Science Fiction based map

[hppavmx704]

I have been working on a story that is mostly SF with some aspects of Fantasy thrown in, and I was wondering if anybody has any good ideas on how to build a map of a universe. I was hoping to get something that is appealing to the eye and yet encompasses a huge area. I was going to just leave out a map and just let the readers imagination take way but I'm unsure if that is the way I want to go.

Any feed back would be appreciated.

 

[sashamerideth]

A lot of us use maps for our own organization, keeping track of distances, travel times, etc. It takes a lot of time and visual artists talent to make a map that would look good to a reader, different purposes entirely. For you, paper, pen, ruler and other drafting tools.

Maybe write your story outline so you know who goes where, then build your personal map from the outline

Sent from my Blade using Forum Runner

 

[Telcontar]

As for map of the universe, I doubt there are too many ways to get in 'detail' on that scale.

Below that, however, galaxies can have some very interesting features that are meaningful to a space-faring race. Black holes, nebula, binary systems, etc. You'll need a working knowledge of them, so I hope you've done your research! You can always do more than one map - a main map of the entire area you'll be working with and then sub-maps depicting important areas at larger scales.

There is an entire forum over at the Cartographer's Guild dedicated to science fiction mapping. I haven't looked at any of it yet, admittedly, but I imagine there are some examples/discussions of this topic there.

 

[ThinkerX]

Google 'Celestia'.

Hmmm...

http://www.shatters.net/forums/index.php

Might get you to their forum, anyhow.

There are one or two similiar sites out there as well.

That site uses some of the best data available to make a star map of our corner of the galaxy. If memory serves, they give distances to around 150,000 stars, if you can find the right addons. However, the calculations claim something on the order of 70-100 billion stars for the galaxy as a whole, and the Celestia project covers a very tiny dot on the galactic map. Distances are fairly decent out to around 100 parsecs (326 light years), even though it shows less than 10% of the actual stars within that range (most of the others were too faint, being very faint 'M' class red dwarfs or simply had no reliable distance info available). So that you know, by way of comparison, if your typical sunlike star is a 100 Watt light bulb, your typical red dwarf is a (red) LED light. Most have less than 1% the luminosity of the Sun.

My calculations put the total number of stars within 50 parsecs (167 lightyears, more or less) at around 40,000 - 60,000. Accurate distance info exists for about 20% of these stars; you go with the not so accurate distance info...well, I wasn't able to give distances to even half of them. (this gets into stellar distribution issues).

I can say, that if it is other earthlike planets you are looking for that are not to far off (within say 50 parsecs)...current odds say there might be a few within that range, but you could probably count them all on the fingers of one hand. This gets into things like long term orbital stability.

Galactic orbits and a stars placement within the galaxy are other issues worth noting. Many stars have wildly erratic galactic orbits - at one point, they'll be within a few thousand parsecs of the highly dangerous galactic core; a few tens of millions of years later, they'll be out by themselves in essentially intergalactic space. The region around the galactic core - or very roughly, the entire inner third of the galaxy is not a hospitable place; lots and lots of radiation and debries.

I spent a fair amount of time late last year and early this year working on a (very boring) project that added about 35,000 stars to their database.

 

[Taytortots]

You can always do more than one map - a main map of the entire area you'll be working with and then sub-maps depicting important areas at larger scales.

Took the words out of my mouth. I think that for your purposes, one map would not suffice. You can do one of the large area, including all the details you can while still keeping it aesthetically pleasing, and than another map for more important areas, such as where they spend a good deal of time. If you're really focused on just making one map, perhaps a good legend or key would be the way to go. You can still keep in key details you want to portray about each place, but all the information isn't crammed into that area.
The way you do it depends on your needs. For example if you were only doing it for the readers, they most likely wont need as much information as you. If you want it for yourself as well, then you would need to take into account your needs.
I'd just stay fluid with it. Start the map of the large area, and if you feel you need smaller ones for better detail do that.

