YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

[Kraven Kor]

I have been messing with various tools we have spoken about here and really I think I am just too stupid or lazy to make them work.

 

Nyrath's are the best but still I can't wrap my head around modifying them enough to do what I want to do. Specifically, I downloaded the 40 LY Habitable map .pdf from his site, as well as trying to mess with some of the "Y-Graph" maps.

 

I need several things - first off a local map of my system links for the section of space around us that humans have explored or claimed. Ideally, this would include all stars, not just the habitable ones, as I intend to use a lot of larger stars for wormhole hubs (wormholes are more likely between a large star and its smaller neighbors than between two smaller stars, according to my completely made up wormhole physics...) I think if I just knew how to correctly make Y-Graph work - and I intend to give it several more tries - I could probably get what I want, just not in an easily printable format.

 

Then another, larger map that shows our not-so-nearby neighbors. My campaign has several spacefaring races who mostly steer clear of each other, the closest border being about 40 LY from Earth, the farthest being about 600 LY. Human's "known space" is only about 40 LY radius, as our FTL ships still take considerable time and we know there are lots of dangers out there.

 

I also intend to put in some markers for known low-tech civilizations, various astronomical oddities, etc.

 

But I want it to be an accurate map of our local area of the galaxy - a more detailed map of our 40 LY radius area, and then a less detailed political map of around 1200 LY though not covering every single object or star. And I'd really love it if it covered things like nearby anomalies, nebulae, etc.

 

I would imagine that, somewhere, there is a work of fiction or coffee table book or something that has already done at least some of the legwork on this.

 

Any advice would be appreciated. And Nyrath, I have been and am still looking at various links on your site, just can't do so from work so I don't have access to tell you what I have looked into so far beyond my many failed attempts at modifying various YGraph stuff from your site.

[Nyrath]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

Well, there are about 558 known stars within 40 light years, so you are talking about a lot.

 

For broad galactic features, there are some charts in The Guide to the Galaxy by Henbest & Couper, Cambridge 1994, ISBN 0-521-45882-X

http://www.bookfinder.com

is showing quite a few used copies for under $10

 

For a detailed map of a 150 light year cube centered on Sol, get a copy of the Astrogator's Handbook

http://www.scifi-az.com/astro2.htm

 

Not quite so detailed is The Astronomical Companion

http://www.universalworkshop.com/ACOM.htm

 

By "y graph" I assume you mean "yEd". Did you look over the help file? What exactly is going wrong?

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

Nothing is going wrong, per se, other than me realizing I just don't have the time to devote to making the starmap I want for a game we'll likely play 5 times and then the campaign will fall apart (I'm such an optimist, but this is about how all my attempts at converting my D20 group to HERO wind up.)

 

I'll check those books out and then revisit yEd if needed.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

Nyrath: Just FYI, I downloaded the "raw" yEd file from your site that has the Hab40ly map put into a rather blockish format.

 

Trying to go through and edit it, I need to basically go and recolor and reshape and move them all (many / some / most, unknown) and then draw my links which would require I know the distance between each star and adding links since that default only links them to nearby neighbors, etc.

 

Now maybe I missed this, but it would be awesome if I could just take raw star data (the way you did) and throw it in yEd and have it graph out all the links with Sol more or less in the center, rather than just a few links.

 

Then I need another map with about 1500 LY radius around Earth, showing major stars I could anchor my alien civilizations to - this one needs much less detail, heck all I need to do is throw some little sphere of influence blobs around our own and then relate that to the first map so it says "Akashi are that way (Coreward), Tau'shi are this way (Rimward), etc. Mostly so I know where to place the trade hubs, as in my setting we have little contact with the other civilizations, beyond trade, as most have around the same tech we do and are spaced out pretty far in the Galaxy.

 

And of course as I look at the map, it is further complicated by my original research being from a different catalog so half the places I picked for colony locations (using wikipedia and lists of stars likely to have habitable planets) have a different name on the map so I can't find them to make the various wormhole links and plan travel times between them and such.

 

If I do this right, I can have some wonderful maps to use not only for my campaign, but for my ongoing pathetic attempts at writing my own Sci-Fi universe and stories and such. While I don't want or need 100% hard sci-fi, I want as much "reality" in it as possible, I want it to "pass basic geek muster" on facts like locations and such.

 

And even more wonderful would be if there were any neat non-star things nearby. Again, humans have only really explored out to about 40 LY, and even then not every system in that zone, and I'd love to have some understanding of the "places of interest" in our very nearby neighborhood of the Galaxy.

