RE: [FH] FTL, astronomy

On Fri, 22 Feb 2002 Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:

Hey, Beth

> > Have no fear, the human mind will develop local 
> > legends for the other planets.   
> 
> I was actually wondering how weird it would look from a nearby planet.
> Aussies would obviously feel a little disconcerted if they were
sitting on a
> planet around Alpha Centuari as there would be no "pointers" (you'd be
> sitting on one), but I was just wondering how different it would all
look,
> or would there just be little odd bits? Ray's link says there would be
odd
> bits (due to our Sun being up there too), the one bit I hadn't clicked
to
> would be that the Sun would fit into a different constellation
depending on
> which star system you travelled to.

Well, the further away you get from Sol the more and more distorted the
constellations you are familiar with are are going to look. I couldn't
tell you exactly how what is going to look how depending on which way
you go. There are people who have done this to some degree. But it's
vastly complex and difficult to explain into words how things would
look from a given star system on the fly.

The stars that make up constellations are at vastly different distances
from us - some relatively nearby (Sirius at 8.7 ly, Altair at 16 ly, 
Vega at 25 ly), others substantially further (Betelguese at 520 ly, 
Deneb at 1600 ly). As soon as you move any significant distance, the
sky starts to really change from what you were used to seeing.

> > Slightly off the subject of your post..
> > Navigation well most likey be done by using at least
> > three known pulsars to determine location in space.
> > Kind of like looking at 'lighthouses' in the stars.
> 
> I'll take your word on that ;)

Each pulsar's "pulse" is unique into and of itself, sort of like
fingerprints are to a person. So if you have a bunch of these
charted into your astro-database, and you can relocate these pulsars
after an FTL jump, you can fix your position pretty darn accurately.