SpaceEngine News

Thanks to everyone who partook in the Beta! The public release has a few more additions which will be highlighted along with the patch notes from the Beta. Dr. Megan highlighted one of the new exoplanets, as well as two new black hole systems, in celebration of our new celestial neighbo(u)rs!

Read all about it here: https://spaceengine.org/news/blog240417/


[h3]Changelog:[/h3]

[h4]New Additions[/h4]

• Added AgX tonemapping mode
  
• Added Gaia BH2 and BH3 black hole systems
  

[h4]Additions from Beta[/h4]

• Updated rotation models for moons in our solar system to be more precise (DE436 model for Earth's moon, and IAU rotation for other moons in the Solar system)
  -Known issue: rotation begins to drift at the distant past or future (around the 20,000 year mark from the present)
  
• Date/time field on the Navigation toolbar now accepts input in Julian date format (for example: J2460409 was the day of the 2024 eclipse)
  
• Added a new stellar limb darkening function (WIP)
  
• Updated spectral types for 60,000+ catalog stars
  
• Updated distances for 100,000+ catalog stars, as well as some black holes and their hosts (mostly minor, only a few thousand are more significant)
  
• Added 810 new brown dwarfs
  
• Added a few dozen new exoplanets/host stars
  
• Added missing 'B' components of exoplanet-hosting binaries
  
• Updated naming conventions for some stars and nebulae
  
• Added an accretion disk to T CrB B (aka, The Blaze Star)
  
• Updated Uranus and Neptune's new moons, and tweaked their atmosphere colors to be more accurate
  
• Improved the appearance of Eris, Dysnomia, and Sedna
  
• Updated greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth's atmosphere
  
• Adjusted shadow and totality mask of the recent eclipse
  
• Tweaked atmosphere visuals for Galilean satellites
  
• Fixed Europa's classification/composition (it's a terra, not an aquaria)
  
• Updated albedo of Dione
  
• More climate model bug fixes, largely related to wind speeds
  
• Fixed eclipse shadow sizes being larger than they should
  
• Fixed carbon star spectral types for catalog planets always presenting as C-R
  
• Updated the asteroid (16) Psyche
  
• Fixed visibility distance of star cluster particles
  
• Removed flags from the language selection list
  
• Pruned duplicate catalog entries
  

Hey folks!

Hope you enjoyed the eclipse! The ongoing refactoring process still demands high commitment, but we wanted to get something out to address the new science and add our newest exoplanetary neighbors as our work continues!

Dr. Megan's pick this round is our newly discovered neighbour, TOI-715 b. Discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), this super-Earth is only 137 light years from our Solar System. TOI-715 b orbits within a conservative habitable zone around its cool, red host star, meaning it could potentially host liquid water! That's not to say TOI-715 b is a hospitable world; it is on a tidally locked orbit, so the same hemisphere always faces its host star, giving it a hot front-side and a cold back-side. TOI-715 b is 0.08 AU from its host star (closer than Mercury is to the Sun!), and its orbital period is only 19 days!



This may just be the beginning of the exciting news from the TOI-715 system, as it is suspected that another, smaller planet may also be present. If this second planet is confirmed, be sure to be on the look out for its future appearance in SpaceEngine!

Additional reading: NASA Press Release https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/discovery-alert-a-super-earth-in-the-habitable-zone/

Remember to opt in on Steam to access the Beta build! Right click Steam in your Library, click Properties>Betas, and select 'beta- public beta branch' from the dropdown list!

As always, please share any bugs or inconsistencies you find in the relevant channels: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports on Steam or #bug-reports on the official Discord!