[Clonus]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

I have a method of mapping that works well for me on nearby suns based on GURPS Space. Here are my rules:

 

Go to the Internet Stellar Database

Search for all stars within 20 light years of Sol.

 

Check each system in turn to see if they have a habitable zone of 0.06 or more. If they do, roll three dice. For worlds with a habitable zone of between 0.06 and 0.21, a roll of 16+ means they have an earthlike planet there. For worlds with habitable zone of 0.21+, a roll of 12+ means they have an earthlike planet there.

 

Generate the earthlike planet and see if it's actually worth bothering with.

 

Once you have your list of systems with good planets, do a 10 light year search for each to see if they have another system on the list within that sphere. If they do, that's a travel route.

 

If they don't, expand the search sphere until you find a planet on the list. Then search for a system in between them by doing a 10 light year search for each and seeing what system appear on both lists. The system in between them becomes inhabited with travel routes to both of them. Do a 10 light year search on the newly inhabited system to see if it has anything else within that range that it could have travel route to.

 

If you end up with a little cluster that isn't connected to any system with a travel route to Sol, pick a couple of stepping stone systems to bridge the gap.

 

Once you've done all that you can expand the sphere by searching between 20 and 25 light years from Sol, the 25 and 30 and so on.

 

Actual three dimensional maps are a waste of time. Nobody can make any sense out of them. Just represent the inhabited systems two dimensionally as circles connected by lines.

 

Now in my case I used 10 light years because that was my maximum jump. In your case you might want to vary the search distance based on the mass of the sun, so that that it is, say, 10 light years for Sol with a mass of 1.0 and 23.5 light years for Sirius with a mass of 2.35. Or you could go with the square of the mass, so it would be 55 light years for Sirius, giving them a connection to everything. Or the multiple might be 5 instead of 10 so Sol can barely make it to Alpha Centauri.

 

In any case you can ignore the majority of suns that are under .5 mass. Unlikely to have habitable worlds or good travel routes. They'd turn into dead ends, literally.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

I'm not going to be nearly so random, I already have my systems picked (will post later) but I need to have the non-habitables on the map for wormhole hubs and researchers and other random places for the players to go and for events to occur. I did use some of the info in Star Hero to assist on this, I just didn't roll - I matched up various random facts from the Wikipedia entry on stars that might host earth-like worlds, the information in Star Hero on system and planet generation, and then just filled it in with random stuff from my own addled brain

 

The map won't have every single object within 40 LY on it, just a good showing of the systems we've explored, what we found there, etc.

 

I'm only going to have about 17 real colonies, most small, and then a few dozen other research and military outposts as well as various hideaways for criminal endeavors or rogue colonies or alien artifacts and such.

 

And this will all be two-dimensional using (I'm currently thinking) yEd. I might turn it into a neat looking map using paint or something if I feel especially motivated to do so.

[Nyrath]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

Nyrath: Just FYI, I downloaded the "raw" yEd file from your site that has the Hab40ly map put into a rather blockish format.

 

Trying to go through and edit it, I need to basically go and recolor and reshape and move them all (many / some / most, unknown) and then draw my links which would require I know the distance between each star and adding links since that default only links them to nearby neighbors, etc.

 

Now maybe I missed this, but it would be awesome if I could just take raw star data (the way you did) and throw it in yEd and have it graph out all the links with Sol more or less in the center, rather than just a few links.

 

Sorry. To do that you'll have to do as I did and write a computer program to crunch the numbers in the star database and produce a *.gml that yEd can import.

 

Then you will be able to customize the colors, shapes, and links to your heart's content.

 

But as far as I know there is no software that will do this out of the box.

 

Assuming that you know any computer programming at all, you could write a program in pretty nearly any programming language of your choice.

 

Of course, yEd can export your map in jpg or other graphic format that you can load into your favorite paint program to make it fancy.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

OK I'm just going to have to draw a map and do guesswork on a lot of things.

 

But any idea on where I can get a quick and easy look at our local part of the galaxy for the sake of where stars are in relation to each other would be awesome. It is easy to find out how far a star is from Sol, but not so easy to figure out where two stars are in relation to each other if one of them is not Sol.

 

I'm going to use Autorealm for the map, and once completed will share it for others to use as it is much easier to edit with than yEd or, say, a PDF.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

I can't get to ProjectHero from work; but there was a link on there to a little 3-D animation of local stars - could someone link that here if possible so I can see if I can pull that up from work? (If anyone knows the link I'm talking about.)

