Real Life Nebulas

[Talon]

What would happen to a ship inside a real nebula (let's use the Crab Nebula as an example, as it has a nice pulsar in the middle)?

[Cancer]

Re: Real Life Nebulas

 

A related discussion in this thread about pulsar planets.

 

Inside a recent supernova remnant like the Crab, with its nice fresh neutron star still stirring stuff up, is going to be an exceedingly nasty radiation environment. What game effects that has depends on your starship tech and gameworld assumptions. If surviveable starship-to-starship combat among cruiser-class ships is included in your world concept, then full battle shielding, however that works, left on continuously, should be more than adequate to keep ship & crew intact in such an environment. But I'd think it would take that.

[Sundog]

Re: Real Life Nebulas

 

But that's more a cause of the Pulsar than the Nebula. The particles that make up a nebula are pretty harmless; unless you're moving at relativistic speeds (.2C and up) you can treat the area as a pretty high-grade vacuum.

 

Though come to think of it, star sightings could get hard to take. You'd need an inertial navigation system of some kind to get around, especially in dense nebulae like the Horsehead.

[Cancer]

Re: Real Life Nebulas

 

Careful. There are several distinctly different physical things lurking under the general heading "nebula". The Horsehead is an entirely different beast from the Crab, to resort to a weak pun.

 

The Crab is a nice, fresh young supernova remnant (SNR). Lots of stuff going on there. Plenty of million-degree plasma there, strong magnetic fields, high-energy particles, x-rays, etc. Not a place I want to visit.

 

Orion, M17, etc., those are "H II" regions. The gas is ionized by hard UV from hot, young stars in the vicinity. Radiation environment, while still not what we're used to, is MUCH less of a deal than in an SNR.

 

Ring Nebula, Dumbbell, etc., these are "planetary nebulae". The gas is ionized as the envelope of a dying low-mass star detaches itself relatively peacefully from the core. These are short-lived phenomena, no more than 10^5 years or so. Higher gas densities than H II regions, perhaps higher temperatures, but again, not a big deal compared to SNR. No X-rays, no high-energy particles.

 

Horsehead (and the Coalsack and similar things) is actually a dark cloud seen as it silhouettes a region of an H II region. Its matter is actually quite cold, relatively high density, lots of dust. Not much radiation at all inside it; in fact, it's likely that inside it, you won't see any other stars (if you look inthe visible)!