[h3]Changelog[/h3]

• Updated rotation models for moons in our solar system to be more precise (DE436 model for Earth's moon, and IAU rotation for other moons in the Solar system)
  -Known issue: rotation begins to drift at the distant past or future (around the 20,000 year mark from the present)
  
• Date/time field on the Navigation toolbar now accepts input in Julian date format (for example: J2460409 was the day of the 2024 eclipse)
  
• Added a new stellar limb darkening function (WIP)
  
• Updated spectral types for 60,000+ catalog stars
  
• Updated distances for 100,000+ catalog stars, as well as some black holes and their hosts (mostly minor, only a few thousand are more significant)
  
• Added 810 new brown dwarfs
  
• Added a few dozen new exoplanets/host stars
  
• Added missing 'B' components of exoplanet-hosting binaries
  
• Updated naming conventions for some stars and nebulae
  
• Added an accretion disk to T CrB B (aka, The Blaze Star)
  
• Updated Uranus and Netrune's new moons, and tweaked their atmosphere colors to be more accurate
  
• Improved the appearance of Eris, Dysnomia, and Sedna
  
• Updated greenhouse gas concentrations in Earth's atmosphere
  
• Adjusted shadow and totality mask of the recent eclipse
  
• Tweaked atmosphere visuals for Galilean satellites
  
• Fixed Europa's classification/composition (it's a terra, not an aquaria)
  
• Updated albedo of Dione
  
• More climate model bug fixes, largely related to wind speeds
  
• Fixed eclipse shadow sizes being larger than they should
  
• Fixed carbon star spectral types for catalog planets always presenting as C-R
  
• Updated the asteroid (16) Psyche
  
• Fixed visibility distance of star cluster particles
  
• Removed flags from the language selection list
  
• Pruned duplicate catalog entries
  

This small patch adds another check to the shader compiling process, and automatically disables old Workshop addons which have invalid or incompatible shader pak file encryption.

[h3]Changelog[/h3]

• Workshop addons with incompatible shaders or shader pak files are automatically disabled with a popup message
  
• Minor catalog update
  

Today’s update includes several smaller updates to several SpaceEngine features. The first is a major exoplanet catalog expansion. We have added 336 new exoplanets, 214 new exoplanet host stars, eight new brown dwarfs/stellar binaries, and added 30 missing stellar binary 'B' components of exoplanet-hosting systems. Additionally, we have updated asteroid binaries and Saturn’s moons, and made many other catalog corrections, including removing duplicate objects and correcting naming inconsistencies.
We have also added some minor bug fixes for the Climate Model. These include fixing a bug where temperatures were constant across the surfaces of planets with extremely thin atmospheres, and fixing a bug where secondary stars were being ignored in some planet surface temperature calculations.

As of November 29, 2023 the NASA Exoplanet Archive reports a whopping 5,539 confirmed exoplanets and brown dwarf companions from researchers all over the world. The number of confirmed exoplanets surpassed 5,500 in August 2023. To celebrate this numeric milestone, and the SpaceEngine catalogs update, we are highlighting five exciting exoplanet discoveries and updates from 2023 you can visit in-game today!

[h3]Changelog:[/h3]

• Fixed minor bugs in the climate model
  
• Updated exoplanets catalog
  
• Updated asteroids catalog
  
• Updated moons of Saturn
  

Recently, we announced the addition of a Climate Model to SpaceEngine, which introduced global temperature maps, local pressures, local densities, wind speeds, and more, affecting planets, moons, and asteroids. An overview of the Climate Model is available in a recent blog post, and more technical details about the math and physics behind this release can be found in an article available on our website.

Beta testing for the climate model is now complete, and we would like to thank all those who participated for the valuable feedback they've provided. We would also like to thank our translators for their hard work translating the new climate tab in the in-app wiki, and other recent features.

The Climate Model is now available to all users on the Public branch.

Finally, we are very excited to announce an upcoming Q&A Session with a three-person panel consisting of SpaceEngine’s author, Vladimir Romanyuk; Cosmographic Software’s CEO, Alexander Long; and the designer and programmer of the Climate Model, Dr. Megan Tannock.

The event will take place live on the official SpaceEngine Discord server on November 3rd at 10AM Eastern. This will also be an opportunity for our community to join the conversation and ask questions about the new update.

As always, thank you for your continued support of SpaceEngine! We look forward to seeing you at the upcoming Q&A.

Changes and Updates in 0.990.46.1990

• Bugfixes for the Climate Model - Released to Public
  
• Search by Name tool now allows the selection of clusters and nebulae with the same name
  (eg: NGC 6711, NGC 7380)
  
• Fixed issues with starting SpaceEngine on a secondary monitor
  
• Added Indonesian localization