If you saw an real accretion disk you wouldn't be able to see those effects anyway.  Accretion disks would be brighter than the sun.

When reality looks wrong, change reality?

The temperature of an accretion disk with respect to radius generally follows [tex]T(r) \propto r^{-\frac{3}{4}}[/tex]

Which as a plot, looks like this:


If the disk is hot enough that it emits x-rays (wavelengths between 10^-8 and 10^-11 meters), then the peak temperature must be hundreds of thousands to millions of Kelvin.

Suppose as in the screenshot that the peak temperature of the disk near the white dwarf surface (about 10,000km out) is about 5 million Kelvin.  Then at twice that radius, the temperature is still about 3 million K.  At 10 times that radius it's about 900,000K.  At 100 times that radius? 150,000K.  You get the picture.  Even at large distances it's still so hot as to be glowing in ultraviolet!  And since luminosity follows temperature to the fourth power, that's a huge luminosity even compared to a typical star, and it would be absolutely blinding.

How far out would we have to extend the disc such that the temperature is merely 5000K and thus peaking in visible light?  That would be ten thousand times the white dwarf's radius!  That's 100 million kilometers -- greater than the distance from the white dwarf to the star it's accreting from!

So that's reality.  White dwarf accretion disks are stupidly bright all the way out!  Trying to extend the disk so that the outer edge isn't stupidly bright would result in a disk that is stupidly unrealistically big.  The only reasonable correction to make it "look right" would be a massive exposure compensation, where everything else including nearby stars are black, as is shown in An'shur's screenshots.

Watsisname explains it pretty well

When reality looks wrong, change reality?

The temperature of an accretion disk with respect to radius generally follows [tex]T(r) \propto r^{-\frac{3}{4}}[/tex]

Which as a plot, looks like this:


If the disk is hot enough that it emits x-rays (wavelengths between 10^-8 and 10^-11 meters), then the peak temperature must be hundreds of thousands to millions of Kelvin.

Suppose as in the screenshot that the peak temperature of the disk near the white dwarf surface (about 10,000km out) is about 5 million Kelvin.  Then at twice that radius, the temperature is still about 3 million K.  At 10 times that radius it's about 900,000K.  At 100 times that radius? 150,000K.  You get the picture.  Even at large distances it's still so hot as to be glowing in ultraviolet!  And since luminosity follows temperature to the fourth power, that's a huge luminosity even compared to a typical star, and it would be absolutely blinding.

How far out would we have to extend the disc such that the temperature is merely 5000K and thus peaking in visible light?  That would be ten thousand times the white dwarf's radius!  That's 100 million kilometers -- greater than the distance from the white dwarf to the star it's accreting from!

So that's reality.  White dwarf accretion disks are stupidly bright all the way out!  Trying to extend the disk so that the outer edge isn't stupidly bright would result in a disk that is stupidly unrealistically big.  The only reasonable correction to make it "look right" would be a massive exposure compensation, where everything else including nearby stars are black, as is shown in An'shur's screenshots.

Although a completely clickable interface could be maybe useful with certain hardware...

I was talking about the gravitational and Doppler shift on a larger accretion disk.

I was talking about the gravitational and Doppler shift on a larger accretion disk.

Yeah, those effects are shown.  A lot of people get thrown by that, since intuition would suggest that you should see the color change.  The color does change, but what you actually notice is more of a change in brightness, because it's like changing the effective temperature, and brightness changes with temperature very quickly (goes as the fourth power).  When astronomers talk of observing different sides of the accretion disk around Sagittarius A* with the EHT, they actually say "Doppler-boosted" or "de-boosted" instead of "blueshift / redshift", because this is such an important effect.

Heath, I'd add that on second thought, my statement that using the mouse is slower is inconsistent, because I took into account an unneeded click. Sleep deprivation is to blame, this time
And... Brace yourself... A "Goto" button has been added to the Solar System browser for the next update.

I wasn't arguing against you.

The doppler shift of the accretion disk is absent.

Thanks man You folks are simply the best ever!

The doppler shift of the accretion disk is absent.

Not to sound argumentative but no it isn't. It is, however, much more subtle than you might have expected going in. Keep in mind that Doppler shift isn't going to be obvious until the disk contents are moving close to the speed of light, which is only the case near the middle - and thus it's hard to spot unless you either find a black hole with an abnormally small accretion disk or turn the exposure wayyy down until everything but the center region is blacked out.

There you'll notice that the oncoming side is noticeably brighter; it's also blue-tinted to a degree, but Doppler shift goes hand-in-hand with a significant change in brightness, so the "blue" side tends to wash out to white while the "red" side goes dim and hard to see, particularly when it's already emitting mainly blue light due to its temperature (blue minus red equals black).

EDIT: WOW, I got ninja'd by a whole page thanks to not checking whether I was on the last page or not. Sorry! Hopefully my illustration helped out anyway xP

SpaceEngineer simply anticipated your same point of view, it's the only one working here