Wolf 359 is a red dwarf star located some 7.8 lightyears from Sol. Memory Alpha lists it as "less than twenty lightyears" away; the STO map places it as closer to Sol than Alpha Centauri
I might be missing something here but does "Alpha Centauri" even exist in the STO Map ... afaik it doesn't, so how is it supposed to be closer / farther away ...
About what Star System are we talking about here ?
I might be missing something here but does "Alpha Centauri" even exist in the STO Map ... afaik it doesn't, so how is it supposed to be closer / farther away ...
About what Star System are we talking about here ?
No, Alpha and Proxima Centauri don't exist in STO. But you can still see the distance listed for Wolf 359 if you put your ship next to Sol. It's about 3 LY, less than half the distance it should be.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
seriously.. does anyone look at that map and think its supposed to be anything but generally representative. OP it doesn't matter (if it does its time for time out)
I might be missing something here but does "Alpha Centauri" even exist in the STO Map ... afaik it doesn't, so how is it supposed to be closer / farther away ...
About what Star System are we talking about here ?
There is another possibility. In the game Star Control II the player travels around the galaxy via hyperspace and quasispace, which are two different "dimensions" or "realities" from normal space, and so the maps for each depict locations differently and at varying "distances". Since warp drive is essentially space fold, perhaps distances on the map are in relation to space fold distances and not direct distances through normal, unaltered space.
Star Trek Starcharts (which is also the source that Suricata used), is probably the closest to "Trek canon" in regards to the Galaxy Map. AND, the STO map still has planets and locations incorrect compared to the Starcharts book.
you can imply it but you can not confirm it. thats where it ends. in otherwords its non-canon until it has a few seconds on a trek series just to tease the trekkies.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Quote:
Anyone can pull up a map of the galaxy from the ST shows and SEE that the Sol System is on the Alpha/Beta border but slightly on the alpha quad side. Why in the galaxy map since Season 1 has it been on the beta side? Was voyager returning to the beta quadrant? Did they say, "we need to defend the beta quad" on the shows? Someone needs to start doing some checks somewhere along the lines.
That someone should be you. The Sol system's location is fairly well cemented as being the border of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. Just like the Prime Meridian on Earth runs through London which is both in the Eastern and Western hemispheres. And just like most of Europe is in the Eastern hemisphere, we still refer to Europe as being part of The West; so too is the Federation referred to as an Alpha Quadrant power despite most of it's core worlds being located in the Beta Quadrant.
*Sorry to say this but I read a topic where someone tried to say the heart of the Federation was on the meridian of the Alpha/Beta Quadrant and that is incorrect. Earth, which is ALWAYS considered the heart of the Federation, when the Borg were attacking they were going to earth and in Nemesis Shinzon was going to destroy Earth. So again STO does have it wrong.
All these maps show the same thing. Earth is CLEARLY in the Alpha Quadrant and the Federation expanded in the Beta Quadrant as the colonized and added new Federation Races.
Now I don't know if this is just an expense error that Cryptic just doesn't see the reason to fix, but it does look pretty silly to be the only Official Star Trek Universe MMO, and get the location of the Federation wrong.
Hmmm. . . well. No. You're mistaken. Sol is actually directly on the border between Alpha and Beta. The line bisecting the quadrants runs through Sol, just as the Prime Meridian runs through Greenwich.
Now, in our game, that line is between sectors, as well as between quadrants. We could put Sol on that line, but then you'd only be able to fly through half of the system, as the other half would be outside the playable space. That seemed lame, so they moved the system in from that edge by a bit.
Yes, the show used "alpha quadrant" a lot to mean "home." However, Star Trek is incredibly inconsistent even within hard canon. Shows contradict other shows as well as themselves all the time. In addition, there are a fair number of systems that are based on real stars, such as Vulcan. Vulcan is 40 Eridani. And like it or not, 40 Eridani is not in the Alpha Quadrant. As it turns out, a whole lot of what was covered in TOS, and much of what was shown in TNG were in the Beta Quadrant.
Considering so many of those key worlds (Vulcan, Andoria, P'Jem, Risa, etc.) are in the Beta Quandrant, when they initially cut up the galaxy into sector blocks, the lumped Sol in with those.
Now, as for your cited maps. Every one of those is fan made. None are canon (though they may reference canon.) The most cited map is this one, from the Star Trek Star Charts book. That map is still essentially fan made, and is not, in itself, canon. However, due to the tremendous amount of research that went into it, many people rely on it as their basis of operation, and we tend to go by it where we can. (Note the position of Sol.)
