Hey folks!

Our next major patch, 0.991: The Universe Generation Update, is now live! This update brings major changes to SpaceEngine’s procedural generation systems, elevating all things beyond the known Universe and breaking from the dreaded giant-terra-giant-terra pattern.

Generation changes like this cause a universe reset— recalculating the 'where' and 'what' of all procedural objects. For established users, this means information like screenshots, saved locations, and procedural object names from 0.990 will likely no longer be accurate. Fear not for your 0.990 records, however! For posterity, build 0.990.48.2075 has been saved as a legacy branch and is available in the Steam Betas dropdown (see Opt In to Beta for more information).

The changelog is available below. For further information on this release, and to see updates that occurred during the beta testing process, please see the SpaceEngine Steam news page.

Changelog

Editor’s Note: Changelog reflects changes between 0.990.48.2075 and 0.991.49.2090. Fixes between beta patches are excluded.

• Improved procedural planetary generation, fixing giant-terra-giant-terra meander sequence and increasing diversity of procedural systems
• Improved diversity of properties of procedural rings and accretion disks
• Improved generation of dwarf planets; previously, they were far too rare
• Calibrated mass-radius distribution of terrestrial planets
• Calibrated iron core mass distribution in terrestrial planets
• Updated effective temperature calculations for M5-M8 (main sequence), L, T, and Y spectral types
• Updated radii calculations for L, T, and Y spectral types
• Updated star system seed generation
• Improved temperature generation for star granules (convection cells)
• Improved temperature generation for sunspots
• Improved shading of underwater surfaces to mimic absorption of sunlight by water; your view now darkens and fades as depth increases
• Improved generation of globular cluster luminosities
• Increased the number of globular clusters generated in galaxies
• Increased the maximum number of clusters per galaxy
• Added ability to specify the number of globular clusters in a catalog galaxy (galaxy catalog keyword: GlobClusters)
• Updated galaxy type generation probabilities
• Increased suppression of procedurally generated galaxies near the Milky Way (Procedural content can be toggled in the Filter Objects settings)
• Improved radius-luminosity relationship for elliptical galaxies
• Added new Featured Locations procured by the SE team to partially replace many that were lost when the universe reset (more to come on this in the new year~)
• Improved brightness of blurred interface background relative to main scene
• Added "deselect" console/script command to deselect objects (in addition to "unselect")
• Fixed a bug where binary planet orbits were often oriented on-edge, “cartwheeling” around their host stars.
• Fixed a bug where comets, asteroids, and moons could be assigned incorrect temperature classes. Classes for all planets/moons/comets/asteroids are now based on their time-averaged distance from their host star(s).
• Fixed a bug causing incorrect procedural metallicity of stars
• Fixed a bug with generation of double Wolf-Rayet systems, where the secondary star had hundreds of times larger luminosity than the whole system
• Fixed a bug where every solo star (not in a multiple-star system) had the same axial tilt of 100.28 degrees.
• Fixed multiple bugs causing cases where a star's age could be greater than its lifetime
• Fixed a potential bug where the star generator thread can overrun its working array, corrupting data in the other worker thread's working array
• Fixed a bug in calculation of stellar magnitudes
• Fixed a bug with star corona coloration
• Fixed a bug in the Climate Model where planets in systems with a binary star could have a huge temperature spike
• Fixed a bug where catalog stars with no physical info aside from apparent magnitude would default to spectral type M2V
• Fixed a bug where changing the oblateness in the Planet Editor was not reflected in the Wiki.
• Fixed a bug causing lava to appear ~10% hotter than it should

Catalog Updates

• Added several of the brightest and largest known galaxies (see Catalog Additions below)
• Added LMC globular cluster NGC 1978
• Added LMC open cluster NGC 2164
• Updated distances and magnitudes for numerous galaxies, especially in the Local Group
• Tweaked brightness of a few Local Group elliptical galaxy models
• Removed unsupported/refuted black holes
• Changed “Central Black Hole” affix to an asterisk (*) to match astronomical naming conventions
• Updated distance and size of the Owl Nebula
• Updated atmospheric composition for K2-18 b
• Updated 2M1510 to be a triple system with the correct orbits
• Updated physical parameters of the PSR J2222-0137 pulsar+WD system
• Updated distance to SPECULOOS-3
• Updated WOH G64 Star
• Added star UDF 2457 (most distant Milky Way star visible in Hubble Ultra Deep Field)
• Reclassified Quaoar as a dwarf planet and its moon as a dwarf moon
• Updated distance and location for PZ Cassiopeiae
• Updated the exoplanet catalogs with 78 new host stars and 105 new planets (plus 1 planemo)

Catalog Additions

Galaxies:

• Abell 2261 BCG
• ESO 383-76/Abell 3571 BCG
• ESO 248-6/ACO 3112 BCG
• ESO 409-25/ACO 2734 BCG
• ACO 3039 BCG
• ESO 347-9/ACO 3998 BCG

Planemo:

• OGLE-2015-BLG-1609L b

Brown dwarf candidates:

• TOI-201 c
• KMT-2024-BLG-0404L B
• KMT-2024-BLG-0404L C

Exoplanets:

