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Author Topic: Question involving Brown Dwarfs, Binary Star Systems and Barycenters  (Read 2128 times)

HaitchCueZed

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I wanted to make a binary star system where there's a Red Dwarf and a Brown Dwarf orbiting it from a relatively far distance. But, I have found a couple of problems. The first problem was with the Brown Dwarf, I checked the characteristics of the star and I noticed it didn't have a luminosity setting unlike my Red Dwarf, I found this to be annoying because it meant that I couldn't really determine what the Goldilocks zone is for that star, unlike the Red Dwarf, which had luminosity. I'm not sure if it's because the Brown Dwarfs are seen as really hot Gas Giants in the game or not. Would it be possible to add the feature in future updates?

Also, I had another problem with Binary Star orbits. I wanted to adjust the orbit of the brown dwarf so it could interact with the Red Dwarf system every few hundred years. But, I couldn't find a way to adjust its semi-major axis or its eccentricity. The options are there but they're grayed out (I also noticed that if you place planets when the game is paused you couldn't adjust their semi-major axis which I found to be bizarre), regardless if the game is paused or not. Would such a feature be included in the future?

Also, do barycenters exist in the game? I've had interesting ideas of twin planets orbiting each other, but I like to be bizarrely specific and I would like some kind of way to set a spot in the sandbox as a barycenter that two or more similar bodies orbit around. This would also be cool for stars as I know of a few examples of Binary Star systems that have very interesting barycenter orbits, like two orbits that shape a car tire or a doughnut.

So far, I'm loving this game and I have so many ideas for complicated systems and it would be nice if these features exist in the future. Can wait for what comes in store in the future. I'm loving the tidal heating and Roche limits so far.

Physics_Hacker

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Re: Question involving Brown Dwarfs, Binary Star Systems and Barycenters
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2016, 04:54:20 PM »
Brown dwarves have no luminosity, true, though I'm not sure why, though they do have other problems such as not casting light or giving any heat whatsoever to any orbiting planets (right now the only heating planets get is from tidal heating rather than infrared)

Adjusting orbital properties for circumbinary/trinary/ect. orbits isn't in the game right now, so if you want, I've been doing a lot of this type of thing so I could for you if you would just give some approximate values for things like the semi-major axis.

Barycenters do exist, use the ctrl key and left-click-drag over the objects you want a barycenter for, then when small properties windows pop up on the side, click one and it'll bring up a multiple bodies menu where one of the options is to give a barycenter.

They might eventually, I think the devs are working on pretty much everything that's half-done right now which this is a prime example of, except the brown dwarves...I don't know if they're working on those.