That said, there are definitely problems with the position of some systems in the STO galaxy. Note that Memory Alpha is not in the sector above and to the right of Sol, but above and to the left. Vega is not near Risa, but even further to the left than Memory Alpha. However, most of those are relatively minor, and should not affect your immersion terribly.
If/when there is an opportunity to correct some of these, you can be sure we will do so to the best of our abilities, and within the constraint of the game.
Edit: And if you want to go down that rabbit hole, the galaxy is constantly spinning, and everything inside of it is constantly moving around as well. So even that Star Charts map would woefully out of date by 2410. . .
I'll add that the Delta Quadrant is simply on an entirely different scale. One sector in the DQ is about the length of your ship. It would not be possible to draw the DQ at the same scale we've drawn the AQ and BQ. Concessions were made, and we have to live with that fact.
Hmmm. . . well. No. You're mistaken. Sol is actually directly on the border between Alpha and Beta. The line bisecting the quadrants runs through Sol, just as the Prime Meridian runs through Greenwich.
Now, in our game, that line is between sectors, as well as between quadrants. We could put Sol on that line, but then you'd only be able to fly through half of the system, as the other half would be outside the playable space. That seemed lame, so they moved the system in from that edge by a bit.
Yes, the show used "alpha quadrant" a lot to mean "home." However, Star Trek is incredibly inconsistent even within hard canon. Shows contradict other shows as well as themselves all the time. In addition, there are a fair number of systems that are based on real stars, such as Vulcan. Vulcan is 40 Eridani. And like it or not, 40 Eridani is not in the Alpha Quadrant. As it turns out, a whole lot of what was covered in TOS, and much of what was shown in TNG were in the Beta Quadrant.
Considering so many of those key worlds (Vulcan, Andoria, P'Jem, Risa, etc.) are in the Beta Quandrant, when they initially cut up the galaxy into sector blocks, the lumped Sol in with those.
Now, as for your cited maps. Every one of those is fan made. None are canon (though they may reference canon.) The most cited map is this one, from the Star Trek Star Charts book. That map is still essentially fan made, and is not, in itself, canon. However, due to the tremendous amount of research that went into it, many people rely on it as their basis of operation, and we tend to go by it where we can. (Note the position of Sol.)
That said, there are definitely problems with the position of some systems in the STO galaxy. Note that Memory Alpha is not in the sector above and to the right of Sol, but above and to the left. Vega is not near Risa, but even further to the left than Memory Alpha. However, most of those are relatively minor, and should not affect your immersion terribly.
If/when there is an opportunity to correct some of these, you can be sure we will do so to the best of our abilities, and within the constraint of the game.
Edit: And if you want to go down that rabbit hole, the galaxy is constantly spinning, and everything inside of it is constantly moving around as well. So even that Star Charts map would woefully out of date by 2410. . .
Hah, I love this. The quote (in bold) you refer to was from myself. And I stand by it. The maps you posted are fan-made. The best resource for this sort of thing is probably the Star Trek Starcharts book.
Oh man... I bought three of those back when they first came out in 1980.
One is still in the original packaging. The other two are mounted between Plexiglas and stainless steel frames.
(I mounted two sets because the set of four maps are on both sides of two sheets of paper)
I have had them hanging on my apartment wall for many years now.
:cool:
EDIT: my bad... you meant the book not the maps.
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
according to what little i know of 40 eridani, that means the vulcan system should have 3 stars, dwarf stars. is around 16 light years away from sol and only star A is capable of supporting any life if any planets do exist in that system if our crude science is accurate.
as for andoria, its in one of two systems, epsilon indi or procyon. the former has 3 stars, one main sequence and 2 dwarfs and its noted if not accurately to have a gas giant orbiting but the star is not as strong as our star in brightness or energy output. however if its the latter, then procyon has a main sequence and a dwarf and around 11 light years away but i dunno if it has any planets in procyon A's orbit and even if it did, its considerably more brighter and puts out more energy then our star does so the chances are alot less for an ice planet orbiting a gas giant.
tellar prime is meant to be 61 cygni, a binary system about 11 light years out and both dwarfs that orbit each other, however no planets have yet been found to my knowledge.
so far thats just these, since we have no idea what there really is out there and compare it with star trek charts which are unreliable at best, think you will find that when humans get out this far and determine that 61 cygni actually has no planets, then for certain the star trek charts are null and void by that alone if your comparing it to real life.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
according to what little i know of 40 eridani, that means the vulcan system should have 3 stars, dwarf stars. is around 16 light years away from sol and only star A is capable of supporting any life if any planets do exist in that system if our crude science is accurate.
