So I am not to highly educated in the field of astronomical science, but I somewhat know what a Pulsar is.
I wanted to make the encounter with a pulsar part of an upcoming adventure, how would you (who probably know more about stellar phenomena than me) act out such an encounter betweeh the pulsar and the party's ship?
A pulsar is a rapidly rotating compact star which emits streams of high energy radiation. Probably not a very nice place to take a ship, especially an unshielded one. Being composed of degenerate matter they're actually very small, but at the same time incredibly dense with a powerful gravitational field; for this reason close proximity to one would play havoc on a ships hyperdrive (which can not be safely engaged inside a stellar bodies gravity well).
In of itself, none of this is particularly dangerous, they could just fly off, but if, per chance, their sublight drives blew - then they would only have a limited amount of time before they drift too close and are crushed by the immense gravity of the pulsar or just outright fried by EM. Of course, you can go way more complex, but you'll need to get more specific with what exactly you're trying to get out of this encounter.
A Hazard, generated by enough threat on an Astrogration check. Thrown out of Hyperspace because of the gravity well. Causing a critical hit +30 to the ship. Basically just a random encounter.
Well, you're the GM so you can go with that result.
But IMHO, the impact of the gravity well of a hyperdrive to an object like a star, black hole, or pulsar would be that the ship would bounce out of hyperspace, well clear of the stellar object. There probably won't be any immediate threat to the ship . . .
HOWEVER, the RAW indicate that a ship retains its previous vector (speed and direction) so if the ship is flying towards the stellar object (very likely), then the crew would need to do some fancy flying to avoid getting sucked into the gravity well. VERY likely an Easy (1 purple) maneuver.
BUT, the real threat to the ship and crew is the radiation or plasma ejected from a star. Call this a simple pilot roll (2 purple) plus setback die equal to the number of threat generated in the Astrogation roll. Require two rolls before you TPK the crew though.
And the most likely "random" encounter will be a red dwarf.
A pulsar would be pretty to observe though.
By itself the pulsar probably won't amount to much. If there's something nearby that they're also interested in then the pulsar creates an environmental danger (an extreme one) while they're dealing with it.
So the radiowaves it emits, won't scramble the systems?
By itself the pulsar probably won't amount to much. If there's something nearby that they're also interested in then the pulsar creates an environmental danger (an extreme one) while they're dealing with it.
That is also a good idea. The last transmission of something was close to a known pulsar! Gonna work someting out.
Edited by TheMOELANDERIn one of my games the players' ship misjumped due to a Despair on a failed astrogation check. They got yanked out of hyper due to an uncharted primordial black hole — into the outer fringe of its accretion disk, with non-functional ion drives and cascade power overloads throughout the ship randomly affecting the grav plating. Lots of sweat, and Destiny-burning, by the players as I counted down the number of minutes left before they'd reach the Roche limit and tidal stress would rip the ship apart. Meanwhile the gunners had fun using the tractor beams to try to slow their 'fall' by pushing against the largest rocks. Most nail-biting encounter I've had in years.
The Wikipedia article on neutron stars is a good place to start if you want to learn a little bit more about what pulsars are actually like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star
IMHO, a neutron star would basically present the same sort of hazard to a starship as a black hole would, which is to say Extremely Hazardous! But only if you flew too close. Neutron stars have an incredible amount of density for their size (which is only about the size of a city). So they have gravity. Lots and lots of it. They also whip out some pretty wicked radiation. But that should only be a problem in the Star Wars universe if you as the GM want it to be. One of the most interesting things about neutron stars for our purposes is that they can have planets orbiting around them just like other stars. To quote the wiki: "Pulsar planets receive little visible light, but massive amounts of ionizing radiation and high-energy stellar wind, which makes them rather hostile environments". That screams to me: "A great place to set an adventure!" But maybe i'm just one of those evil GMs.
If it is an actual pulsar, and its magnetic field is off axis from its rotation axis, you could also have to worry about EMP. Megatesla magnetic fields oscillating upwards of hundreds of times per second might be able to set up eddy currents in blood vessels....
Also, the science nerd in me demands to point out that a pulsar spins something in the neighborhood of 3,000 times per second . So to the layman having his ship stuck next to one, might as well be a constant stream of radiation instead of a lazy "whoop. . . . whoop. . . . .whoop. . . . whoop" lighthouse effect.
Personally...I'd avoid the scientific label. If you just call it "some weird star that rotates thousands of times per second, sending out regular beams of radiation" then you're not constrained by any science nerds at the table (even if some of them go "aha!") and you can do what you want with it. It could:
It could also be chalked up to being anything from a "normal" pulsar, to a Morse code relay from an ancient civilization gone offline (what happens if the PCs get it back online...?)
3 hours ago, Desslok said:Also, the science nerd in me demands to point out that a pulsar spins something in the neighborhood of 3,000 times per second . So to the layman having his ship stuck next to one, might as well be a constant stream of radiation instead of a lazy "whoop. . . . whoop. . . . .whoop. . . . whoop" lighthouse effect.
You're absolutely correct; but if the writers for Star Trek TNG can get paid to depict a pulsar as spinning like a lighthouse, then I think a GM can get away with doing the same; especially in a universe which also features 30m tall bipeds. : )
Pulsars rotate in rates ranging from thousands of times per second to several seconds per rotation.
Yeah, I checked the NASA website and they're confirming what Korjik is saying as to the rotation rate on Pulsars. So pick a number you like as the GM.
I did some math (oh boy) and figured out that a slow pulsar (a 12 mile diameter pulsar rotating once per second) has a surface speed of about 250,000 miles per hour.
Compared to Sol (our sun) Wiki reports a surface speed of about 5,000 mph (which has a diameter of 464,000 miles [give or take 5,000 miles]).
(Please feel free to audit my numbers. I'm obviously rounding generously for ease of discussion however).
So yeah, pulsars are rotating FAST.
But the biggest problem with both objects is that if you get close enough to get captured by the gravity well, you're dead. The solar radiation is likely to fry you long before you get close enough to worry about escape velocity.
The last time I did real research about the sun, I learned that if you get within a million miles of the Sun, you have a pretty good chance of being hit by a solar flare which speed out to that distance at about .3 c. (1 third the speed of light). That doesn't give you much time to dodge!
Note that Mercury's orbit is 1.1 million miles out from the sun.
Okay enough useless trivia data. Back to Pulsars . . .
35 million kilometers for Mercury
Yep. I was mistaken on the orbit on Mercury. Unless Wikipedia is lying!
I also completely mis remembered Earth's orbital distance too. Hmmm.
It looks like I need to refresh some of my Astronomy.
Thank you all for these intersting posts, I have some devious ideas I'm gonna use now.