• KOI-134 b 
• KOI-134 c 
• Kepler-725 c
• L 98-59 f 
• TIC 88785435 b
• TOI-1117 b
• TOI-1117 c
• TOI-1117 d
• TOI-1238 b
• TOI-1238 c
• TOI-1846 b
• TOI-2031 A b
• TOI-2169 A b
• TOI-2346 b
• TOI-2382 b
• TOI-2407 b
• TOI-2876 b
• TOI-2886 b
• TOI-2986 b
• TOI-2992 b
• TOI-3135 b
• TOI-3160 A b
• TOI-3464 b
• TOI-3474 b
• TOI-3486 b
• TOI-3523 A b
• TOI-3593 b
• TOI-3682 b
• TOI-3856 b
• TOI-3877 b
• TOI-3980 b
• TOI-4214 b
• TOI-4465 b
• TOI-4487 A b
• TOI-4734 b
• TOI-4794 b
• TOI-4961 b
• TOI-5181 A b
• TOI-5210 b
• TOI-5322 b
• TOI-5340 b
• TOI-5386 A b
• TOI-5592 b
• TOI-5800 b
• TOI-5882 b
• BEBOP-3 b
• Gliese 508.2 b
• Gliese 9773 b
• HD 135344 A b
• KMT-2023-BLG-0119L b
• KMT-2023-BLG-1896L b
• KMT-2024-BLG-1209L b
• MOA-2022-BLG-033L b
• MOA-2022-BLG-091L b
• Ross 176 b
• TOI-1011 b
• TOI-1346 b
• TOI-1346 c
• TOI-2719 b
• TOI-4155 b
• TOI-5795 b
• TOI-5817 b
• TOI-6000 b
• TOI-7149 b
• TOI-880 c
• Gliese 536 c
• HD 224018 b
• HD 224018 c
• HD 224018 d
• HD 28471 b
• HD 28471 c
• HD 28471 d
• K2-73 c
• TOI-1438 b
• TOI-1438 c
• TOI-2141 c
• TOI-2141 d
• TOI-2322 b
• TOI-2322 c
• TOI-4773 b
• TOI-5261 b
• TOI-5350 b
• TOI-6303 b
• TOI-6330 b
• TOI-6420 b
• WISPIT 1 b
• WISPIT 1 c
• WISPIT 2 b
• AU Mic e
• HD 143811 AB b
• NGTS-31 b
• NGTS-32 b
• TOI-1203 b
• TOI-1203 c
• TOI-1203 d
• TOI-1203 e
• TOI-1743 b
• TOI-2449 b
• TOI-5799 c
• TOI-6109 b
• TOI-6109 c
• TOI-6223 b

Hey folks!

We're opening the gates on 0.991 with an extended Beta to ensure everything is working before release. We anticipate the Beta to run for at least two weeks, during which we may push further updates and/or fixes, which will further affect generation. We will let you know if this happens.

The purpose of this Beta is to ensure the generation improvements are in their best form, and that none of the changes made have broken other aspects of SpaceEngine. Suspected bugs should be reported in the Troubleshooting and Bug Reports section of the Steam forums, or in our #bug-reports channel in our official Discord (Discord.gg/spaceengine).

On the topic of bugs, there are a few known issues we're already aware of, but they are self-contained, so they won't hamper the beta launch:

• Globular clusters are sometimes too common in the most massive galaxies
• Intermediary mass black holes and other high-density objects have strange artifacting when viewed at certain angles (described as "angry sparkles" or "occasional Pac-Man'ing")
• Spatially thick accretion disks may not generate

Whether you want to help test or are eager to see what's new, you can opt in to the Beta by going to your Steam library, right-clicking SpaceEngine, then selecting Properties > Betas and picking beta - public beta branch from the dropdown menu.

Changelog:

• Calibrated mass-radius distribution of terrestrial planets
• Calibrated iron core mass distribution in terrestrial planets
• Fixed giant-terra-giant-terra meander sequence in procedural planetary systems
• Fixed a bug with incorrect procedural metallicity of stars
• Fixed a bug with generation of double Wolf-Rayet systems, where the secondary star has hundreds of times larger luminosity than the whole system.
• Fixed suppression of generation of procedural galaxies near the Milky Way
• Fixed generation of dwarf planets
• Improved generation of globular cluster luminosities
• Increased the maximum number of clusters per galaxy
• Improved the number of globular clusters generated in galaxies
• Added ability to specify the number of globular clusters in a catalog galaxy (galaxy catalog keyword: GlobClusters)
• Improved the effective temperatures of M5-M9 (main sequence), L, T, and Y spectral types
• Improved the radii of L, T, and Y spectral types
• Improved galaxy type generation probabilities
• Improved shading of underwater surfaces to mimic absorption of sunlight by water
• Improved temperature generation for star granules (convection cells)
• Improved temperature generation for sunsots
• Improved brightness of blurred interface background relative to main scene
• Fixed a bug that caused lava to appear 10% hotter than it should
• Fixed a bug where a star's age could be greater than its lifetime
• Fixed a potential bug where the star generator thread can overrun its working array, corrupting data in the other worker thread's working array
• Fixed a bug in calculation of stellar magnitudes
• Fixed a bug in the climate model where some planets in systems with a binary star had a huge temperature spike
• Fixed a bug with star corona color
• Improved diversity of properties of procedural rings and accretion disks

Catalog Updates:

• Added several of the brightest and largest known galaxies
• Improved distances and magnitudes for numerous galaxies, especially in the Local Group
• Tweaked brightness of a few Local Group elliptical galaxy models for greater realism
• Added globular cluster population data for multiple galaxies
• Removed unsupported/refuted black holes
• Changed "_ Central Black Hole" names to "_*" to match astronomical naming conventions
• Added LMC globular cluster NGC 1978
• Added LMC open cluster NGC 2164
• Improved distance and size of the Owl Nebula
• Improved atmospheric composition for K2-18 b
• Updated 2M1510 to be a triple system with the correct orbits
• Updated physical parameters of the PSR J2222-0137 pulsar+WD system
• Updated distance to SPECULOOS-3
• Updated WOH G64 Star
• Updated the exoplanet catalogs with 57 new host stars and 66 new planets, 1 new planemo