as for andoria, its in one of two systems, epsilon indi or procyon. the former has 3 stars, one main sequence and 2 dwarfs and its noted if not accurately to have a gas giant orbiting but the star is not as strong as our star in brightness or energy output. however if its the latter, then procyon has a main sequence and a dwarf and around 11 light years away but i dunno if it has any planets in procyon A's orbit and even if it did, its considerably more brighter and puts out more energy then our star does so the chances are alot less for an ice planet orbiting a gas giant.
tellar prime is meant to be 61 cygni, a binary system about 11 light years out and both dwarfs that orbit each other, however no planets have yet been found to my knowledge.
so far thats just these, since we have no idea what there really is out there and compare it with star trek charts which are unreliable at best, think you will find that when humans get out this far and determine that 61 cygni actually has no planets, then for certain the star trek charts are null and void by that alone if your comparing it to real life.
Pretty good summation. However, remember that the existence of an ice planet is not negated by the fact that the star is bright or hot. The planet could just be in a much more distant orbit, or could have a thinner atmosphere that captures less radiation. There are other ways to skin an Andorian, as they say.
And yes. IMO, I like utilizing the data for any real stars that Star Trek may be referencing, but their planetary information is pretty much irrelevant.
As for 3d Space someone else brought up, this also explains away why Wolf 359 is "closer" to Sol than Alpha Centauri. AC might be closer, but on a 2D top down map, 359 would appear to be the closer system. And yes, while the Star Charts map is 2D, the book does acknowledge the three dimensionality of space, and explains how sectors are stacked and such. However, that vertical travel almost never comes up in ST.
A quick examination of the 40 Eridani system tells us that 40 Eri A is a K-type orange dwarf; a planet as warm as Vulcan would have to be pretty close to the star, skimming the inner edge of the Goldilocks zone. B and C orbit each other, with the pair orbiting A at an average distance of about 400 AU, or about nine times as far out as Pluto is from Sol; the fact that C is a red dwarf flare star shouldn't bother anything close to A, although it might make for some very bright nights. Since B is a white dwarf, it contributes little to the overall radiation of the system.
Epsilon Indi would make a fine candidate for Andoria's home star, as it's a K-type orange dwarf, cooler than Sol, with two brown-dwarf companions some 1460 AU out.
Procyon is more problematic, consisting as it does of an F-type star, warmer than Sol, which appears to be a mere 10 to 100 million years from leaving the main sequence and becoming a red subgiant (Sol has about 5 billion years or so to go on that), and a cooler yet large companion whose orbit is between 9 and 21 AU out. A "snowball" world like Andoria would have to be in a distant orbit around the pair, I would imagine, or possibly in some complex orbit interrelating with the two of them. (That latter seems a little unstable to me, so I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for it.) In Larry Niven's Known Space, Procyon is the primary for We Made It, a world close enough to be habitable to humans, but which develops 200-kph surface winds every winter and summer as its north pole faces Procyon A. (The ramrobot landed in spring, and was only programmed to find a habitable place and maser a message to Earth; the colony ship tried to land in late summer half a century later. Known Space colony worlds are usually named for the first words uttered on their surface.)
61 Cygni isn't preposterous as a location for Tellar Prime; both stars of the pair are stellar type K, and orbit one another at a range of 44 AU to 124 AU, leaving enough room for each star to have its own Goldilocks zone.
I asked this a few months ago and promptly got slapped down. I really do think the map regarding Fed space is well off. Why is so much of it spilling into the Beta Quadrant with virtually nothing in the AQ side? Looks totally off to me, like most of Trek is taking part in the Beta Quadrant which goes against massive amounts of very clear canon.
In fact, canon is quite unclear on this point, due in part to the fact that when TOS ran, few of the writers knew what was meant by "quadrant" or "sector", and even fewer cared. There's a reason why they seldom referenced stars that actually exist.
In TNG, someone took a shot at straightening that out, but it was still treated pretty cavalierly. DS9 was the first attempt at making it rigorous, but even then all you could really be sure of from the dialog was that Bajor was in the Alpha Quadrant; it was kind of vaguely implied that most, if not all, of the Federation was in AQ as well, but it was never made explicit.
And the writers and producers of VOY never met a canon, internal to their show or shared across the Trekiverse, that they didn't violate. I think Berman and Braga actually wanted to make a completely different sci-fi show, and when it wasn't greenlit, they used their control over VOY to make their show anyway.
Well, as Taco said, Star Trek Starcharts (which maybe be soft canon as I believe it was written and developed by people who worked on the series) is the reference material used for the galaxy map.
That being said, there's still plenty of the Federation's territory not depicted in game, and much of that lies in the Alpha Quadrant. Also, as has been said, yes, Sol is on the AQ/BQ border, but is officially considered to be in Sector 001, which is in the Alpha Quadrant. Earth (Sol) is the capital of the Federation, and so referring to the Federation as an Alpha Quadrant power would not be inaccurate since 1) the capital world is officially in the AQ, 2) the majority of its territory is also in the AQ despite the founding worlds of Vulcan and Andoria being in the BQ. Taking that into consideration, since most of the action is taking place in the Beta Quadrant, it was decided to put Sol in Beta for the sake of simplicity.
As for those that complain about distances between systems and inaccurate scale: how about Cryptic just build a to-scale galactic map? Then to add to the authenticity, all starships will travel no faster than speeds that are actually stated in canon. Transwarp drive won't actually instantaneously transport you to your destination, but it will get you there much faster (BTW, no canceling once initiated, because...game coding). The odd Transwarp Gate will be here and there to get to certain areas instantly, but those gates will be few and far between, as they weren't prevalent in canon. Now, traveling from one system to the next can take days, weeks, even months before you arrive depending upon where you're going. Congratulations! New time gate added to STO: sector space travel. :rolleyes:
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I might be missing something here but does "Alpha Centauri" even exist in the STO Map ... afaik it doesn't, so how is it supposed to be closer / farther away ...
About what Star System are we talking about here ?
http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/sto.gamepedia.com/2/2c/Alpha_Centauri_Sector_Block.png
No, Alpha and Proxima Centauri don't exist in STO. But you can still see the distance listed for Wolf 359 if you put your ship next to Sol. It's about 3 LY, less than half the distance it should be.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
you can imply it but you can not confirm it. thats where it ends. in otherwords its non-canon until it has a few seconds on a trek series just to tease the trekkies.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Yeah. Who needs maps?
I followed yer first link, then saw this:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Star+Trek+Romulan+Women&Form=IQFRDR
LOOKS MUHCH MOR BETTA!!
Hmmm. . . well. No. You're mistaken. Sol is actually directly on the border between Alpha and Beta. The line bisecting the quadrants runs through Sol, just as the Prime Meridian runs through Greenwich.
Now, in our game, that line is between sectors, as well as between quadrants. We could put Sol on that line, but then you'd only be able to fly through half of the system, as the other half would be outside the playable space. That seemed lame, so they moved the system in from that edge by a bit.
Yes, the show used "alpha quadrant" a lot to mean "home." However, Star Trek is incredibly inconsistent even within hard canon. Shows contradict other shows as well as themselves all the time. In addition, there are a fair number of systems that are based on real stars, such as Vulcan. Vulcan is 40 Eridani. And like it or not, 40 Eridani is not in the Alpha Quadrant. As it turns out, a whole lot of what was covered in TOS, and much of what was shown in TNG were in the Beta Quadrant.
Considering so many of those key worlds (Vulcan, Andoria, P'Jem, Risa, etc.) are in the Beta Quandrant, when they initially cut up the galaxy into sector blocks, the lumped Sol in with those.
Now, as for your cited maps. Every one of those is fan made. None are canon (though they may reference canon.) The most cited map is this one, from the Star Trek Star Charts book. That map is still essentially fan made, and is not, in itself, canon. However, due to the tremendous amount of research that went into it, many people rely on it as their basis of operation, and we tend to go by it where we can. (Note the position of Sol.)
That said, there are definitely problems with the position of some systems in the STO galaxy. Note that Memory Alpha is not in the sector above and to the right of Sol, but above and to the left. Vega is not near Risa, but even further to the left than Memory Alpha. However, most of those are relatively minor, and should not affect your immersion terribly.
If/when there is an opportunity to correct some of these, you can be sure we will do so to the best of our abilities, and within the constraint of the game.
Edit: And if you want to go down that rabbit hole, the galaxy is constantly spinning, and everything inside of it is constantly moving around as well. So even that Star Charts map would woefully out of date by 2410. . .
+1, Like... so on. Thank you, Taco.
Oh man... I bought three of those back when they first came out in 1980.
One is still in the original packaging. The other two are mounted between Plexiglas and stainless steel frames.
(I mounted two sets because the set of four maps are on both sides of two sheets of paper)
I have had them hanging on my apartment wall for many years now.
