Comments for The Lair of Evil Dr. Ganymede

Comment on [Stellar Mapping] RECONS list updated! by LiNeNoiSe

LiNeNoiSe — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:34:59 +0000

I wanted to do a weighted mean on the parallax for Wolf 359. There’s one from 2009 listed on SIMBAD. RECONS is using the one from the 1995 GCTP. I suppose that just averaging the two would probably work. The one from 2009 put it further away. When I tried the weighted mean formula, it was even further. I also noticed the DENSE site had older parallaxes listed for some of the white dwarfs. The RECONS site is more likely to be updated, but I’d still check everything against SIMBAD and ARICNS.

Comment on [Stellar Mapping] RECONS list updated! by EDG

EDG — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:22:10 +0000

I get the impression that those have already been calculated where necessary in the papers, so recalculating them would probably give you wrong answers.

Comment on [Stellar Mapping] RECONS list updated! by LiNeNoiSe

LiNeNoiSe — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:59:03 +0000

Have you tried the formulas given at the bottom of the DENSE website for the weighted means and errors? I tried them on Lalande 21185, but couldn’t get the figures to match the ones given on the RECONS website.

Comment on [Stellar Mapping] The 2300AD Near Star Map by EDG

EDG — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:14:20 +0000

I’m not so sure… after all, one K or M V star is pretty much like any other (that said, there seem to be an awful lot of planets that aren’t tidelocked to their stars that should be…). I’d like to try to keep any moved systems on the same Arm at least though.

I don’t know if the designers tweaked the map a bit. Certainly Wolf 359 (Nyotekundu) should be too far to reach from Sol, but pretty much the entire French Arm is broken really. As for ignoring known connections, there are actually a lot of “minor routes” that are shown in the back of the 2300AD Directors Guide that I didn’t show here – to an extent that seems to reflect the weblike network of stars that you can see in the animation that AX Microscopii allows access to. That’s something I want to look at in more detail in a future article.

Comment on [Stellar Mapping] The 2300AD Near Star Map by Gordon Horne

Gordon Horne — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:07:27 +0000

An excellent article. It is tempting to update the 2300AD Near Star Map to retain its original perceived accuracy, but it’s not really possible. Moving stars and planets around breaks too much else in the setting. It’s like deciding Carthage makes more sense on Sicily than in Northern Africa.

A question I throw out in case anyone is more motivated than I am to dig through the original material is if GDW ignored any connections known at the time in favour of fictional systems. If I remember correctly, in the Challenge articles about the original map, the designers admitted to nudging Nyotekundu to open up the French Arm.

Comment on [Stellar Mapping] The 2300AD Near Star Map by EDG

EDG — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:48:26 +0000

Yeah, it’s a shame that it hasn’t been updated (then again, this is largely down to bad timing). At least with this (and the next article on the subject that I’m going to write, which will examine the real network I mention at the end of this one in more detail), someone can make their own 2300AD games more realistic if they want to.

Comment on Stellar Mapping by [Stellar Mapping] The 2300AD Near Star Map « The Lair of Evil Dr. Ganymede

[Stellar Mapping] The 2300AD Near Star Map « The Lair of Evil Dr. Ganymede — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:43:45 +0000

[...] A lot of stars have been discovered in the solar neighbourhood since the late 1980s (as shown on my Stellar Mapping page), and the locations and distances of existing stars have been greatly refined since then too [...]

Comment on [Stellar Mapping] The 2300AD Near Star Map by Steff Worthington

Steff Worthington — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:42:41 +0000

Fascinating read! I’m also impressed that a sc-fi rpg would engender such need to be ‘accurate’ in its star map (which of course is part of its charm). As the person who drew the star map for the new edition I can confirm that it hasn’t changed at all. Understandably so.

Comment on Stellar Mapping by [Stellar Mapping] RECONS list updated! « The Lair of Evil Dr. Ganymede

[Stellar Mapping] RECONS list updated! « The Lair of Evil Dr. Ganymede — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:36:21 +0000

[...] the RECONS CSV files, so if you’ve already downloaded the RECONS data, you’ll need to download the new version so you can include Gliese 667! (I only found it because I was checking the stars on the American [...]

Comment on Stellar Mapping by Website update: Further Stars List uploaded! « The Lair of Evil Dr. Ganymede

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:12:25 +0000

[...] finally added the “Further Star List” to my Realistic Near-Sol Astrography webpage – it’s an excel file containing accurate locations of a selection of major [...]