Catalog Additions:

Galaxies:

• Abell 2261 BCG
• ESO 383-76/Abell 3571 BCG
• ESO 248-6/ACO 3112 BCG
• ESO 409-25/ACO 2734 BCG
• ACO 3039 BCG
• ESO 347-9/ACO 3998 BCG

Exoplanets:

• KOI-134 b 
• KOI-134 c 
• Kepler-725 c
• L 98-59 f 
• TIC 88785435 b
• TOI-1117 b
• TOI-1117 c
• TOI-1117 d
• TOI-1238 b
• TOI-1238 c
• TOI-1846 b
• TOI-2031 A b
• TOI-2169 A b
• TOI-2346 b
• TOI-2382 b
• TOI-2407 b
• TOI-2876 b
• TOI-2886 b
• TOI-2986 b
• TOI-2992 b
• TOI-3135 b
• TOI-3160 A b
• TOI-3464 b
• TOI-3474 b
• TOI-3486 b
• TOI-3523 A b
• TOI-3593 b
• TOI-3682 b
• TOI-3856 b
• TOI-3877 b
• TOI-3980 b
• TOI-4214 b
• TOI-4465 b
• TOI-4487 A b
• TOI-4734 b
• TOI-4794 b
• TOI-4961 b
• TOI-5181 A b
• TOI-5210 b
• TOI-5322 b
• TOI-5340 b
• TOI-5386 A b
• TOI-5592 b
• TOI-5800 b
• TOI-5882 b
• BEBOP-3 b
• Gliese 508.2 b
• Gliese 9773 b
• HD 135344 A b
• KMT-2023-BLG-0119L b
• KMT-2023-BLG-1896L b
• KMT-2024-BLG-1209L b
• MOA-2022-BLG-033L b
• MOA-2022-BLG-091L b
• Ross 176 b
• TOI-1011 b
• TOI-1346 b
• TOI-1346 c
• TOI-2719 b
• TOI-4155 b
• TOI-5795 b
• TOI-5817 b
• TOI-6000 b
• TOI-7149 b
• TOI-880 c

Planemo:

• OGLE-2015-BLG-1609L b

Brown dwarf candidate:

• TOI-201 c

Hey folks!

In preparation for the public release of the Universe Generation Update, we’re highlighting some major changes to SpaceEngine you can expect with this fresh batch of cosmos!

Planetary System Architecture

One of the biggest frustrations with 0.990’s procedural universe is the sameness between systems. Established users know the pattern: giant-terra-giant-terra, big planet, small planet, etc. With 0.991, this is no longer the case!

Planets will now generate in more realistic, diverse patterns. In this example, the procedural system shown below was once exactly what you’d expect: terra, ice giant, aquaria, gas giant, and so on. The same system (in name, at least) has taken an entirely new identity, changing its location in space. Planets 3 and 5 in this new system are gas giants, but the rest are smaller terras, subterras, and aquarias!

Dragging the slider to the left reveals that procedural systems now also have something much more common in 0.991: dwarf planets! Previously, dwarf planets were exceedingly rare among the generated parts of the universe, which wasn’t very realistic.

While the old meander sequence is still technically possible, you can expect far more interesting finds in unknown space!

Visual Improvements

The 0.991 release contains a couple of visual improvements worth mentioning. For starters, underwater terrain is now colored according to its depth, emulating the absorption of sunlight in the overlying water. It's a seemingly small change, but it significantly enhances immersion when underwater. No more sea floors bathed in sunlight under 5 km of ocean!

25 meters deep, looking down towards deeper water.

200 meters deep.

At 700 meters deep, the ocean floor is practically invisible.

We've also made some adjustments to the surfaces of stars. In earlier versions of SE, including 0.990, most stars had granulation patterns with much higher contrast than in reality, and which displayed as being cooler (redder) than they should have. These granule temperatures have been replaced with a more realistic value, with further improvements to their scientific accuracy coming in the future. Sunspots have also seen an update to their temperature generation, with their temperatures now determined by the effective temperature of the star according to an equation based on real astronomical observations.

A comparison of granules and sunspots on a G2V star in 0.990 (left) and 0.991 (right).

The lower contrast of the new granulation may seem less visually interesting, but it's much more representative of what stars really look like. To highlight this, the following image shows a real photo of the Sun (left) taken by one of our own team members, and the Sun with the new temperature values in 0.991 (right). The photograph was white balanced to match the real color of the Sun as closely as possible, and both images were tonemapped from linear brightness values using the same function (Reinhard SE).

Left: A real photo of the Sun taken by one of our own team members. Right: The Sun in SpaceEngine version 0.991 with the revised granulation contrast.

Further updates to the accuracy of star surfaces are being worked on for a future release.

Galactic Globular Cluster Systems

The generation of globular cluster systems (GCS) – the globular cluster populations belonging to individual galaxies – has also received some improvements. In 0.990, the number of globular clusters (GC) in a galaxy was related strictly to the volume of that galaxy's model. This didn't make much sense for spiral galaxies, as the amount of matter they contain is more closely related to the square of their radius, unlike volume, which grows with the cube of the radius. This resulted in large spiral galaxies having a very large GCSs, while smaller spirals had much smaller GCSs than they should have. While it would seem to make more sense for elliptical galaxies, it still wasn't closely based on any observed trends in GC populations. As a result, elliptical galaxies often had smaller GCSs than they should have, especially the largest galaxies.

