Battlestar Galactica: Myths, Truths, and Our "Real World" Galaxy

So there was the recent news that an earth-like planet was found only 20 light years away in the constellation Libra. Hell, 1/3 of the speed of light and a huge fleet/ travelling colony could make it there in 60 years.

So then I was thinking, does this mean Libra constellation is only 20 light years away? Nope, because the constellations are mapped by our view of them in the sky. So I found out, for each constellation, there could be stars hundreds of light years away from each other.

Now I was ruminating on Battlestar Galactica final episode. I kinda noticed in the final pullout effect, the zoomed out of the galaxy, but kinda zoomed back in to near where they had zoomed out.

So I started looking at each constellation, and decided to check the list ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._constellation ) and come up with the *nearest star and furtherst star from Earth* for each constellation. Very geeky, I know. Well, it's Sunday, and I got nothing else to do, I'm not supposed to be working today (not a religious thing)...

The order is from right to left from http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/zodiac/dsm-b.htm . The Battlestar Galactica "colony" name is next to it. Okay, let's get into it. LY = LightYears. Any corrections of course, feel free to mention


Pisces [Picon]
14 LY : van Maanen's star
2,296 LY : 101 Psc

Aries [Aerelon]
12-15 LY : TZ Arietis, Teegarden's star(?)
1,342 LY : unnamed, location 02h 03m 42.61s +18° 15? 11.8?

Taurus [Tauron]
45 LY : 10 Tau
2,103 LY : 139 Tau

Gemini [Gemenon]
34 LY : Pollux
5,821 LY : 41 Gem

Cancer [Canceron]
11.8 LY: DX Cnc
3,928 LY: unnamed, location 08h 09m 35.19s +29° 05′ 35.1″

Leo [Leonis]
7.8 LY : Wolf 359 (Trekkies will know significance of this star system)
6,653 LY: 72 Leo

Virgo [Virgon]
14.3 LY : Wolf 424
1,160 LY : 65 Vir

Libra [Libris]
20 LY : Gl 581
1,863 LY : unnamed, location 14h 47m 13.66s −21° 19′ 29.6″

Scorpio [Scorpia]
23 LY : unnamed, location 17h 18m 56.36s −34° 59′ 22.5″
9,000 LY : Scorpius X-1

Sagittarius [Sagittaron]
9.7 LY : Ross 154
5,000 LY : OGLE-TR-10

Capricon [Caprica]
39 LY : δ Cap
108,667 LY : unnamed, location 20h 11m 10.08s −08° 50′ 32.4″

Aquarius [Aquaria]
11.3 LY : EZ Aqr
6,792 LY : 35 Aqr

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So, according to the Star Trek side of things, Warp 8 (1,024 times the speed of light) means 7.1 days for 20 light years travel, and 10 years for 10,000 light years. Of course, any faster-than-light travel in popular Sci-Fi is problematic in any real terms ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_speed ).

However. Back to Battlestar Galactica. Unfortunately I don't have the skillz or software to plot and visualize in 3D the 12 constellations relative to Earth, relative to each other, and the stars in each constellation relative to other stars within the same constellation.

1. The first thing I gather is that for each "constellation" Colony, it is very undefined which star system is the "seat" of the colony and which others make up the colonized planets/systems.

2. Following on from this, it is thus highly fictional how the Colonies relate to each other in terms of distance. In one recent episode Baltar refers to his backwater home colony of Aerelon as the "food basket" for the Colonies. This and the idea of "unified colonies" that facilitate travel and commerce and politics, war, etc. that the core planets of the various colonies are within 1 day, 1 week to maybe 6 months of each other in terms of travel time.

3. The above gives us an idea of how fast the FTL Drives in the Fleet can propel a ship in a single jump.

4. I feel the producers and writers have thus been very smart in playing with the vagaries of the actual 3D locations of the stars and planets of each constellation/Colony with regards to Earth. They also hint that the Earth as the "13th" Colony could be reachable within just months, or not more than a few years should they know better where it is, since the nearest stars to Earth of each constellation are anywhere between roughly 10 to 100 light years. However, the "unknown path" story element makes it sound like the 13th Tribe's journey and the current Fleet + Cylon search for Earth, is an epic adventure. Very smart.

