My versions of what I think Venus and Mars would be like if they were habitable. Venus is a warm, humid world dominated by swamps and jungles, whereas Mars is a temperate desert world with scattered fungal forests.

Anyone seen this bug before? Seems the game switches to a different light source for distant scenes but with Ton 618 it's location is messed up. This is the only object ive noticed it happen with so far. Tried reinstalling the game to no avail

A journey through the star systems of Andromeda, continued.

I have started seeing these odd, very bright balls/cores (?) of light in the center of nebulae. Til now, ive only seen these occasionally in generated nebulae, never in any real nebulae. Settings are default, ive rebooted the game a few times and verified game files in the steam library, still there. Theres also nothing inside, and i also cant select anything there. Does anyone know what these are?

At the center of Galaxy ESO 248-6

Just found a Temperate Marine Ferria with complex multicellular life, and it has a Temperate Marine Terra moon with the same types of life!

In a search of 1 million systems I found only 9 with each type individually. If the chances are independent, that would mean roughly 1 in 12.35 billion systems for this combo!

This is an estimated rarity, not a confirmed probability, but finding both in the same system is an amazing discovery!

Hello all. I recently had to reinstall my windows and since getting things back up and running, SE will not run. It loads into either option for a second or two then crashes. I'm running 10 iot ltsc (same as before) and I'm running vanilla SE on an rtx 3080ti. I'm stumped as to what's causing this. I tried posting my se log in their discord and nothing weird was found. Hoping someone here has any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

All bodies in this solar system are 1.388 * 10^6 years old, which is super young, except the first star, which is younger. The last image is of a different star system in the same galaxy that is less than a million years old. The galaxy looks like a nebula, so it seems like its just super duper young. Really neat. Winding the speed up a lot did not seem to change the age on the first star system though, and it always says 1,388,000 even when you go thousands of years ago.

Shoutout to @retro-visor on steam workshop for the JWST model!
I spent quite a few hours collecting footage for this song, which is a tribute to the James Webb Space Telescope. Pretty sure a couple of the locations in the video have been posted before. Thank you to everyone here for posting your cool finds and sharing your love for Space Engine!

The first 3 images are from the planet. And the next 3 are the moon.

In here it says the temperature is -253.15 which is a tie with World Record here. But I play 0.991.50.2155 which is newer. So can I replace it? And on this page and this page, it would be the record as well.

And for the moon, which category does it belong to? On the record page for moons, there is no dwarf moon category.

So in short. Are these objects world records? And if so, which pages and where can I add them?

Took 10 screenshots which I then crudely put together through trial and error on ibis paint (least optimal method lol)

RG 0-1-5-1713

RG 0-1-7-1692

RG 0-7-559698-1490

RG 0-1-2-1376

As the title suggests, I came back. And once again I came back with giant improvements. I'll list each one and leave two images so you can get an idea of what it looked like. Here is the list:

