2300AD Star List/Map question
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FallingPhoenix
Mongoose
Tenacious-Techhunter said:
Relativity and quantum physics, mostly (as far as I remember).
Tenacious-Techhunter
Mongoose
Both of which are so extraordinarily specialized applications of physics that they generally have little to no impact on every day life.
I limited what I said with, “aside from some pretty esoteric finds”; where physics is concerned, special relativity and quantum physics are both pretty damn esoteric. We’re not going to find any new exotic form of non-visible star in radical numbers we did not expect. We may find some stray bodies of various sorts, but those are not stars. The star catalog, is, by and large, filled, for objects close by.
I limited what I said with, “aside from some pretty esoteric finds”; where physics is concerned, special relativity and quantum physics are both pretty damn esoteric. We’re not going to find any new exotic form of non-visible star in radical numbers we did not expect. We may find some stray bodies of various sorts, but those are not stars. The star catalog, is, by and large, filled, for objects close by.
Tenacious-Techhunter said:
The only risk of a large change is if somehow we get REALLY good at finding interstellar planets (those would be viable stutterwarp destinations)... but I can't really see that happening, they're pretty much impossible to locate because they're not giving out any significant heat (a lot of the BDs we've found are younger, warmer ones).
I think we've got many of the brown dwarfs within 50ly now too - again, the ones we're missing would be the older, colder, dimmer ones which are going to be damn hard to spot anyway. Those would probably make the bulk of the additions over the next 20 years or so.
I'm pretty sure we've got at least 90% of the red dwarf stars that are actually there now, and 100% of all the more massive stars. And we've got pretty accurate positional data for those (which will be updated again - but not too significantly - when the GAIA results come out).
Whereas in the Gliese catalogue that the original NSL is based on, we were missing a lot of the red dwarf M V stars and had none of the brown dwarfs, and also the positions of all the stars we did have weren't very accurate either.
FallingPhoenix
Mongoose
Tenacious-Techhunter said:
Aside from transistors, lasers (used in fiber optic connections), and GPS?
FallingPhoenix said:
Please stick to the topic, I wouldn't want to see this derailed into an irrelevant discussion about physics and discovery. It's very unlikely that some revolution will come along that will suddenly make us discover hundreds of nearby stars that we can't currently see.
Check out the Evildrganymede link above for realistic (or, more accurately, more realistic) star maps. Dr. Thomas has taken the most recent data and has built new arms based on it. It's not my preferred flavor of 2300AD, but it is very, very good work.
The comment about M and Y/T/L dwarf stars is a valid one. The further away you look, the harder it is to see dim stars. The spread of star types towards the outer 20-30 LY of the NSL badly under-represents these dim stars as they were too hard to detect back then.
In 20-30 years time we are likely to have a problem that we will know MORE about the stars local to us, and so may know that actually there are only three planets at Wolf 359, instead of the seven or eight it says in the Nyotekundu sourcebook. The "here be dragons" of our current interstellar incognita being rolled back to reveal the actual system makeup.
G.
The comment about M and Y/T/L dwarf stars is a valid one. The further away you look, the harder it is to see dim stars. The spread of star types towards the outer 20-30 LY of the NSL badly under-represents these dim stars as they were too hard to detect back then.
In 20-30 years time we are likely to have a problem that we will know MORE about the stars local to us, and so may know that actually there are only three planets at Wolf 359, instead of the seven or eight it says in the Nyotekundu sourcebook. The "here be dragons" of our current interstellar incognita being rolled back to reveal the actual system makeup.
G.
FallingPhoenix
Mongoose
fusor said:
True, but now I totally want to brainstorm out-there, but possible ways that more nearby stars could be hidden or missed somehow!
I guess that would probably derail the topic, too, though.
FallingPhoenix said:True, but now I totally want to brainstorm out-there, but possible ways that more nearby stars could be hidden or missed somehow!
I guess that would probably derail the topic, too, though.
There won't be any such ways - not in the space near Sol anyway. Going further out there are ways to hide or miss stars - dim stars would be missed as they'd be less detectable further out, going way further there could be stars hidden behind dark dust clouds but that's more on a galactic scale than a local scale.
The only 'missing' objects within 50ly would be the dimmest BDs and interstellar planets, and the dimmest M V stars (especially closer to 40-50 ly from Sol).I think we've already found everything (or the vast majority of objects at least) within 25ly of Sol though.
Tenacious-Techhunter
Mongoose
GJD said:
This is already a problem now. Planet hunting techniques are already making information on canon starsystems obsolete. And, as scientists, and even amateurs, discover new planet hunting techniques, it’s only going to get dramatically worse from here.
Tenacious-Techhunter said:
It's an issue, sure, but we're talking here specifically about identifying stars and nailing down their positions, not how many planets they have. Though yes, the "what planets they have" aspect will obviously change as time goes on (and some of the 2300AD systems are known to have planets already)
Reynard
Cosmic Mongoose
Having just picked up the 200AD book and idly curious about near stars again, I search for Near Star Lists. Found a couple that have useful info. There are others but these give good reference.
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nearstar.html
http://www.bcholmes.org/rpgs/starhero/stars.html
http://recons.org/TOP100.posted.htm
http://evildrganymede.net/wp/
More fun for me playing with stars and stutterwarp. Need to rebuild my spreadsheet listing all distances to each NSL star.
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nearstar.html
http://www.bcholmes.org/rpgs/starhero/stars.html
http://recons.org/TOP100.posted.htm
http://evildrganymede.net/wp/
More fun for me playing with stars and stutterwarp. Need to rebuild my spreadsheet listing all distances to each NSL star.
steve98052
Mongoose
Just how large does a celestial body have to be for it to be a viable way point for Stutterwarp?
Reynard
Cosmic Mongoose
Dragoner, you saved me some time! I was going to update my spreadsheet but, if your maps are accurate, I can get the information analyzed quicker. I want to calculate all the 7.7ly routes then have an alternative timeline with new system properties and worlds expanded with the colony data from Tools for Frontier Living to figure which worlds would be best suited for initial colonization. I assume the original planet designations were more story driven and maybe random. Might even 'age' the colonies up the timeline.
Reynard
Cosmic Mongoose
Okay, now things get interesting. I first attempted to use the maps to find each 7.7 ly link, Sol-Wolf 359 at 7.79 and UV Ceti-Teegarden's Star at 7.71 are too far. I was going to draw each link on a piece of paper which would link each of the 9 maps but it was getting messy. My next attempt will be scanning each map to a JPG file then remove every link over 7.7ly so I have maps solely showing actual routes. Make you realize there will be stars unreachable by stutterwarp drives. Wolf 359, so close yet so far.
