Monthly Archive for January, 2012

Website Update: Stellar Mapping page updated!

Published on January 30, 2012 in Gaming, Science, Stellar Mapping and Worldbuilding. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

My new Stellar Mapping page is finally online! This is a complete rewrite of my previous “Realistic Astrography” page, and now includes Equatorial to Galactic co-ordinate conversion files, the complete RECONS (2012) and DENSE star lists, as well as all the data from the Hipparcos, Gliese 3, and Yale catalogues for stars out to 300ly from Sol! And the Further Stars list is also in there too 🙂

RECONS-coreward

RECONS dataset, looking towards the galactic core.

The focus has moved away from Traveller and its hex map format (I realised that I was taking accurate data and then making it inaccurate by forcing it into hex map format, so I’ve dropped that completely) and moved towards raw data and Astrosynthesis, but this will still be very useful for anyone interested in using realistic data for the stars near Sol.

You can check it out at http://evildrganymede.net/wp/rpgs/stellar-mapping/

I’ll be writing some articles in the coming weeks to expand this – this will include how to use the Vizier stellar databases, and what this means for the 2300AD RPG!

Website update: Further Stars List uploaded!

Published on January 8, 2012 in RPGs, Science, Stellar Mapping and Worldbuilding. Closed Tags: , , , , .

EDIT: This has been superseded by my new Stellar Mapping page!

I’ve 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 stars (including Vega, Deneb, 51 Pegasi, Spica, Bellatrix and Algol) that are more than 10pc from Sol.

The format is a bit raw (and I’m not entirely sure why I selected those specific stars to list!). The dark red X/Y/Z columns show the distances in each direction (Sol is the origin, +X is Coreward, +Y is Spinward, +Z is “above” Sol). If you have trouble interpreting it, let me know!

You can doublecheck the stars too – you can use the Convert spreadsheet in Section 1 of the mapping page to convert the RA/Dec of any stars into X/Y/Z coordinates. If you have astronomy software like Celestia, open it up and activate the Galactic Grid and rotate it so that you’re facing 0° latitude and 0° longitude – you’re now looking directly along the +X axis. Turn to look at 0° Lat, 90° Lon and you’re looking directly along the +Y axis. Look at the Galactic north pole, and you’re looking directly along the +Z axis. You should be able to find your stars using this (e.g. Aldebaran is pretty much directly along the -X direction, and down a bit on the Z axis. Look towards 180° Lon direction and -20° Lat, and there it is!).

I’ve been sitting on this for six and a half years (!!) and finally decided that I’m never going to draw hexmaps showing these stars, so I may as well just release the data and let other people figure it out! Enjoy! 🙂

The link is at http://evildrganymede.net/wp/rpgs/stellar-mapping/.