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!
Changelog
- 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