In 0.991, GCS generation has been overhauled. Elliptical galaxy GCS generation in particular is much more realistic, following population trends observed by astronomers. One way of describing the population of a galaxy's GCS is with a term called the "specific frequency" (SF). The number of clusters in a GCS is a function of the SF and the host galaxy's absolute magnitude (intrinsic brightness, i.e., luminosity). When looking at the GC populations of elliptical galaxies, astronomers observe that small elliptical galaxies tend to have a lower SF, while larger galaxies have a higher SF. Interestingly, the SF does not significantly change within those size categories, only around a transition point in between. Based on the available research, 0.991 uses an absolute magnitude of -18.5 for this transition. That's why, on the graph below, you can see that as you move from right to left (from fainter to brighter), the graph levels off, indicating that brightness increases faster than the number of GCs. However, as the absolute magnitude increases further, the size of the galaxy's GCS starts increasing more quickly. After reaching magnitude -18.5, the relationship is amplified even further in favor of larger GCS populations. This is the result of the difference in GCS SF between fainter and brighter elliptical galaxies.

This graph shows the number of globular clusters (Y axis) that generate in elliptical galaxies in 0.991 as a function of galaxy absolute visual magnitude M_V (X axis).

Lenticular galaxies (type S0) also have their GCS generation based on a SF relation, using a single SF value that's fairly typical of the type. The SF of spiral galaxy GCSs in nature varies based on a number of variables that are beyond what SE can accurately accommodate at present, so their GC populations scale with the square of the galaxy's radius. In all cases, this results in a more realistic number of globular clusters than in 0.990.

The generation of GC luminosities has also been significantly improved. In previous versions of SpaceEngine, GC luminosity generation used a normal distribution (i.e. a Gaussian function or bell curve) with respect to luminosity. In reality, the luminosities of a galaxy's GCs follow a normal distribution with respect to absolute magnitude. This seemingly simple change results in much more realistic and natural looking GC systems, as visible in the comparison image below.

There's also a small bonus feature related to the above work on globular clusters: you can now specify the number of globular clusters in catalog galaxies! Multiple galaxies in SE's catalog have already been updated to generate the correct number of globular clusters based on astronomical observations. Once 0.991 comes out, you can do the same for any catalog galaxy you create by using the GlobClusters parameter in the galaxy's catalog entry, followed by the desired number of clusters. Enjoy!

Brown Dwarf Effective Temperature and Radii

Finally, we have made improvements to the effective temperatures and radii of ultra cool dwarfs (UCDs), which include the dimmest red dwarfs (spectral type M7 and later) as well as all brown dwarfs (including L, T, and Y spectral types).

There are several ways to define the temperature of a star or brown dwarf, depending on what part of the body you’re looking at (e.g., core, photosphere, chromosphere, etc.) and what wavelength you’re looking at (e.g., optical, infrared, all wavelengths, etc.). The effective temperature (T_eff) is a particularly useful temperature quantity that allows us to estimate the surface temperature of a body, and it is defined as:
\begin{equation}
T_{\rm eff} = \left(\frac{L}{4{\rm \pi} R^2 {\rm \sigma}}\right)^\frac{1}{4},
\end{equation} where L is the bolometric luminosity (the luminosity measured across all wavelengths), R is the radius of the body, and σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. The effective temperature is the temperature of a blackbody (a theoretical object that perfectly absorbs and emits radiation) that emits the same amount of energy as a star or brown dwarf of the same radius. Stars and brown dwarfs are, of course, not perfect blackbodies. The atoms and molecules present in their atmospheres cause absorption and emission of light at different wavelengths. But the T_eff is still a useful quantity for categorizing and understanding stars and brown dwarfs. The T_eff of the Sun is 5778 K, and for UCDs T_eff ranges from about 2700 K all the way down to just hundreds of Kelvin. Some theories estimate that the faintest Y dwarfs may be as cool as 90 K.

In the 0.991 update, we revised the T_eff of UCDs using values measured and published by astronomers. The figure below shows the T_eff for different spectral types. In the case of our UCDs, it is immediately noticeable that T_eff does not change linearly with spectral type. This is because spectral types are a sequence of spectral features (light absorbed by atoms and molecules in their atmospheres), not a temperature sequence. The transition between the late-L brown dwarfs and the early-T brown dwarfs is especially interesting, as the T_eff levels off over a few steps in the spectral sequence. This is because the diversity of molecules present in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs at these “low” temperatures (around 1200 K) can make spectra look very different, despite having approximately the same T_eff. At these temperatures, the main carbon-bearing molecule changes from carbon monoxide to methane. This switch is the hallmark of the transition from L- to T-type brown dwarfs and results in some very interesting chemistry in the atmospheres of these objects.

Effective temperature (T_eff ) as a function of spectral type for Ultra Cool Dwarfs. The relationship used in SpaceEngine 0.990 is shown with green diamonds, and the new relationship in 0.991 is shown with red squares. The new relationship is based on data from Filippazzo et al. (2015), Leggett et al. (2017), and Kirkpatrick et al. (2021). We adopted the fit from Filippazzo et al. (2015) for M, L, and T dwarfs, and extended that fit through the early-Y dwarfs using T_eff values available in the literature. We extrapolated through the mid- and late-Y dwarfs to a fixed value of 90 K for Y9.9.