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So where does that leave us? As in most science fiction, exactly where the writers want us to be, plus or minus our own imagination.

However, my analysis here justifies the visual effect in the last episode of Season 3 where there is a massive camera move pullout showing the whole galaxy, then the camera zooms back in to the part of the galaxy roughly but not quite where it pulled out from.

Earth is not that far away, but the journey may be a long and hard one. Cue "The Matrix" and its long treatise on "paths", "journeys" and "choices".

That's my point. A constellation as seen from Earth, is actually a collection of stars/ star systems that have over 20 star/ star systems *within a constellation*, with the size of a constellation spanning up to 5000 light years or more.

That's the "problem" with the "Colonies" of Battlestar Galactica, there is no indication, for example, for Caprica, which planet in which star system it is in of the Capricorn constellation.

However, it is an essential part of the storyline (yes I know it is fiction, hence the word "story"line) that Caprica is a planet in a star system that is part of the Capricorn constellation.

There is an episode in Season 2 of BSG where they see the constellations as seen from Earth. And this correlates to the Colonies.

But again, it's half-here half-there, given a particular constellation covers so much of the galaxy, there's a lot of wiggle room in the storylines.

Huh? I thought this was a hardcore geeky forum site. Harumph!! I shall take my business elsewhere then, dear sir....

Cool. Thanks. Could someone run a query on the star database (not Celestia, maybe something more hardcore...)(??) -- What are the number of star systems in each of the 12 constellations which are each no futher than 100 light years away from any other star system of the other 11 constellations??

Spice. Travel to any part of the universe without moving.

Am I right???

Heh.


Wow, Hendrix, jumping into a different galaxy. Whoa. That totally changes *everything*. Indeed, it be fiction now. No more science.



Never enough geek! .... Yeah, Science Fiction features 3 main ways of travelling faster than light.

1. Warping space - travel faster than light, at a certain multiple of light speed. Eg. Star Trek
2. Folding space - instantaneous, distance varies. Eg. Battlestar Galactica, Dune [in Dune distance is irrelevant when folding space. "Travel to any part of the universe, without moving..."]
3. Entering another dimension to then exit at a faster-than-if-it-took-you-light-speed-travel- location.Eg. Babylon5.

StarWars I think is more in category 1. because (A) Han Solo mentions calculating the hyperspace as being important and not "bouncing off some asteroid" IIRC -- suggesting faster-than-light-travel *through normal space*...

That was one of the best "Space" Battle sequences EVER. Abso-fracking-lutely brilliant. Also I believe one of the very very few science fiction TV/Movie scenes to actually have a spaceship *jump* while in the atmosphere.

Good points. The fact that the constellations pre-1900 AD are pretty much defined by magnitude, (those bright enough that line up as you mention), it only really stretches as far as 1000 light years max. In modern astronomy today they use the constellations as a "segment" of space as viewed from earth*, and they have picked up galaxies hundreds of thousands of light years away eg. from Hubble deep space observations.

*As in Stellarium and Celstia Mac apps, the red-coloured borders that define areas in the sky like states on a country map...

So yeah, the 12 tribes and 13th tribe and all that is pretty much symbolic. And as for "Earth", well, we'll see what the writers do with that.



Heh. You definitely need some more chill time. ... I think you've been mindfracked by MarkUK's "Noah's Ark as metaphor for the body". That's a very personal interpretation because whatever one reads online about it, can be interpreted differently. I'm heavily into Course in Miracles right now, so I could give my "Noah's Ark/ Flood and the Body" interpretation which would be perhaps wildly different from most other views.

Best part: When the Battlestar jumped out of the atmosphere and we saw the "poof" remnants of the burning air around the empty space (air) of the outline of the starship. Nice.

Yeah, After Empire Strikes Back, Episode 3 stands as the next favourite for me too. I'm pretty much over Star Wars, but it was good to see some of it salvaged in Episode 3 and all the CGI actually coming together to tell how Anakin became Evil and stuff. Episode 1 was, in 1999, a total and other debacle that made me feel like a real loser for so desperately waiting for it. Episode 2 was a little silly as well, didn't take it too seriously. Yoda bouncing around like a frog in a sock was interesting, to some extent.