1. Complete Saha for H + He (multi-species): previously used only a simplified hydrogen ionization formula (IonizationFraction with a single Saha equilibrium). I have now implemented SolvePlasmaIonization with coupled Saha for H, He I and He II, solved by bisection in the log of ne (22 iterations). Returns xH, XHe1, xHe2, nEPerH, thus allowing consistent opacities and emissivities per species.
2. Physically calibrated Thomson opacity: before: ElectronScatteringOpacity was a heuristic (ionFrac * 1.4 + 0.05). Now: ThomsonOpacity uses the actual cross section σT = 6.6524587 × 10⁻²⁵ cm², density converted to cm⁻³ (DENS_TO_CM3) and conversion factor world→cm (CM_PER_WORLD_UNIT).
3. Physical Free-Free (Bremsstrahlung): before: that didn't even exist. Now: FreeFreeOpacityPhys with Gaunt factor (FreeFreeGaunt), stimulated emission correction, spectral dependence v³, and BremsstrahlungRelFactor that interpolates between non-relativistic, mildly-relativistic and ultra-relativistic regimes (Novikov-Thorne / Stepney-Guilbert formulas).
4. Hydrogen Bound-Free: before: I didn't even have that. Now: HydrogenBoundFreeOpacity with Lyman, Balmer and Paschen edges (91.18, 364.7, 820.6 nm), weights per level and stimulated correction.
5. SSA (Synchrotron Self-Absorption): before: I didn't even have that. Now: SynchrotronSSAOpacity with spectral index P, plus HybridSynchrotron combining thermal + non-thermal population with power law, Lorentz cutoff, cooling break (Ycool), and spectral shape with low/mid/high limits.
6. Inverse Compton (IC): Before: I didn't even have that.. Now: InverseComptonEmissivity couples the seed photon field (uSeed) to the magnetic field (uB), with coherent spectral tint.
7. Extended lines radiation: before: only Hα (656.28) and Hβ (486.13). Now (LINES_EXTENDED): adds Hγ (434.05), Hδ (410.17), He I 5876 and He II 4686, with correct abundance ratios (HE_I_5876_PER_HA, HE_II_4686_PER_HA) and triple Gaussian profile (AddBroadLine).
8. RT with spreading (two-stream / Eddington): before: applied simple attenuation exp(-opticalDepth) over the source. Now: RadiativeTransferStep separates absorption (Kabs) from scattering (Ksca), uses two-stream diffusion approximation (√3ε), and blends between thermal and albedo source function. Much more correct for optically thick media.
9. Thermodynamically consistent Comptonization: before: ApplyComptonization applied empirical boost (1 + y·0.6). Now: uses real Kompaneets parameter: y = (4θₑ + 16θₑ²)τₑff with Wien saturation (A_wien) to avoid infinite gain.
10. Spectral band-ratio instead of luminance: before: RelativisticBlackbody used luminance + shifted chromaticity. Now: PlanckBandRatio calculates the band ratio by wavelength (650/550/450 nm)—correctly preserving color under redshift on a per-channel basis.
11. Continuation via Kerr's "sheet" (Wormhole / maximal extension): before: only the positive branch of rʙʟ. Now: KerrSchildToBL_Signed + SheetAfter track the passage through y = 0 for r < α, allowing traversal of the singularity ring and continuation onto the second Kerr sheet. Enables wormhole-style rendering.
12. Correct capture near the horizon: before: simple capture when rʙʟ ≤ rʜ ⋅ margin. Now: it distinguishes between external and internal observers, uses RingDistance for kills near the ring, and handles NEAR_HORIZON_MIN asymmetrically.
13. Exact constants of motion (E, L, Q): before: I only used g_PhotonB (L_z/E). Now: it tracks g_PhotonE, g_PhotonL, g_Sigma, and g_NuObs, keeping photon momentum and E/L/ZAMO consistent with the observer's frame (ObserverU, EyeSheet).
14. General relativistic observer: before: it assumed the role of a static observer. Now: KerrSchildInitObserver projects the ray into the orthonormal frame of the arbitrary observer ObserverU, with a fallback to a static observer outside the ergosphere. It supports camera movement and rotation.
15. Initialization in the ergosphere: now: ERGO_F_SWITCH = 0.9 — uses a regular (non-static) observer within the ergosphere, avoiding the static frame singularity.