We have also improved the radii of field-age (>5 Gyr) brown dwarfs in this update. As substellar objects, the forces in the cores of brown dwarfs have an interesting balancing act that results in fairly constant radii over nearly two orders of magnitude in mass. Despite their cool atmospheres, the cores of brown dwarfs can still be millions of Kelvin – not quite hot enough to overcome the Coulomb barrier and ignite nuclear fusion, but certainly hot enough to ionize hydrogen. The Coulomb barrier fixes the inter-particle distance in the interior of brown dwarfs and leads to the radius being proportional to mass to the power of +1/3. But the ionization of the hydrogen means that the outer layers of a brown dwarf are supported from gravitational collapse by electron degeneracy pressure. Under this condition, the radius is proportional to mass to the power of -1/3. These two effects cancel each other out, resulting in a fairly constant radius, regardless of mass. Of course, these effects are not always perfectly balanced, and the electron degeneracy effects matter more for high mass-brown dwarfs, while the Coulomb effects matter more for lower-mass brown dwarfs, and so the radii vary by about 15% over the range of brown dwarf masses. The figure below shows our new mass-radius relationship compared to our old relationship, based on brown dwarf evolutionary models.

Radius as a function of mass for the typical mass range of field-age (5 Myr) brown dwarfs. The old SpaceEngine radius relationship is shown in green, and the new, revised relationship is shown in cyan. This relationship is a 6th-degree polynomial fit to data from the Sonora brown dwarf evolutionary models (Marley et al. 2021). The Sonora model data are shown as white circles.

This is only a selection of notable improvements from the coming update. There are a number of other changes coming in 0.991, and you'll be able to read the full changelog and experience it for yourself when public beta testing begins next week!

Stay Tuned!

Hey folks!

We’re heads-down on improvements while we prepare our next major release, 0.991: The Universe Generation Update! The team has been hard at work behind the scenes on all things procedural, bringing you a slew of improvements and fixes that will re-map our procedural Universe!

What is the Universe Generation Update? Put simply, this release contains all the accumulated changes that affect procedural generation. It has been put together into a single package to avoid a Universe reset until there are enough changes to justify making a separate release. Now that the time has come, we’re letting you know what to expect and how to prepare.

So what is procedural generation? Procedural generation is how the Universe of SpaceEngine is populated with objects and information anywhere that there is a gap. Anything not explicitly defined in the astronomical catalogs is assigned values based on scientific formulae and special algorithms developed and curated by our development team. Any time the process is adjusted, it may influence the generation of other objects or values that depend on it. For example, back in May, we changed the galaxy IC 1101 to a black hole host. As a result, all of the generated objects in that galaxy also changed.

This update will change the foundation of our procedural generation, potentially affecting every procedural object in the Universe. That means all of your current screenshots, saved locations, custom objects, and object extremes will be of a universe that is no more. While location data carries over between branches, many will take you to empty space or no longer work after the Universe Generation Update. It is advised that you label your saved locations now to avoid confusion when the update drops.

To make sure you can go back and visit your old saved locations, we plan to make a snapshot of the 0.990.48.2075 release branch, which will remain accessible through Steam Betas.

That’s a BIG change. How are we going to handle it? Like with any other update, when the Universe Generation Update is ready, a new beta branch will open up for the community to test, explore, and find any bugs we may have missed. When beta testing ends, the default branch will update to 0.991 and be available for everyone to use. We anticipate that some addons and mods may break with this update, so ensure your installation is back to vanilla before updating or submitting bug reports.

That’s all for now! Keep your eyes peeled for more information as we get closer to release!

Opposition surge refers to the significant increase in brightness observed on many objects as their phase angle approaches zero (i.e. at opposition), when the observer is located directly between the object and the sun. Opposition surge can be observed on essentially all solid bodies in the Solar system, but is most prominent on rocky airless bodies and Saturn's rings. The effect is caused by a combination of shadow-hiding (particles on an object's surface blocking the view of their own shadows at zero phase), retroreflection (objects preferentially reflecting light back to the source due to their material properties and geometry) and coherent backscattering (constructive interference of reflected light waves back towards the light source). Shadow-hiding seems to be the main contributor in most cases.

Scroll down for real-life images of opposition surge.

Moon

Opposition surge on the lunar surface, centered on the shadow of Buzz Aldrin
Photo credit: NASA

In this video of an Earthrise from Japan's Kaguya lunar orbiter, opposition surge is visible during the first 18 seconds as a bright moving spot on the left side of the frame
Video credit: JAXA/NHK

Mars

Opposition surge is visible near the center of this low-orbit photo mosaic from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft
Photo credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

Opposition surge is visible just above the center of this colorized image taken by the Perseverance rover during its descent to the martian surface
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Simeon Schmauß/AndreaLuck

Saturn

Saturn's rings display an especially strong opposition surge in this photo from the Cassini spacecraft
Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Asteroids and Comets

Opposition surge is clearly visible on this photo of comet 67P from the Rosetta spacecraft
Photo credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

More Examples

Some great examples of opposition surge on Earth: [1] [2] [3] [4]
A few of the many great images processed by Thomas Appéré showing opposition surge on Mars: [1] [2] [3]
Opposition surge is visible in the descent videos captured by NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers

Hey folks,

This week, we're celebrating Cosmographic Software's third anniversary, and I'm pleased to say we're in a fairly good place. As we look forward to the rest of the year, I'd like to continue my tradition of giving our community a few updates.

Development

The past year was focused on incremental improvements and refinement through smaller updates, with much of this happening largely behind the scenes. Much of our current focus is on improvements to Universe generation, which many of our current users will know to be fairly significant. In terms of a timeline, we hope to have those features available to you by early Fall (Q3).

