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.
This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog
