Orion's Belt in Elite Dangerous - A question for the astronomers!

Bojangles

B
Just loving Elite Dangerous! It's absolutely amazing and I love the attention to detail in the galaxy - literally if you see a star/nebula/black hole in the distance, you can get there eventually! Brilliant.

One thing that has been niggling away at me is the constellation Orion. Viewing from Earth, I noticed the middle star in Orion's Belt seems to be missing (Alnilam). I searched on all the stars in the constellation, and sure enough, they all were found in the Galaxy Map, except Alnilam. Please see the picture attached on this post, which shows the names of the stars of Orion.

Just a curiousity question, but where is Alnilam, the middle star in Orion's famous three star belt? :D


Orion_constellation_with_star_labels.jpg
 

Dakron Nova

Dakron Nova
I'm sure I dont know, have you tried the alternate spellings Alnihan & Alnitam?

If that doesnt find it I would be tempted to pretend that you had found some olde Elite lore from the 80's that blames the Thargoids for its destruction. Possibly involving a witchspace wormhole and a giant game of billiards, although that sounds more like Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
 

Silvershadow

Silvershadow
If you have a problem to find a star, you can start a search via the Hipparcos Catalogue.
Alnilam is "HIP 26311". Normally you can find this Hipparcos numbers in Wikipedia.
Now you can type "HIP 26311" into the galaxy map, and it will show you the right star. In this case the galaxy map will find "Epsilon Orionis" for you.
 

Harry Stone

H
I love you guys. I'm not even an amateur astronomer, I love stars but have never really learned them past the big ones, but I come to the forums see a question like this and see it answered. And it's a game! And we can visit these stars! It's mindblowing.
 

Bojangles

B
Thank you all for your help! I had no idea of the alternative names for that star, I love the night sky but don't know too much about all the names, so I will look forward to searching on that later in the Galaxy Map! Appreciate it.
 

EtherDragon

E
Silvershadow said:
If you have a problem to find a star, you can start a search via the Hipparcos Catalogue.
Alnilam is "HIP 26311". Normally you can find this Hipparcos numbers in Wikipedia.
Now you can type "HIP 26311" into the galaxy map, and it will show you the right star. In this case the galaxy map will find "Epsilon Orionis" for you.
Click to expand...

Wow! That is a really interesting detail that you can search a star by its HIP Catalogue designation and get the current Y3300 name for it.
 

Bojangles

B
Harry Stone said:
I love you guys. I'm not even an amateur astronomer, I love stars but have never really learned them past the big ones, but I come to the forums see a question like this and see it answered. And it's a game! And we can visit these stars! It's mindblowing.
Click to expand...

That's exactly how I feel too! Great community of people have my question answered in minutes, all with a common love of Elite Dangerous! It's a great educational tool and no mistake.
 
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