[Clonus]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

OK I'm just going to have to draw a map and do guesswork on a lot of things.

 

But any idea on where I can get a quick and easy look at our local part of the galaxy for the sake of where stars are in relation to each other would be awesome.

 

Still and always: Internet Stellar Database

 

http://www.stellar-database.com/

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

No, it was a site with an interactive 3D application where it showed all the stars within X LY of Sol and you could rotate around and stuff, seeing each stars location in relation to all other stars with a handy connect-the-dots wireframe.

 

The Stellar Database gives me a whole lot of information on the stars themselves, but no visual or "easily readable" information on the distance between other nearby stars.

 

Right now I'm beginning my map using the Wikipedia list of nearest stars, using the "Right Ascension" and "Declination" as rudimentary tools to place stars in approximately the right places... as I get farther out that will be harder and harder to do. But I need a way to say "Sirius A is (X) LY from Wolf 359." Again, the distance from Sol is easy to find, the distance between two non-sol systems is.... not easy to find.

 

Nor is a good 3D view of the local Galaxy, apparently.

 

Am I even making any sense?

[Clonus]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

No, it was a site with an interactive 3D application where it showed all the stars within X LY of Sol and you could rotate around and stuff, seeing each stars location in relation to all other stars with a handy connect-the-dots wireframe.

 

The Stellar Database gives me a whole lot of information on the stars themselves, but no visual or "easily readable" information on the distance between other nearby stars.

 

Right now I'm beginning my map using the Wikipedia list of nearest stars, using the "Right Ascension" and "Declination" as rudimentary tools to place stars in approximately the right places... as I get farther out that will be harder and harder to do. But I need a way to say "Sirius A is (X) LY from Wolf 359." Again, the distance from Sol is easy to find, the distance between two non-sol systems is.... not easy to find.

 

 

The distances aren't given from Sol unless you start at Sol. They are given from where-ever the center of your search radius is. So:

 

Search for "Sirius"

Search for "Stars within 20 lightyears". From the Sirius page it will give from 20 lightyears of Sirius.

Look down list to find Wolf 359. (Use "find" function if necessary)

Wolf 359 is 8.96404 light years from Sirius

 

It is an awesome database.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

 

Take 1... thanks, that will take a bit of work but I think I can make it work...

[Nyrath]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

It is easy to find out how far a star is from Sol' date=' but not so easy to figure out where two stars are in relation to each other if one of them is not Sol.[/quote']

 

DIST = SQRT[ (X1-X2)^2 + (Y1-Y2)^2 + (Z1-Z2)^2 ]

where SQRT[x] means "take the square root of x", and (x)^2 means "square x".

 

Example: If Tau Ceti is at -0.99,+0.12,-3.35 (with the x, y, z units in Parsecs); and Zeta (1) Reticuli is at +1.15,-7.16,-7.84; then:

 

DIST = SQRT[ (X1-X2)^2 + (Y1-Y2)^2 + (Z1-Z2)^2 ]

 

DIST = SQRT[ ((-0.99)-1.15)^2 + (0.12-(-7.16))^2 + ((-3.35)-(-7.84))^2 ]

 

DIST = SQRT[ (-2.14)^2 + (7.28)^2 + (4.49)^2 ]

 

DIST = SQRT[ 4.5796 + 52.9984 + 20.1601 ]

 

DIST = SQRT[ 77.7381 ]

 

DIST = 8.81 parsecs

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

Well, FYI, I just bought the map listed here (the Galactic Map) and am getting those books as well. Seems work has unblocked your site with the new Firewall, Nyrath

 

I'll use that as my 2-D reference from which to create the "Node Map" and "Political Map" that I need.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

I'm going to go mad....

 

Nyrath, the HabHYG40LY.pdf file on your site is about the best looking Map I've found in regards to showing stars in relation to each other. I'm using it to clean up the map I'm creating and putting my stars more or less on the positions relative to Sol that this map has.

 

However, I cannot find Wolf 359 (CN Leonis) on that map, anywhere. Or, rather, couldn't - because on that map it is listed as Gl 406. Which is not listed on the ISDB list of nearby stars, because they use Wolf 359.

 

I think someone in Astronomy land needs to say "OK, this is it, from now on we use one set of freaking names.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

And I can't find Ross 248 on that HabHYG40LY map either, under any name - Tried HH Andromedae, GCTP 5736.00, GJ 905 (there is a Gl 905...), Gl 171-010, LHS 549....

 

Edit: Found it, it is Gl 905 but one of the references I'm using only lists GJ 905 as the alternate designation. More reasons to avoid Wikipedia, I suppose...

[Nyrath]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

I know, the alternate designations drive me crazy sometimes.

 

As you probably know, if you look a star up in the ISDB, it will list most of the alternate designations.

 

So if you do a query for Ross 248

http://www.stellar-database.com/Scripts/search_star.exe?Name=Ross+248

under "Catalog Numbers", the first entry is "Gliese (Gl) 905"

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

I know, the alternate designations drive me crazy sometimes.

 

As you probably know, if you look a star up in the ISDB, it will list most of the alternate designations.

 

So if you do a query for Ross 248

http://www.stellar-database.com/Scripts/search_star.exe?Name=Ross+248

under "Catalog Numbers", the first entry is "Gliese (Gl) 905"

 

Yeah, and I'm managing. Between EXOSOLAR and ISDB I've got a fairly accurate map out to Tau Ceti now (about 20 systems.)

 

And it is greatly helping me fact-check my background info, establish where wormholes and trade routes and colonies and such are located... basically it is working very well just taking a lot of time.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

The most useful stellar mapping utility I've found is here:

 

http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/chvc.htm

 

First, download and run chview.exe

 

Then download and unzip 50ly-h.zip or one of the other such files on that page, and use chview to open it.

 

You can use chview to display the stars in 3d, rotate them, center the view on any star system in the file, expand or shrink the view as needed, show routes and distances between systems, and hide or display a 3d map grid. Have fun.

 

XO

[Cancer]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

I'm going to go mad....

 

Nyrath, the HabHYG40LY.pdf file on your site is about the best looking Map I've found in regards to showing stars in relation to each other. I'm using it to clean up the map I'm creating and putting my stars more or less on the positions relative to Sol that this map has.

 

However, I cannot find Wolf 359 (CN Leonis) on that map, anywhere. Or, rather, couldn't - because on that map it is listed as Gl 406. Which is not listed on the ISDB list of nearby stars, because they use Wolf 359.

 

I think someone in Astronomy land needs to say "OK, this is it, from now on we use one set of freaking names.

 

When you have nomenclature problems like that, try running your identification through Simbad. That's the oldest and best tool I know of, if you're doing a small enough list of stars that you can enter them by hand and get satisfactory throughput.

 

Identifiers (33) :

 

V* HH And G 171-10 2MASS J23415498+4410407 USNO 275

ASCC 451737 G 190-42 NLTT 57692 USNO 908

Ci 20 1445 GJ 905 8pc 316.00 Zkh 353

CSI+43-23394 IRAS 23394+4354 PLX 5736 [FS2003] 1203

CSI+43-23394 1 JP11 5182 RAFGL 905 [GKL99] 454

CSV 5777 LFT 1816 Ross 248 [RHG95] 3743

GCRV 14848 LHS 549 1RXS J234155.0+441047

GEN# +6.10010905 LSPM J2341+4410 UBV M 42997

GEN# +9.80171010 LTT 16985 USNO-B1.0 1341-00523884

(Blech. That looks worse than it should since the tabs get suppressed here.)

 

Then consider how awful the situation was back before on-line cross-identification tools.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

For the most part I've been able to cross reference on Stellar Database, now that I am starting to understand the correct nomenclature of some of the catalogs, identifying greek characters and abbreviations (though I still can't find "Epsilon Boo" shown on this map on any of the catalogs, and yes I tried "Epsilon Bootis" as well.)

[Clonus]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

For the most part I've been able to cross reference on Stellar Database' date=' now that I am starting to understand the correct nomenclature of some of the catalogs, identifying greek characters and abbreviations (though I still can't find "Epsilon Boo" shown on this map on any of the catalogs, and yes I tried "Epsilon Bootis" as well.)

 

Try harder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Bo%C3%B6tis

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

For locating stars and finding distances between them, the program on this page should do everything you need:

 

http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/chvc.htm

 

It also has multiple names for most of the listed stars, and quite a few other features. I use it for my campaign, and I'll never switch to anything else.

 

X.O.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: YASMT (Yet Another Star Map Thread): There has to be an easier way...

 

Silly me, giving up on Wikipedia in favor of the Stellar Database... SDB lists it too I just wasn't using the "ö"