Near-Solar Space

[bartmoss]

I'm using this one: http://uranometria.blogspot.com/p/ne...catalogue.html

Was the most convenient I found. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is not the most accurate but it works I guess.

[cfds]

It is a nice set of data (and machine readable too). You translated the polar coordinates to Cartesian coordinates and then calculated relative distances, right? I hope you automated at least that...

[bartmoss]

I wrote a quick AWK script for the conversion of the coordinates, and for reformatting the list - I don't need a bunch of different catalogue IDs for example.
I then imported the result into openOffice, sorted it by distance from Sol in ascending order, and am working my way down the list manually. For a bunch of stars the spectral class is missing in this list, and sometimes it is not easy to find them. (SINBAD is awesome though I didn't know it when I started this map!) I am also adding popular names for stars as I notice them, I will probably revisit this when I work out the exploration of space and have to give names to stars and colonies anyway.

After placing a new star, I "manually" (OpenOfifce does the calculation but I have to copy and paste the coordinates into a 2nd worksheet) check the distance to stars that are likely to fall within 7.7 light years. I am pretty good at that, but sometimes I overlook a star that should be connected.

I did a bunch more stars yesterday but I still didn't connect the two big clusters. There are some nice, long routes on the fringes of the cluster that the Earth is connected to, though, and I am almost hoping that I will NOT be able to connect Earth beyond the 25 parsec sphere I am working on since this will give me a nice sandbox with defined borders. And I can always fudge access to the rest of the galaxy - a jumpgate built by The Ancients(tm) that defies the known rules of FTL travel and sends ships to a destination 100s of light years away - Into a region of space so uncharted by our primitive 21st Century technology that I can just randomize it.

[bartmoss]

Not much to say - there's more stars in there. I connected a few of the smaller clusters, but the big one that is irking me is still unconnected.

[cfds]

I think I have good news for you. I have written a c++ program to harvest that data and it found a 52-jump connection from Altair to Sol. If you are interested I will send you the source code.

[Edit] Mu Herculis and Gliese 3959 are only 4.65 ly apart, add that connection and travel to Altair. And my program needs a slight adaption for routing, traveling EVERY star in a multi system is not efficient...[/Edit]

[bartmoss]

Thanks but - Are you sure?

If my conversions are right - and, boy, they better be or I wasted a LOT of time on this, then:

Mu Herculis is at x,y,z = 15,0527 19,5839 11,8455
Gliese 3959 is at x,y,z = 6,49408 13,7845 14,313

Distance = 10.62880863

As for the source, sure, why not. I have some Linux systems I could run it on.

[bartmoss]

I found a 7.44ly link between Vega and HIP 83945A/B though!

Interestingly it puts Earth more or less in the middle of two "arms":

[Hungry Donner]

I've been using this site to calculate the distance between stars so I figured I'd check the distance between Mu Herculis and Gliese 3959 myself. Unfortunately while SIMBAD had coordinates for both the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database only has a distance for Mu Herculis.

If you want to try it yourself to see which result it agrees with (or is closer to, distances do have so wiggle room) you can copy the coordinates straight out of SIMBAD and paste them in to that site, just make sure you check the +/- of the declination.

[bartmoss]

the stellar database can do distances very conveniently. Their results do not always agree with mine but I put that down to normal margin of error. Anyway:

http://www.stellar-database.com/Scri...06600&ly=7%2C7

7.7 ly of Mu Herculis:

Bonner Durchmusterung +18°3421: 4.47559 light-years, class M0 V
Gliese & Jahreiss 1230: 6.4155 light-years, class M4.5 V

I also have Vega in addition to those two. My distances are: GJ1230=5.98, BDetc aka GJ686=4.49ly

/phew

[Hungry Donner]

Ah ha, I've solved your Mu Herculis problem, that designation "Mu Herculis" is apparently used for two different stars

Through that in to SIMBAD and you'll get a star at Right Ascension 16 36 58.815, Declination +42 44 50.10. However Stellar Database, NStED, and Wikipedia are referred to a star at Right Ascension 17 46 27.5, Declination +27 43 14.44.

(If you put 86 Herculis in to SIMBAD the data will line up with these other searches)