May/June 2011 Lite Challenge Entry - Guinevere II-G Survey

[walterful]

Curse you and your wet blanketry, Omnigeek. But thanks.

Actually, it's as good a time as any to get the cold science down. Last night, I stripped away all of the display data to rework the important bits, so I might as well fold this in too. I had used some random online orbital data calculator and that's where I had gotten my numbers (the star was something in a class F at 2.65 solar masses, btw); and as we all know, there is no false information on the interwebs . Really, I was just lazy and didn't bother to get a second opinion, or question my own sciencing.

And yeah, forget the window; guess I should go with a screen since that's really the only way to get a constrained field of view that would allow for a scene this populated. Actually, since it's in the future, nothing to say it can't be both a window AND a viewscreen.

### LATEST WIP ###

[Omnigeek6]

Curse you and your wet blanketry, Omnigeek. But thanks.

Actually, it's as good a time as any to get the cold science down. Last night, I stripped away all of the display data to rework the important bits, so I might as well fold this in too. I had used some random online orbital data calculator and that's where I had gotten my numbers (the star was something in a class F at 2.65 solar masses, btw); and as we all know, there is no false information on the interwebs . Really, I was just lazy and didn't bother to get a second opinion, or question my own sciencing.

And yeah, forget the window; guess I should go with a screen since that's really the only way to get a constrained field of view that would allow for a scene this populated. Actually, since it's in the future, nothing to say it can't be both a window AND a viewscreen.

### LATEST WIP ###

Glad to know I didn't come off as TOO annoying... XP

A 2.65 solar mass star sounds about right for the orbital period, although F class sounds a bit cool. My calculations gave me a temperature of about 10,000 Kelvins, which would be an A0 or B9. It's possible the star in the calculations you used was slightly off the main sequence.

Incidentally, I highly recommend using Universe Sandbox for creating realistic planetary systems (You can find it on Steam. I'm not sure what the price is, since I bought it before the Steam release, but probably between $10 and $20).
My planetary systems are all made using a combination of Universe Sandbox, Wikipedia, Gimp, and occasionally Wilbur (a Fractal Terrain generator).
I've also got a little tip for calculating the characteristics of your stars: for a star on the main sequence, these three equations should approximate its traits:

M= mass (solar masses)
L= luminosity (suns)
R= radii (suns. 1 sun= 0.695 M km)
T= temperature (suns. 1 sun= 5778 k)

L=M^3.9 R=M^0.8 T= (L/R^2)^.25
Simplified, the last equation is T=M^0.575

By the way, I'd like to ask some advice from you: how did you make the gorgeous cloud map on Garland. Don't worry, I won't use the tip against you in this contest, I'm too far in.

[walterful]

This is where I bow my head in shame and admit that I didn't make the textures of Bittersweet and Garland (land and clouds); the original 2D textures came from various Celestia downloads. I did, however, recolor, bump, spherize, and light them only in GIMP.

Although, now I'm starting to wonder if I did something bad contest-wise. I've been focusing on the data presentation as the focus of the contest, and that the world image (while pretty) was secondary to that. I thought I was within the rules, and to my knowledge, nothing used was copyrighted, but now I'm questioning the validity of my entry. I may have just pulled a Shepard Fairey (and not in the good way).

[Hai-Etlik]

I would be careful to check the Celestia data. The program itself is not Public Domain, it's covered by copyright and licensed to the public under the GNU GPL. The data may well be under the GPL or a similar Copyleft license as well. There is a big difference between Copyleft and Public Domain and you would do well not to confuse them. Just because both let you make and distribute derivative works, doesn't mean you can do so without restrictions.