Whoops! I thought black dwarfs were 100% confirmed!

The universe is not sufficiently old to have Black Dwarfs yet. Those are white dwarfs that have radiated the vast majority of their residual heat and are no more visible in the visible spectrum. The oldest white dwarfs known are from the infancy of the universe, around 11 billion years old and they have cooled to 3900 K, that means they are glowing orange (maybe that would be a neat addition to Space Engine: some very unfrequent "orange white dwarfs"). The time to reach temperatures so the white dwarf no longer glows in the visible spectrum is debated but the smallest estimate gives 100.000 times the age of the universe.

They are not 100% confirmed (nothing in science is 100% in fact) but yeah, I mean, theoretically they should appear sometime in the far future (even the sun should become one in 10¹⁵ years). The thing is that obviously no black dwarf has been observed so no confirmation at all. In fact that makes sense with our estimates of the age of the universe. If you where to put black dwarfs in SE then to make it realistic you should change the whole galaxy (since Milky Way, Andromeda and Triangulum would be fused by that time), the solar system should be erased (or almost all planets changed in to other kind of objects), the large scale structure would have to change and galaxies be way more sparse between them, the galaxies more yellowish and with less bright star forming regions (older stars), stars with higher metallicities are the only stars you would see, in fact since this time would be after the end of the stelliferous era there would be no more star formation, at this time the vast majority of planetary orbits (those planets who survive around stellar remnants) would have decay or been ejected, so no more planets to explore around stars, and the universe you could explore should not extent farther from the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies (galaxies farther away would be outside our hubble sphere by now), so you could still explore around a million galaxies. But not all of this would be dark and unfunny, you would have probably new exotic objects and phenomena pertaining to this new era of the universe.

So no, better to not include black dwarfs sicne they dosen't exist but when they will the universe in SE would look completely different. But yeah we should include orange white dwarfs somewhere right?

Really? How?

Disable night side lights in the graphics options. Of course, this will disable ALL self-emission lights in SE, not just lava.

add some animated rings with dark spots moving and waving 

New granule + sunspot change sometime in the future?

Can we add Tycho 1 and 2 catalogs as well as USNO catalogs?  I know the distances aren't known but can't we guess those based on spectral class?  It's better than procedural stars- catalog stars actually exist

Also B-V index numbers for each star, H-R catalog and a saturation slider!

Can we add Tycho 1 and 2 catalogs as well as USNO catalogs?  I know the distances aren't known but can't we guess those based on spectral class?  It's better than procedural stars- catalog stars actually exist

That would make sense if there where reliable spectral classifications for all those stars (not the case) and if we had also good extinction laws that could tell us about the dimming of light in different directions in the sky and in different distances (humanity is still far from this). But don't worry, in something like half a year we would have the first Gaia catalogue with more than a billion stars (covering the vast majority of USNO and TYC catalogues for sure) with coordinates and distances. Vladimir Romanyuk wants to add them one day so, wait a little bit more for the epicness.

Can we add Tycho 1 and 2 catalogs as well as USNO catalogs?  I know the distances aren't known but can't we guess those based on spectral class?  It's better than procedural stars- catalog stars actually exist

That would make sense if there where reliable spectral classifications for all those stars (not the case) and if we had also good extinction laws that could tell us about the dimming of light in different directions in the sky and in different distances (humanity is still far from this). But don't worry, in something like half a year we would have the first Gaia catalogue with more than a billion stars (covering the vast majority of USNO and TYC catalogues for sure) with coordinates and distances. Vladimir Romanyuk wants to add them one day so, wait a little bit more for the epicness.

OMG that is going to be AMAZING!  I had never heard about this Gaia project before.  So we will be able to 3D plot the vast majority of stars down to Mag 12 or so?
One other thing I was wondering about, does SE account for proper motions of stars and planets through the years?  So let's say I wanted to see what the stars and planets look like from Earth in, say, 1 million AD (or BC), could I get a fairly accurate approximation?  Or will SE be able to do so once this Gaia catalog is completed?

One other thing I was wondering about, does SE account for proper motions of stars and planets through the years? So let's say I wanted to see what the stars and planets look like from Earth in, say, 1 million AD (or BC), could I get a fairly accurate approximation? Or will SE be able to do so once this Gaia catalog is completed?

Unfortunately no, but it's planned:

• Motion of stars in the galaxy
• Modeling of evolution of stars

OMG that is going to be AMAZING!  I had never heard about this Gaia project before.  So we will be able to 3D plot the vast majority of stars down to Mag 12 or so?

you never heard of that? It's going to be a leap in the history of astronomy. The European Space Agency doesn't advertize as much as NASA but it has spactacular missions going on now.

Not magnitude 12 but 20!!!!

I better going to make a new thread about this because epic things are coming out of this mission. You would find many answers to your current and upcoming questions there.

The link to the thread:http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=297&p=11493#p11493

OMG that is going to be AMAZING!  I had never heard about this Gaia project before.  So we will be able to 3D plot the vast majority of stars down to Mag 12 or so?

you never heard of that? It's going to be a leap in the history of astronomy. The European Space Agency doesn't advertize as much as NASA but it has spactacular missions going on now.

