Alpha Centauri

[racerguy76]

I've been trying to recreate the 3 stars in Alpha Centauri, but I am having trouble getting Proxima to stay in an orbit that is so far away(15000AU +/-700AU). The auto orbit option trys but can never seem to "lock on".

Any suggestions?


sorry if this is the wrong section.

[Darvince]

Where is Apha Centauri?

[FiahOwl]

Alpha Centauri

[racerguy76]

Yes, my mistake. Alpha Centauri.

[Darvince]

OH. Give everything a barycenter and tell it (Proxima Centauri) to orbit that.

[racerguy76]

How can I make Proxima orbit the barycenter? When it is created it always chooses to orbit Alpha Centauri A(the first object created) and I can't seem to change that.

[Darvince]

Box select them all and balance them.

[smjjames]

I tried that and it didn't work, however, given that Proximas orbit is on the order of a million or two years, so even with the speed auto timestep is going, i'll have to observe for quite a while and 100K sim years on, Proxima shows no sign of slowing down. Then again, acceleration is slowing

Not sure what I did wrong here though.

Not that it matters much anyways because for one, the period is on the order of millions of years and trying to do planetary accretion around that at the same time would just slow US down.

Edit: After 500K years, Proxima went to 3+ light years and even though the velocity slowed slightly, no point in waiting for it to orbit, even if it has an eons long orbit.

[atomic7732]

Box select them all and balance them.

Wouldn't it make more sense to box Proxima Centauri and the barycenter, instead? Tell it to "Make Binary Orbit"

[smjjames]

I tried that, didn't work. Although it's possible that US can't handle stable orbits at those distances very well with the speeds autostep was using on green.

[vh]

it probably can. i can simulate galaxies orbiting had hundreds of millions of lightyears. stably.

slow the time step, the circle thingy is wrong sometimes.

[smjjames]

Galaxies are far more massive than stars though, and I did try a low timestep like two minutes or an hour or something, but the orbit quickly deteriorated outwards.

It's possible that I'm not doing something right, but it doesn't matter for what I'm doing anyway.

[vh]

what does being more massive have to do with whether the orbit falls apart or not.

ITS DARK MATTER'S FAULT!

no, maybe?, ^^^^^^

[smjjames]

More massive= greater gravity reach is what my logic was going.

Really though, I have no clue why it falls apart, stable trinary star systems with one that is tens to hundreds of thousands of AU away are just tricky I guess. Could be the wobbling of the main binary pair that is throwing Proxima Centauri off. Last night I had actually managed to get proxima (or rather, a mass reduced barnards star) to show an orbit with the projected path, but that didn't stick for very long.

Having a planet orbit a star at tens of thousands of AU away works fine, although too much system wobble might throw that off over time.

Dan might know whats up with it.

Edit: OR maybe it's the order I'm doing it?

[deoxy99]

Or maybe it's because your version of the program has been cursed!

On a serious note, I have nothing to say here.

[smjjames]

Or maybe it's because your version of the program has been cursed!

On a serious note, I have nothing to say here.

Are you saying that because I'm complaining too much? Seriously though, it would help if people said that it also happens to them or not as far as what I've posted.

Also, I've done a reinstall a few times, so technically that should uncurse it if there were any problems with it, and I have the latest version.

[deoxy99]

No sense of humor much?