:cool:
EDIT: my bad... you meant the book not the maps.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
as for andoria, its in one of two systems, epsilon indi or procyon. the former has 3 stars, one main sequence and 2 dwarfs and its noted if not accurately to have a gas giant orbiting but the star is not as strong as our star in brightness or energy output. however if its the latter, then procyon has a main sequence and a dwarf and around 11 light years away but i dunno if it has any planets in procyon A's orbit and even if it did, its considerably more brighter and puts out more energy then our star does so the chances are alot less for an ice planet orbiting a gas giant.
tellar prime is meant to be 61 cygni, a binary system about 11 light years out and both dwarfs that orbit each other, however no planets have yet been found to my knowledge.
so far thats just these, since we have no idea what there really is out there and compare it with star trek charts which are unreliable at best, think you will find that when humans get out this far and determine that 61 cygni actually has no planets, then for certain the star trek charts are null and void by that alone if your comparing it to real life.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Pretty good summation. However, remember that the existence of an ice planet is not negated by the fact that the star is bright or hot. The planet could just be in a much more distant orbit, or could have a thinner atmosphere that captures less radiation. There are other ways to skin an Andorian, as they say.
And yes. IMO, I like utilizing the data for any real stars that Star Trek may be referencing, but their planetary information is pretty much irrelevant.
As for 3d Space someone else brought up, this also explains away why Wolf 359 is "closer" to Sol than Alpha Centauri. AC might be closer, but on a 2D top down map, 359 would appear to be the closer system. And yes, while the Star Charts map is 2D, the book does acknowledge the three dimensionality of space, and explains how sectors are stacked and such. However, that vertical travel almost never comes up in ST.
Generally those would come with content centered on them.
Epsilon Indi would make a fine candidate for Andoria's home star, as it's a K-type orange dwarf, cooler than Sol, with two brown-dwarf companions some 1460 AU out.
Procyon is more problematic, consisting as it does of an F-type star, warmer than Sol, which appears to be a mere 10 to 100 million years from leaving the main sequence and becoming a red subgiant (Sol has about 5 billion years or so to go on that), and a cooler yet large companion whose orbit is between 9 and 21 AU out. A "snowball" world like Andoria would have to be in a distant orbit around the pair, I would imagine, or possibly in some complex orbit interrelating with the two of them. (That latter seems a little unstable to me, so I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for it.) In Larry Niven's Known Space, Procyon is the primary for We Made It, a world close enough to be habitable to humans, but which develops 200-kph surface winds every winter and summer as its north pole faces Procyon A. (The ramrobot landed in spring, and was only programmed to find a habitable place and maser a message to Earth; the colony ship tried to land in late summer half a century later. Known Space colony worlds are usually named for the first words uttered on their surface.)
61 Cygni isn't preposterous as a location for Tellar Prime; both stars of the pair are stellar type K, and orbit one another at a range of 44 AU to 124 AU, leaving enough room for each star to have its own Goldilocks zone.
In TNG, someone took a shot at straightening that out, but it was still treated pretty cavalierly. DS9 was the first attempt at making it rigorous, but even then all you could really be sure of from the dialog was that Bajor was in the Alpha Quadrant; it was kind of vaguely implied that most, if not all, of the Federation was in AQ as well, but it was never made explicit.
And the writers and producers of VOY never met a canon, internal to their show or shared across the Trekiverse, that they didn't violate. I think Berman and Braga actually wanted to make a completely different sci-fi show, and when it wasn't greenlit, they used their control over VOY to make their show anyway.
That being said, there's still plenty of the Federation's territory not depicted in game, and much of that lies in the Alpha Quadrant. Also, as has been said, yes, Sol is on the AQ/BQ border, but is officially considered to be in Sector 001, which is in the Alpha Quadrant. Earth (Sol) is the capital of the Federation, and so referring to the Federation as an Alpha Quadrant power would not be inaccurate since 1) the capital world is officially in the AQ, 2) the majority of its territory is also in the AQ despite the founding worlds of Vulcan and Andoria being in the BQ. Taking that into consideration, since most of the action is taking place in the Beta Quadrant, it was decided to put Sol in Beta for the sake of simplicity.
As for those that complain about distances between systems and inaccurate scale: how about Cryptic just build a to-scale galactic map? Then to add to the authenticity, all starships will travel no faster than speeds that are actually stated in canon. Transwarp drive won't actually instantaneously transport you to your destination, but it will get you there much faster (BTW, no canceling once initiated, because...game coding). The odd Transwarp Gate will be here and there to get to certain areas instantly, but those gates will be few and far between, as they weren't prevalent in canon. Now, traveling from one system to the next can take days, weeks, even months before you arrive depending upon where you're going. Congratulations! New time gate added to STO: sector space travel. :rolleyes:
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