Not magnitude 12 but 20!!!!

I better going to make a new thread about this because epic things are coming out of this mission. You would find many answers to your current and upcoming questions there.

The link to the thread:http://forum.spaceengine.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=297&p=11493#p11493

Thanks, this is GREAT news!  Mag 20 is way lower than what my camera can do even with very long exposures in a low light pollution location!
I will check the thread out
To get back on topic here, will SE eventually be able to simulate weather conditions using METAR info?  It shouldn't be all that difficult to do, I have a free program called YoWindow which does it very well for locations around the world.  It's actually very useful to run YoWindow along with a planetarium program to organize when the best time is for observing the skies Speaking of planetarium software, can eclipses be properly simulated in SE .980 or should I briefly switch to another program to handle the 8/21 eclipse?  If SE doesn't simulate eclipses properly I'd probably use either Stellarium or Starry Night for that, but for everything else SE is king!
Here is a screenshot of SE and Yowindow running together on my left monitor.

I will check the thread out

Thank you. I will apreciate if it usefull for inspiring people to know more about GAIA.

 I have a free program called YoWindow which does it very well for locations around the world

I mean, Yowindow is not an accurate nor a usefull source for SE as I can see.
All the features that requiere real-time or near real time updates, thus internet connection, like cloud formations, ice caps seasonal changes, satellite images, satellite orbits, etc...) are things that probably are going to be implemented in the far future. Even the internet capabilities are going to arrive very far away for sure. Even with that, real time simulation of wheather conditions is going to be a hard programming goal. But yeah I hope eventually we can see this in SE also.

can eclipses be properly simulated in SE .980 or should I briefly switch to another program to handle the 8/21 eclipse?  If SE doesn't simulate eclipses properly I'd probably use either Stellarium or Starry Night for that, but for everything else SE is king!

As you can read here and here Vladimir Romanyuk is right now working precisely on that. "I planning to implement VSOP87/DE403 soon, and maybe release a quick patch for 0.980 with this feature only. Before the total solar eclipse in August." he said.
VSOP is a mathematical model for planetary orbits that accounts for the gravitational pull between planets (and not only for the interaction with the Sun). With this we are going to have very accurate orbits for all the objects in the solar system and therefore very good ephemerids (eclipses, conjunctions, etc...)

I will check the thread out

Thank you. I will apreciate if it usefull for inspiring people to know more about GAIA.

 I have a free program called YoWindow which does it very well for locations around the world

I mean, Yowindow is not an accurate nor a usefull source for SE as I can see.
All the features that requiere real-time or near real time updates, thus internet connection, like cloud formations, ice caps seasonal changes, satellite images, satellite orbits, etc...) are things that probably are going to be implemented in the far future. Even the internet capabilities are going to arrive very far away for sure. Even with that, real time simulation of wheather conditions is going to be a hard programming goal. But yeah I hope eventually we can see this in SE also.

can eclipses be properly simulated in SE .980 or should I briefly switch to another program to handle the 8/21 eclipse?  If SE doesn't simulate eclipses properly I'd probably use either Stellarium or Starry Night for that, but for everything else SE is king!

As you can read here and here Vladimir Romanyuk is right now working precisely on that. "I planning to implement VSOP87/DE403 soon, and maybe release a quick patch for 0.980 with this feature only. Before the total solar eclipse in August." he said.
VSOP is a mathematical model for planetary orbits that accounts for the gravitational pull between planets (and not only for the interaction with the Sun). With this we are going to have very accurate orbits for all the objects in the solar system and therefore very good ephemerids (eclipses, conjunctions, etc...)

Thanks FFT, the eclipse simulation is definitely more important than the real time weather thing.  Really good news to hear that SE might have a patch released for it for 0.980.
I am trying to spread news about SE far and wide across different forums.  I had not even known about its existence until a few months ago and frequenting various science forums I found quite a few people who were pleasantly surprised, they did not know such great simulation software that gave you the ability to simulate exoplanet landscapes and skies existed.  SNPP7 has some of this capability but unfortunately does not show atmospheres of exoplanets and the collection of landscapes is very limited.

Perhaps seeing the occasional meteor streak across the night sky might be nice when on a planet.

And if there are volumetric clouds on the way, we'll need plenty of lightning storms to go along with them. (And towering clouds of ash from a volcano or two.)

-Alex

I'd really like to see an android version of SE, or at least the possibility to stream SE from my PC to my phone and experience it in VR via google cardboard for example. I think people could do amazing stuff with it this way. People have already done something similar so you can at least watch videos of SE in VR so it is possible. This being implemented as a regular feature would surely increase the value of the program.
Here are some examples:

I'd really like to see an android version of SE, or at least the possibility to stream SE from my PC to my phone and experience it in VR via google cardboard for example. I think people could do amazing stuff with it this way. People have already done something similar so you can at least watch videos of SE in VR so it is possible. This being implemented as a regular feature would surely increase the value of the program.
Here are some examples:

Streaming to your device might be possible, but a mobile port of SE isn't. Mobile devices to not have the processing power to run SE.