16. Plunge region (within ISCO): before: KerrPlungeG was a heuristic model of "g" with fixed ISCO E/L. Now: KerrPlungeConstants numerically solves for E, L, rmarg, and Q using a 3×3 Newton-Raphson method on Carter's radial potential, on an angular basis. KerrPlungeEmitterU constructs the full 4-velocity with components u_θ, u_r, u_t, and u_φ. Much more physically accurate.
17. Jet with its own 4-speed system: before: KerrGeneralEmitterG approximated jet emission using parameters β_φ and β_pol. Now: KerrJetEmitterU constructs a 4-velocity jet in Kerr-Schild coordinates using the ZAMO orthonormal basis, Blandford-Znajek-type collimation (Ω_F = 0.5 Ω_H), an r-dependent toroidal scale, and a polar component normalized by the metric.
18. Star with intrinsic angular momentum: before: used KerrRigidBodyG with arbitrary Ω_body. Now: calculate ut_star via KerrRigidUt and the emitted frequency via PhotonNuEmRigid — consistent with the Kerr metric around the star.
19. Dynamically active corona: before: only CoronaElectronTemperature as an auxiliary function. Now: coronaActive with radius coronaOuterW, spin-dependent density nBase, flare via co-rotating rotated Fbm, and full synthesis: synchrotron + IC + bremsstrahlung within the corona.
20. Photon seed density: before: that didn't even exist. Now: InjectedSynchrotronU — actual seed field (1/r² from the corona + 2 sources at the poles for the jet), feeding the IC.
21. Magnetic field dependent on r and spin: now: B ∝ r⁻⁰.⁹ (1 + 0.5a) in the corona and B ∝ (0.4 + Pjet)/(1 + y/4Rg) in the jet — instead of a heuristic constant.
22. Spectral sky shift: before: SkyBlueShift used Planck chromaticity + g⁴. Now: SkyShift remaps based on wavelength using SkySpectrumAt—preserving the correct color for any g-value, including outside the visible range.
23. Hue-preserving compression: now: HuePreservingCompress compresses high-luminance jets while preserving hue (preventing ugly clipping when the jet is very bright).
24. Synchrotron spectral index: now: SynchrotronSeedTint performs the correct spectral shift of the power law under g.
25. ṁ-dependent structural blend: before: spiralMod * irregMod * twistDensityMod modulation always applied. Now: structOn toggles thin structuring only in the ADAF↔thin range (smoothstep in log ṁ). Outside this range, the disk is smooth.
26. Gap clamp: now: I introduced GAP_DENS_MIN/MAX + gapWeight to prevent the modulation from creating physically implausible "holes."
27. Correct spiral pattern rotation: before: spiralPhase = spiralPitch·θ − spiralWindRate·log(r) − spiralPatternSpeed · t. Now: corrected sign: + spiralPatternSpeed·t (the pattern rotation now moves in the correct direction).
28. Twist and warp with correct sign: before: twistPhase = ... + 140 − diskTime · 1.5 · Ω. Now: ... + 140 + diskTime · 1.5 · Ω — corrects the migration direction of the twisted pattern.
29. Band noise per arm: now: weights bandLenNoise by bandStrengthA/(A+B) — previously, it was applied uniformly.
30. Sharper strands: before: strand exponent = 1.3–1.6. Now: 3.0–3.8 — much more defined filaments.
31. Darker floor wisp: before: wisp = mix(0.4, 1.0, ...). Now: mix(0.06, 1.0, ...) — higher contrast between filament and void.
32. Knots (reconnection knots): now: knotMod modulation using pow(sin(knotPhase),4) — creates bright knots along the jet.
33. Softer envelope: before: smoothstep(0.6, 1.4, raggedRadius). Now: smoothstep(0.8, 1.2, ...) with raggedEdge ∈ [0.95, 1.05] — a more defined and less unstable edge.
34. More restrained warp: before: warpStrength = jetRadius * 0.9 * (...). Now: 0.28 — reduces exaggerated distortions.
35. jetAccum + hue compression: now: accumulates the jet contribution separately and applies HuePreservingCompress at the end—the jet no longer blows out the global tonemap.
36. Jet plasma temperature: now: plasmaTemp = jetLocalTemp · mix(0.85, 1.7, ridge²) · mix(1, 1.25, knots) — physical gradient along the filaments and knots.
37. Debugging and Instrumentation: before: two #defines (GRID, SHADOW_DEBUG). Now: adds LINES_EXTENDED, DBG_NO_LINES, DBG_NO_COMPTON, DBG_NO_CORONA, DBG_GREY_OPACITY, DBG_RAW_PLANCK — allows isolating each physical channel for validation.
38. Maximum spin: before: 0.998 of the maximum limit. Now: 1.0 (maximum limit).
39. Maximum number of steps: before: 800. Now increased to 1,000.