GAIA to SpaceEngine catalogs
Works in 0.980, 0.980e and 0.990
What does it do?
It adds a certain amount of stars from the Gaia DR2 catalog to SpaceEngine. All the stars are fetched from the Gaia archive, which means that their position relative to Sol will be an accurate representation of real life. The emergence of dust from the absence of stars is even visible with high magnitude limits in versions that do not have a distance limit. Obviously, more stars = more overall resemblance to the actual survey, and thus more resemblance to what it is like in real life.
How to Install:
1. Download one of the paks from the list below
2. Choose ONE version.
3. Extract one pak file into SpaceEngine\addons folder.
GAIA designation is GAIA DR2 [######]
I suggest to install the 800kstars100LALL version as it very clearly depicts the overall shape of the GAIA catalog without being too heavy. Disabling procedural stars when upping mag limit is also a great idea. You can do so by clicking the gear icon on the bottom of the right toolbar and checking off procedural under stars.
Current versions:
Normal Versions
2kstars100lyALL: 2033 total stars; features all the stars in the GAIA catalog within a 100 light year radius. >>Download<<
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127kstars10L500pc: 127660 total stars; features all the stars in the GAIA catalog with at least 10x sun luminosity in a 500 parsec radius. >>Download<<
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609kstars10L1000pc: 609366 total stars; features all the stars in the GAIA catalog with at least 10x sun luminosity in a 1000 parsec radius. >>Download<<
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800kstars100LALL: 800135 total stars; features all the stars in the GAIA catalog with at least 100x sun luminosity. >>Download<<
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Extreme Versions
Will lag and crash your game if not careful. Also can take significantly longer to load.
Extreme-2Mstars1000lyALL: 1744721 total stars; features all the stars in the GAIA catalog within a 1000 light year radius. >>Download<<
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Extreme-3Mstars40LALL: 2724372 total stars; features all the stars in the GAIA catalog with at least 40x sun luminosity. >>Download<<
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Extreme-4Mstars25LALL: 4294715 total stars; features all the stars in the GAIA catalog with at least 25x sun luminosity. >>Download<<
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Extreme-5Mstars20LALL: 4951813 total stars; features all the stars in the GAIA catalog with at least 20x sun luminosity. >>Download<<
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OTHER
Gaia's White Dwarf catalog by FastFourierTransform containing 73 221 white dwarfs. (Highly suggested)
Contains a highly detailed and accurate catalog of white dwarfs, with their 3D positions relative to Earth.
http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=465
EXTRA PREVIEWS
Video Showcase
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Comparison to real life.
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Plan of the Milky way with procedural stars on with Gaia (3819x3717)
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Giant Photorealistic Panorama by tRetro-Visor, post processed with photoshop.
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My own version 18728x2160, don't worry I downscaled it. Original can be found here: https://www.deviantart.com/phunnieb/gallery/67646365/Devious-Folder
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Don't worry if you don't have an insane gaming computer. This barely affects loading time (even the 3M version) and won't have any perfomance impacts until you start turning magnitude way up. With magnitude set at default (7), it's as if the addon was not present. All the stars are very dim, and require a high magnitude limit to be able to visually see them (the pictures in the previews were taken at magnitudes 14.5 to 16)
If anyone is wondering: Yes those stars are real are present in real life. The planets around the stars, however, are not real. The planets are procedural. Also, the spectral class of the stars are wrong as I could not retrieve any spectral data from the gaia archive.
Side note: Only the stars with the required and useful information were pulled from the search query. All data was fetched from https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/ and then converted to SE .csv using https://github.com/LucasAstro/Space-Engine-Gaia. Also should be mentioned all the data is from Gaia DR2. This took around a day an a half to make because of corrections that had to be made in the code of the converter among things.
Credits go to LucasAstro for making the base converter and saving millions of years of slavery.
Massive thanks to JackDole for pointing out an error in the conversion from GAIA to SE, as well as being very helpful. Also massive thanks to Watsisname for helping with super secret stuff.
Changelog
V2.91 - Small hotfix for missing clusters in 3M and 4M. 09/12/2018
V2.9 - Changed the algorithm of the way spectral classes are assigned to classes using the HR diagram as a model. Now has more than just the V type class (Main Sequence). Includes Ia (luminous supergiant, Ib(supergiant), II(bright giant), III (giant) and V (main sequence). IV (subgiant) line is ambiguous so I did not add them. Spectral subclass (1-9) are still randomized (does not affect anything). 08/12/2018
V2.6 - Fixed version 800k, 2k and 2M.
V2.5. - "Fixed" the clusters in 800k(missing M 11), 3M, 4M and 5M from pillars of stars to a smaller "cube" of stars.
V2. - Fixed RA, added 4M & 5M.
V1. - Added 2k, 127k, 609k, 800k, 2M, 3M.
Known Issues:
-Spectral type and class areinaccurate (all are main sequence, and the class is randomized.) Fixed according to HR diagram. Subclasses (1-9) cannot be accurately determined so they are still random. I and IV classes are not included due to ambiguity or not present in-game.
-There are some duplicate stars for Hipparcos catalog.
-Clusters are pillars of stars Fixed, but still not accurate.
-Wrong RA for all stars Fully fixed.