Our community and support team — Jon, Mike, Massimo, and Katie — are also keeping an eye on the feedback, comments and suggestions; and in addition to the support tickets, notes, and usual daily work one might expect, last year we added a monthly meeting where community suggestions are considered for development. When this initiative was put forward by our community manager (Jon), I was immediately on board, as we value our users and what’s important to them. While most suggestions might not be implemented for one reason or another, we all agree it's important they are heard and discussed, and that's exactly what we're doing.

Company Updates

The company has largely remained the same size going into 2025. While we're still looking for one more full-time developer to join our crew, any further team expansion will be delayed until sometime in 2027 (So, if you're interested in joining, keep an eye out around then).

Some team members are heading to conferences this year to improve skills, and trade notes with other professionals in astronomy, video games, and education. The first will be GDC (Game Developers Conference), but we're also planning to head to CASCA (Canadian Astronomical Society) and SIGGRAPH later in the year. SpaceEngine is complicated, and our developers are constantly facing new challenges. For us, this means both traditional development and a "hard science" aspect which is fairly unique to SE.

Because of this, I believe it to be vitally important that we take every opportunity to support our team by providing opportunities to improve their knowledge and skills so they can, in turn, continue to innovate and improve on Vladimir's creation.

I'm glad to say that this year has gotten off to a productive start, and I am relieved that we have been fortunate enough to avoid any major impact as a result of the ongoing changes in world affairs. We are a team that prides itself on our differences and what each person brings to the table. From the start, I set out to build an environment where diversity could thrive in an equitable and inclusive environment.

I often reflect on my time in the Canadian Armed Forces, where during our basic training we were introduced to the concept of "strength through diversity." Every member of your team brings their own value, whether through experience, background, or skills. It was important to me personally that we set these values deep within the foundations of our company and that, as we continued to grow, we would remain faithful to those principals. As it stands now, I am glad to say that we've stayed that course, and I believe this lies at the centre of why we have remained strong despite the many challenges we faced together.

Both the Cosmographic team, and myself personally, are grateful for our community’s support; it means the world to us. Your comments, screenshots, and suggestions keep us smiling even when things are at their toughest.

On behalf of Vladimir, and the Cosmographic team: we are grateful, as always, for your continued support. We'll continue to do our best into 2025 and beyond.

Sincerely,

Alexander T. Long, CEO

Today's update includes many catalog changes. The highlights include 60 new exoplanets, with 53 new host-stars, and a collection of 42 Jupiter Mass Binary Objects in the Trapezium cluster. It was a good summer for exoplanet announcements, and we have highlighted a couple of our favorites below!

Our update also includes other catalog maintenance, such as:

1. Fixing incidents where duplicate objects were superimposed on each other.
2. Removing a third star that was mistakenly added to a system barycenter in some binary systems.

New Catalog Addition - JuMBOs

Rogue planets, planemo (planetary-mass objects), or free-floating planets are, as the names suggest, planets without a host star. Rogue planets are formed by two mechanisms:

1. Within the disk of a young star, to be later ejected from the system due to some gravitational effect from other nearby stars
2. Or, similarly to stars, are condensed directly from a giant molecular cloud.

These formation mechanisms hint star clusters would be a good place to search for these objects, and new observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with its unprecedented sensitivity, have shown that to be true.

One very exciting, and unexpected discovery by astronomers using JWST, are the so-called Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, also known as JuMBOs. JuMBOs are rogue planets in binary systems with another rogue planet. How JuMBOs form is a particularly interesting question. If they are ejected from solar systems, how do two planets end up staying together as they travel through space? And for those planets forming from the giant molecular clouds, astronomers expect only very massive planets to form, but they are finding notably small bodies making up the JuMBOs. While astronomers aren’t quite sure of the answer yet, they have lots of data to work with. For example, in just the Trapezium Cluster (located in the Orion Nebula), more than 40 JuMBOs were discovered!

We added 42 JuMBO systems in the Trapezium Cluster to SpaceEngine, and we hope you enjoy exploring them. The Trapezium Cluster itself is also now a searchable object in SpaceEngine.

JuMBO 2 B is a ringed planemo in the Orion Nebula.

Planet Highlight - TIC 241249530 b

The newly discovered planet TIC 241249530 b may give astronomers new insights into the formation and evolution of some of the hottest planets we know of: hot Jupiters. TIC 241249530 b, which orbits its host star in the most eccentric orbit known to date, is thought to be a hot Jupiter-progenitor. Its extreme orbit, and the structure of the system it resides in, might hold the secret to hot Jupiter formation.

Hot Jupiters have very tight orbits, and our current understanding of planet formation suggests such planets would not be able to form that close to their host stars. They would have to form at wider orbits and migrate inwards. But how does this migration happen?

In the case of TIC 241249530 b, a secondary star in the system is the likely cause. TIC 241249530 b probably formed as a colder planet on a wider, more circular orbit, but over time the gravitational effects from the second star in the system pushed it into the highly eccentric orbit observed now. In another billion years or so, TIC 241249530 b will settle into a more circular, close-in orbit where the planet will be heated significantly by its host star, turning it into a hot Jupiter. Few systems like this have been observed because this is a temporary orbital configuration. Hopefully when we have a full understanding of the orbital dynamics at play here will lead to a better understanding of one way hot Jupiters form.

You can see the TIC 241249530 system in its present-day orbital configuration in SpaceEngine.

The highly elliptical orbit of TIC 241249530 b.

