about as far away as I could get it
SpectralType "O"
AbsMag -10.4
}

"Pistol-Pluto" "Pistol Star"
{
Texture "pluto-lok.*"
SpecularTexture "pluto-lok-spec.*"
SpecularColor [ 0.135 0.12 0.08 ]
SpecularPower 9.5

Radius 1151

CustomOrbit "pluto"
EllipticalOrbit
{
Period 248.54
SemiMajorAxis 39.48168677
Eccentricity 0.24880766
Inclination 17.14175
AscendingNode 110.30347
LongOfPericenter 224.06776
MeanLongitude 238.92881
}

RotationPeriod 153.293904
Obliquity 115.60
EquatorAscendingNode 228.34
RotationOffset 320.75

Albedo 0.55
}

this image might be visible for a while until 50 megs find out I am remote linking...

Well, I think that at this temperature, all the planet's surface should be a red hot melted crust. The vulcan texture should be better.

Yowzer. That's pretty impressive...

Pity you can't do volumetric nebulae in Celestia, it'd look pretty nifty with all its nebulosity around it.

I'd like to thank you for the link. It was very interesting.
Quite impressive screenshot.

Just an observation:
If we use a mass greater than 85 solar masses for Pistol Star, then your "Pistol-Pluto" would have a period smaller than 27 years, considering a semi-major axis of 39.5 A.U.