Class M star highway

Vin Nova · Oct 25, 2017

Hey guys. I was exploring NGC 1333 nebula when I noticed that there is a clear path of class M stars. If you line up the path, it points right at the pleiades or at the bubble. I know others have been there, because it has all been explored. Anyone know what causes this?
I linked a video I made while exploring it. https://youtu.be/9cbkJnvA7_8

damon8r351 · Oct 25, 2017

Found a group of 2MASS stars? This might explain: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/159121-Strange-path-in-the-stars-Prefix-2MASS

Heavy Johnson · Oct 25, 2017

> Anyone know what causes this?

Imported data from star catalogues that all put a group of stars in a similar area. 'Slices' of the sky, because the star charting done so far by humans has observed certain arcs of the sky.

There are multiple things like this all over the galaxy (closer to Sol).

Vin Nova · Oct 25, 2017

damon8r351 said:
Found a group of 2MASS stars? This might explain: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/159121-Strange-path-in-the-stars-Prefix-2MASS

Ahh, I see now. Thanks for the response.

Sapyx · Oct 25, 2017

Yep, it's one of several "star beams" that point directly at Sol, caused by importing real-galaxy stars into the ED starmap. It's caused by the sky-survey telescope taking a snapshot of a tiny cross-section of sky, and measuring allt he stars in that section. This particular beam is not one that's visible on the skybox, because the stars are all dim red M-class stars. The beams in the Eagle, Orion and NGC 7822 nebulae are made of O and B class stars, so they're visible from hundreds of LY away.

Kerrash · Oct 25, 2017

The scary thing being; that these 'slices' hint that the star density in ED is way lower than it could be out there! :O

iain666 · Oct 25, 2017

Either that or the distances to the real stars come with large error bars and the FDev clustering is an artefact of how they fixed distances within those error bars and it's actually exaggerating how close they really are.

Heavy Johnson · Oct 26, 2017

iain666 said:
Either that or the distances to the real stars come with large error bars and the FDev clustering is an artefact of how they fixed distances within those error bars and it's actually exaggerating how close they really are.

The core density is def not high enough. The source I read said that there were something like 10 million stars in the cubic parsec (~3.1 Ly) around Sag A*!