Further Reading:

JuMBOs: Physics World Article
TIC 241249530 b: MIT Press Release

Build 0.990.48.2034, Changes and Updates from the Previous Version:

• Updated the exoplanet and host star catalog (new planets and hosts), including new Jupiter Mass Binary Objects (JuMBOs)
• Fixed duplicates in the white dwarf catalogs, so white dwarf binaries won’t have an extra white dwarf at the barycenter
• Fixed an assortment of one-off errors in object properties in the catalogs
• Fixed a bug where planemo displayed large numbers for daylight hours at equator and an annual fraction of polar day at current latitude
• Fixed issue with AgX tonemapping name

Please see the SpaceEngine Steam store page for other recent changelogs.

Beta testing for these changes, including the high-resolution screenshot tool, is now complete. We would like to thank everyone who participated in testing and provided valuable feedback!

The changes are now available to all users on Steam. If you participated in the beta and would like to return to the default Steam release branch, please follow the instructions to opt out of the beta found here: Opt In to Beta.

Thank you for your ongoing support of SpaceEngine!

Changes and Improvements from the Previous Version:

• Fixed a bug in the Star Browser where planet/moon temperature and temperature class results didn't match the actual system when visited
• Fixed several bugs and issues with the high-resolution screenshot tool

Click here to see changes included in this release from last week's beta.

Letter from the CEO

Five years ago today, SpaceEngine — the monumental achievement of Vladimir Romanyuk — was released on Steam.

To start, I want to acknowledge how truly impressive it is for a solo developer to come so far.

I didn't know Vladimir through most of this early development, as SpaceEngine was already on Steam and had existed outside of that long before Cosmographic was founded. However, I remember being shocked when I learned it was created and developed almost entirely by one person alone. Thinking of the skill, knowledge, and perseverance that was poured into his creation, over thousands of hours, is something that always moves me — as I know it does every member of the team. Every day, I reflect on what an honor and privilege it is to be trusted by him to build and lead this company, and to help him continue what he started many years ago.

Where we are now is somewhere I don't think any member of the team expected to be. We've grown steadily and sustainably over the last two years, and now have 13 people involved in furthering Vladimir's vision. I know that everyone at Cosmographic is focused on making sure we "do right by Vladimir,” as one of our developers put it. To that end, we all give our best each day, because this project and its original creator deserve nothing less.

It is perhaps fitting that today we're also releasing a new update to the beta branch, which will be available around the time this post goes live. We have included a special gift that I know a lot of our community members have been requesting: a high-resolution screenshot tool!

I'd also like to acknowledge our community; without you, we wouldn't be able to keep this vision alive. I believe SpaceEngine is something genuinely unique, and I like to think that everyone who has used it at some point is moved by seeing the Universe through its lens.

As always, you’ll find more information about the next update below!

High-Resolution Screenshot Tool

Have you ever wanted to take a really big picture of your favourite location in SpaceEngine, but your screen just isn’t large enough? Or maybe your graphics card just doesn’t have enough video RAM?

Well, you’re in luck! Today, we would like to present to you: the high-resolution screenshot tool. This new tool empowers you to take immense pictures, but without overloading your computer.

How does that work?

The high-resolution screenshot tool works on a very simple principle. It breaks the scene down into small pieces, takes screenshots of each piece, and then assemble the pieces into a large mosaic image.

Where can I try it out?

The high-resolution screenshot tool is presently only available on the SpaceEngine Beta branch on Steam. To sign up to the beta please follow the instructions in Opt In to Beta.

How do I use the tool?

You can find the high-resolution screenshot tool:

1. By clicking the camera icon on the left-hand side of the planetarium screen.

OR
2. By clicking Tools in the main menu.

OR
3. By pressing Shift+F11 on your keyboard.

The high-resolution screenshot tool will appear as a modal box:

The tool has several options available for you to configure:

• Target resolution: The size of the screenshot you are taking.
• Image format: What image format to save the screenshot in.
• Tile resolution: The size of the tiles (or pieces) a screenshot is broken up into for processing. The smaller the tiles, the easier it is to process.
• Landscape LOD: The level-of-detail that landscape will have in the screenshot. The higher the LOD, the harder it is on your computer, but the nicer the screenshot looks.
• [PRO Feature] Save transparency: For image formats that support it, save a transparent background with the screenshot. This is a feature that is only available in SpaceEngine PRO.
• Set graphics to maximum: Use the highest-quality graphics when taking your screenshot.
• Scale stars: Scale stars based on the size of your screenshot.
• Minimize window: Minimize the SpaceEngine window when your screenshot is done rendering.
• Exit to desktop: Quit SpaceEngine when your screenshot is done rendering.

Before you take your screenshot, you can review your settings at the bottom of the window. To start taking your screenshot, press the camera button. If you want to stop taking a screenshot, press the square (stop) button. To see the screenshots you have already taken, press the folder button.

