I can't be sure that those coordinates won't change between now and whenever I get around to coding it up. Whereas an external star catalogue is a stable reference.
The Bootes Cluster is relatively close to Sol, just a few tens of lightyears away. It looks like the map presently gives constant precision distances (0.001 ly), which allows using more distant reference stars, which will remain useful for longer once exploration gets underway.
Sol happens to be the capital of the Federation. Achernar and Alioth are the capitals of the Empire and Independent Alliance respectively. Both these latter stars appear in the list of 58 bright stars presently approved for celestial navigation on Earth. Another such star, Antares, is remarkably close to the Beta 1 bubble. Looking on the far side of the bubble from Antares, I came across Etamin - aka Gamma Draconis
- which is also on said list.
Many of the navigation stars are quite close to Sol, merely appearing bright because they are so close; this makes them less useful for 3D mapping. However, there are quite a few which are intrinsically very bright and are visible from much further away. Polaris is one of these; Canopus and Betelgeuse also fit the description.
So that's a tentative list of eight reference stars. I haven't done any careful analysis of how geometrically suitable they are yet. I could go through all 58 navigation stars if I wanted to.
A complication is that FD have probably used different absolute positions for these well-known stars than appear in any given 21st-century star catalogue, not least due to proper motion, which is significant over a 1000-year interval. Sol itself is moving in a different direction than most of its neighbours. For that reason, I'll need to calibrate the positions of the reference stars themselves. I should be able to do that using the stars reachable by, say, a Viper.
The Bootes Cluster is relatively close to Sol, just a few tens of lightyears away. It looks like the map presently gives constant precision distances (0.001 ly), which allows using more distant reference stars, which will remain useful for longer once exploration gets underway.
Sol happens to be the capital of the Federation. Achernar and Alioth are the capitals of the Empire and Independent Alliance respectively. Both these latter stars appear in the list of 58 bright stars presently approved for celestial navigation on Earth. Another such star, Antares, is remarkably close to the Beta 1 bubble. Looking on the far side of the bubble from Antares, I came across Etamin - aka Gamma Draconis
- which is also on said list.Many of the navigation stars are quite close to Sol, merely appearing bright because they are so close; this makes them less useful for 3D mapping. However, there are quite a few which are intrinsically very bright and are visible from much further away. Polaris is one of these; Canopus and Betelgeuse also fit the description.
So that's a tentative list of eight reference stars. I haven't done any careful analysis of how geometrically suitable they are yet. I could go through all 58 navigation stars if I wanted to.
A complication is that FD have probably used different absolute positions for these well-known stars than appear in any given 21st-century star catalogue, not least due to proper motion, which is significant over a 1000-year interval. Sol itself is moving in a different direction than most of its neighbours. For that reason, I'll need to calibrate the positions of the reference stars themselves. I should be able to do that using the stars reachable by, say, a Viper.
