Looking for some sort of 3D star reference for future game.

[Terath Ninir]

I'm going to be running a Traveller d20 game. While I love the system, their universe is flat. That makes it much easier to map out the stars, but it also hurts the realism part of my brain.

I thought maybe someone over here might have some idea of where I could look on the web for resources on stars in our galaxy. I know what I'm looking for may not exist, but I'd like some sort of reference on what stars are actually out there in our galactic neighborhood. If there isn't such a reference, I can always wing it, but I'd like to have some facts backing up my campaign.

As a side note, does anyone have any idea how thick our galaxy is, in either light year or parsecs?

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

http://www.solstation.com/stars.htm

http://members.fcac.org/~sol/chview/

http://members.aol.com/nlpjp/cosmo.htm



Live it up!

I have some others (All the way to Supercluster maps) on my hard drive, and am perfectly willing to email them to you.

 

[DMScott]

I'm going to be running a Traveller d20 game. While I love the system, their universe is flat. That makes it much easier to map out the stars, but it also hurts the realism part of my brain.

Yeah, it does when setting up the maps and doing large-scale campaign planning. But IME it doesn't matter so much when you're actually playing - you just want to know where you can get to from where you are now.

I thought maybe someone over here might have some idea of where I could look on the web for resources on stars in our galaxy. I know what I'm looking for may not exist, but I'd like some sort of reference on what stars are actually out there in our galactic neighborhood.

In addition to Warlord Ralts' excellent links:

http://members.shaw.ca/evildrganymede/rpg/traveller/mapping.htm (This one has a lot of links to star catalogs)
http://www.projectrho.com/starmap.html (One of the best, IMHO)

If you've got a game store with a decent used game section, you might try looking for Traveller 2300 or 2300 AD. Two versions of the same game, both with really nice colour-coded near star maps. The star data is out of date now, but any set of data will be out of date within a few years so what the heck.

As a side note, does anyone have any idea how thick our galaxy is, in either light year or parsecs?

In the region of our sun, about 2000 light years, according to this site:

http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/milkyway.html

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

The lyrics to this Monty Python song should give you all the data you need!

http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/galaxyso.htm

 

[arkham618]

Here's a spreadsheet listing all confirmed stars within 35 light years of Earth that I compiled from various sources. Each entry lists, in order, the Gliese catalogue number of the star, its proper name (or most common designation), its spectrum (i.e., color -- A, white; F, yellow-white; G, yellow; K, orange; M, red; D, white dwarf), its galactic coordinates in parsecs, galactic coordinates in light years, distance from Earth in parsecs, and distance from Earth in light years. You can plug the coordinates into any of the starmapping programs available on the net and get a 3-dimensional view of the local stellar neighborhood.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Again,

You can get a free demo of Voyager III from Carina Software www.carinasoft.com and look up the Solar Neighborhood under the Options menu which will go out to 4000 light years (I think) and will give you a triangle which will show you how far away it is in x,y,and z (you will have to do some math though). For more information than you ever wanted to know you can also check out:

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/Simbad

The Simbad astronomical database which provides more information on stars than you ever wanted to know. Also you can look up articles on stars at:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html

The nasa ads webpage. Generally only older papers are available for free, but most studies on stars are older than copyright anyway (most visual light studies were done by the first half of the century, spectroscopy is the big thing right now).

Sincerely,




Sammy Grimes

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Sorry about the second post

...

 

[Jslade]

Attn: arkham618

I apologize for the lack of ... well whatever.

I've been trying to track you down and send you an email. I saw some work you did on a never made Hearts of Iron mod. I have a some questions about the subject matter that I would really appreciate your expertise on.

if you could; please email me at jimholm@yahoo.com

thank you very much.

 

[Terath Ninir]

Wow! Four days, and finally I can see this frickin' thread!

Thanks, all of you. I'm going to bookmark and go through every one. I've decided I just don't have enough time to do a 3D map for this campaign, but I'm going to plan for a later one. Something along the lines of Traveller 2300/2300 AD (both of which I own; I hope Quicklink actually comes out with 2320 AD!). But I'm DMing this Saturday and a 3d map just ain't gonna happen.

Damn cool info, though. I will have to use it for that future campaign.

 

[Terath Ninir]

I have some others (All the way to Supercluster maps) on my hard drive, and am perfectly willing to email them to you.

I've been trying to find your email addie on your profile and I can't find it. I assume it's hidden. So if you're still willing, could you send the stuff to cyberzombie23 (at symbol) yahoo.com ?