Tool Limitations & Usage Tips

• The maximum resolution of the screenshot tool is limited by the image format chosen. Most image formats support no more than 65535x65535 and/or a 4 GiB memory footprint.
  • To calculate the memory footprint of an image, multiply width by height and by either 3 or 4 for RGB and RGBA pixel format respectively.
•  The screen-space rendering effects, including bloom, glare, diffraction spikes and lens flares, are rendered at the current window resolution. This means that in a very large screenshot they will look blurry. Although they are blurry by their nature anyway.
  •  If you notice a very large "corona" around bright stars when you zoom into a saved screenshot, try to reduce bloom brightness. This can be found in Settings -> Visual style.
  • The FXAA anti-aliasing is also a screen-space effect, but it works on a per-tile basis perfectly. However, it does not have access to pixels in the adjacent tiles, so you may notice seams between tiles. It is therefore recommended to use MSAA instead.
• The gravity lensing effects found around black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, wormholes, and warp drives are not really compatible with the tile rendering. The gravity lensing effect works by distorting the background image and rendering it back to the frame using ray-tracing, from the camera position towards infinity. As such, some rays may go outside of the edges of the frame or of the tile boundaries. For these rays, the engine doesn't have data to sample, so it takes pixels from the special environment map, which is generated in advance. The environment map is a cubic texture surrounding the camera. But this map has a limited resolution, which can be configured by the environment maps resolution slider in Settings -> Graphics. While the resolution of this setting may be enough for normal rendering, with the high-resolution screenshot tool the maximum setting of 4k is far too little for a high-quality screenshot. Areas on the screenshot where the environment map was sampled will look very blurry compared to the rest of the scene. As such, since the high-resolution screenshot rendering occurs in independent tiles, every tile will have patches of low-resolution areas in it.
  • The accretion disk and jets are not affected by this limitation and are rendered in full resolution. So scenes more focused on depicting the accretion disk may look good, since strongly warped areas near the event horizon will be masked by the accretion disk or may be too small to notice.
  • Where the gravity lens fits into a single tile, the issue should not occur. You may adjust the camera position to achieve this.
  • If you take screenshots of black holes with auto or manual exposure mode, the background stars/galaxy will not be visible at all.
• You may experience issues while taking landscape screenshots at high LOD. The engine has a special buffer in the GPU video memory used to store generated terrain textures and geometry, called the texture cache. Its size is 2048 slots or around 3 GiB at most. Even if you have a decent GPU with enough video memory (6+ GiB), the engine can't fully load/generate terrain at LOD 1, and in some circumstances even at LOD 0.5. This is also true for the tile rendering. If the high-resolution screenshot tool detects purging of the texture cache multiple times per tile, it shows a popup message suggesting that you reduce terrain LOD or tile size. You can reduce LOD on-the-fly. This will allow you to find the working LOD, experimentally.
  • Try to disable clouds, water, and night/thermal glow, as these all consume slots in the texture cache.
  • Reducing the tile resolution to 512 may also help, because less terrain patches will be visible in the tile, so less slots will be needed from the texture cache. You can see how terrain is splitting into patches while the engine preloads the tile before saving it to the disk. The patches will look like a wireframe mesh.
• You don't need to push all graphics settings to the limits (like aurora quality, rings resolution, resolution of volumetrics, etc.) to achieve a good screenshot. Those are performance/quality tradeoff optimizations, and they all can be simply disabled by selecting the set graphics to maximum option.
  • This is also true for the Video Capture Tool.

Special Thanks

We would like to give a special thanks to our community member Kewen L. "Phunnie" who helped us create the high-resolution screenshot tool. Thank you very much!

Catalog Updates

Our catalog update this month features new exoplanets and host stars, new binary asteroids in the Solar System, and a variety of fixes and updates for existing catalog entries. Among the new exoplanets are a pair of nearby Earth-sized worlds, SPECULOOS-3 b and Gliese 12 b. And yes, that first planet is named like the beloved Belgian cookie! But in this case, ‘SPECULOOS’ is an acronym standing for “Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars” (astronomers love a good acronym!). Both of these planets closely orbit cool, M-type stars, but their atmospheres (or lack thereof) are expected to be quite different. Not only does SPECULOOS-3 orbit about 9 times closer than Gliese 12 b (at 0.00733 au, vs Gliese 12 b’s 0.067 au), their host stars’ activity levels also have a big impact. SPECULOOS-3 is an active star, while Gliese 12 b is a quiet star, with little activity. This means that SPECULOOS-3 b is being blasted with radiation and as a result, it is expected to have little to no atmosphere. Gliese 12 b, meanwhile, with its calm star, could retain a massive, Venus-like atmosphere, or a thinner, more Earth-like atmosphere. Both planets make promising targets for follow-up studies, and continue to demonstrate the diversity of the universe.

Behold! SPECULOOS-3 b:

Gliese 12 b:

Build 0.990.48.2024 (Public Beta), Changes and Updates from the Previous Version:

• Added high-resolution screenshot tool
• Improved integration of Settings and Tools windows with the main menu
• Updated the exoplanet and host star catalog
• Updated binary asteroid catalog
• Improved the appearance of Eris and Sedna (for real this time!)
• Miscellaneous catalog fixes, including the distance to galaxy and blackhole S5 0836+71
• Fixed broken Featured Locations and added a few new Featured Locations
• Added button to the video capture dialog to open the output folder
• Added missing gamma correction to several tone mapping options
• Added new tone mapping options: AgX Punchy, Reinhard SE, Rec 709, and sRGB
  •  Rec 709 and sRGB are mainly for reference, they are not designed for HDR content and clip harshly with bright pixel values; manual exposure adjustment recommended for best results
• Fixed some settings not saving while in the main menu

Steps to Opt In

If you would like to opt in to the SpaceEngine beta on Steam, please do the following:

1. Go to your Library in Steam.
   
2. Right click on SpaceEngine and select Properties.
   
3. Go to the Betas tab.
   
4. Select Beta Participation and then choose beta.
   
5. You are now opted in to the SpaceEngine beta.
   

Opt Out of Beta

If you wish to opt out of the SpaceEngine beta, follow the steps above, but choose none in the Beta Participation dropdown.

Reporting Bugs

If you discover any bugs while using the SpaceEngine beta, please take a moment and report them on the SpaceEngine Discord server. Thank you for helping us improve SpaceEngine!