I got back to work on my “Red Star Flyby” video this week. I hadn’t done anything with it since just before my heart attack. I’d like to get it done and move on to other projects. I have far too many unfinished projects.
I first got interested in this idea when I read about Breakthrough Starshot. I realized that even under the most optimistic scenario, I would be dead long before they got any results. So, I decided I’d just make up my own imaginary trip.
It has been a while since I last used Blender, but I was able to get the hang of it again after a little experimentation. I learned a few new tricks while I was at it. The file has gotten much more complex and the video takes up to 8 hours to render.
Names
I gave names to the star and the planets. I just assigned a catalogue number for the star itself: MMC 898465843. This is not, so far as I know, a catalogue number that would ever be used. I did come up with a name as well, but I wasn’t happy with it. I might come up with something better later. I was tempted to call it Morison’s Star, but that is just too egotistical for me.
The innermost planet I call Bowser. It is somewhat larger than Earth. The next planet further out is Chuck, which is midway in size between the Earth and Mars. Next out is Dodgeball, which is very slightly larger than Earth.
Finally, the big planet is Elvis, which is about twice the size of Uranus. It had been about the size of Uranus, but it was also quite far from the camera, so looked small. I doubled the size. It is still smaller than Saturn though and it still fits inside my computer ;). I also gave it a moon. I thought it would make it look more interesting.
Camera Adjustments
I had the camera focus on the star and each of the planets in turn as it went through the system. The star just didn’t look very interesting, so I changed the timing of when the camera points to each of the planets. When I started on the project, I created an Excel spreadsheet to calculate where everything would be at a given time, and which way the camera should point. That made it much easier when I went to make changes.
Next Steps
One of the problems I have is that the star doesn’t look all that round. It looks more like one of those disco mirror balls. I’ve tried several ways to make it rounder. It is difficult to tell if any of that helps.
Once I have the animation the way I want it, I plan to add some sound. One of my ideas was to have a commentary track of people talking about what the screen shows. I see that as a lot more work than I want to do right now. I’ll likely go with some sound effects or music. Something “spacy”.
If I go with just sound effects or music, I should have some on screen data to describe what the viewer is seeing. I’d like to include a “mission” clock to give an idea how fast the space craft is going. My simulation is based on the Breakthrough Starshot project, where the space craft is travelling at about 20% the speed of light. The speed would vary as it flies through the system, but I decided not to try to work out exactly how much it would change.
I want include captions about the characteristics of star and the planets in the display. The sizes and distances from the star I have already. I used a website: https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/orbital-period to calculate the orbital periods. They turned out to be much longer than I had expected.
My intent was that Dodgeball would get about the same light from the star as the Earth gets from the Sun. With the orbital periods longer than I expected, I thought I better check if that were the case. I used the luminosities of the Sun, Proxima Centauri, and Barnard’s Star with the inverse square law to compare. A star midway in size between Proxima Centauri, and Barnard’s Star would work. I may adjust the size of the star to fit into this range.
In the past, I’ve done a lot of stop and start on this project. I hope I can keep my nose to the grindstone this time.