I have noticed that a lot of catalog stars that are single star systems in reality have binary companions in SpaceEngine. For example: 61 UMa - should not be binary ε Ind - does have companions (binary brown dwarfs) but at large distance; no stellar companion τ Cet - should not be binary HIP 101997 - should not be binary
There are also stars that are binary but have erroneous orbital parameters, such as: ι Peg - should have period of 10 days, not 20+ years Algol C - should have period of 680 days, not 419 years (ID as Algol B in SE)
There are probably others, but you get the idea.
I can understand why it would be difficult to get every known binary/multiple star system exactly right. But is there any plan to remove false binaries (my first list) from the catalog and make them single?
I would be happy to work on it myself if I knew how.
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Edited by HarbingerDawn - Tuesday, 12.06.2012, 18:32
Open 'universe.cfg' and change the 'StarProcBifurcation' parameter to false. This will disable the generating of procedural binary/multiple systems for stars from catalog. SE needs a real binary/multiple stars catalog, but making it is much hard work. However someone could make a few dozen most common binary/multiple systems, as I have made for Alpha Centauri, Sirius, Castor, and binary suns of some exoplanets.
Well, there's Mizar... Aside from not being in orbit around Alcor in SE, I'm quite sure that when I pointed my telescope at it a few days ago, I saw another companion closer to Mizar. In fact, from what I've read both Mizar, Alcor, and this companion of Mizar are actually spectroscopic binaries themselves.