 

[hppavmx704]

Thanks for all of the input. I definitely have some thoughts for consideration now.

 

[Ravana]

Basically, there's no good way to render any sort of large-scale stellar map into something that can be included with a book—not even for ten parsecs, let alone fifty, or thirty-odd thousand (respectable for a galaxy), or more. The problem is the same regardless of scale: you're trying to render something inherently three-dimensional in two dimensions, and it just doesn't work. You'll always end up with stars that appear directly adjacent to one another which are separated by as much as the entire map's scale, since they're on your Z axis (and regardless of what directions you choose for X and Y). It's not the same as rendering, say, mountains… because no matter the size of the mountain, you probably aren't concerned with anything that's either above or below its surface: they're effectively two-dimensional for mapping purposes. In fact, any star map will probably be more confusing than helpful, as far as your readers are concerned, except perhaps on very small scales.

Even constructing a map for your own purposes, using two dimensions plus some indicator of how far above/below the plane something is, involves trigonometry if you want to use real-world data. (Yes, I've done it—for about 15 pc, and on a somewhat dated and thus smaller catalog; no, I'll never do it again.) On the other hand, there is effectively no "terrain" in space—so little that if you mapped your stars as anything remotely to scale relative to the space between, they'd be invisible—so all most SF writers really need is to know the distances between the ones they're using. For which this kind of map can be useful, if you're making the whole thing up and not using real-world data: you can put them wherever you feel like, and calculate the distances between any two with simple arithmetic (since you'll have two sides of a right triangle, as opposed to one side and two angles).

This may depend upon how you decide FTL travel works in your story; if ships can only cover comparatively short distances (say, 6-8 light years at a stretch), then you do end up with "terrain," in the sense that there are only certain directions they can go from any given point. (In fact, if you set that number at anything under 6, there's only one way to get away from Sol; we're rather isolated in that regard—several nearby stars are separated from their nearest neighbor by 2 ly or less.) On the other hand, if you set that number at 10, the limiting factors drop way off, and if you set it at more than 12, they all but vanish for most purposes practical to any story: there will be too many "ways around" and alternate routes for them to matter. (Even at 12 ly, the number of ways to leave town from Sol leaps from one to twenty.) If your ships can travel farther than that in a single trip… don't worry about it.

(In one of only two instances I'm certain of where star maps were printed, C. J. Cherryh includes one in her book Downbelow Station which is dead on—as I discovered after creating my own, then accidentally using exactly the same set of assumptions she did about distances that can be covered in one jump: our maps looked identical. Well, except that mine was in color. That's all that both maps showed, too: a handful of stars, and the viable routes between them. Hers didn't even give a scale… that's how irrelevant that data is for these purposes. All you need to know is whether you can get from A to B or not.)

This assumes all destinations are equal, however. As ThinkerX noted, the number of stars within 160 ly is upwards of 40k… but it's a fair bet few of them will be worth going to, as far as your characters are concerned. In all probability, 99%+ of these won't even have gas stations. That gives another approach: you map out those stars that matter, figure the distances between them, and ignore the overwhelming majority. The map will still be pretty useless for your readers, but it will let you know whether or not your characters need to pass through (your equivalents of) Vega or Procyon on their way from Tau Ceti to Pollux. (No, those were not arbitrary choices. Yes, the answers are different… or, rather, if they aren't, then the ship likely doesn't need to stop at all. )

Think I'm going to have to play with Celestia a bit when I get the chance. Thanks for the tip.

 

[ThinkerX]

This assumes all destinations are equal, however. As ThinkerX noted, the number of stars within 160 ly is upwards of 40k… but it's a fair bet few of them will be worth going to, as far as your characters are concerned. In all probability, 99%+ of these won't even have gas stations. That gives another approach: you map out those stars that matter, figure the distances between them, and ignore the overwhelming majority.

Thanx...and that about sums it up. I've attempted something along these lines a couple times before, with one motivation being to keep the distances fairly accurate for a couple of SF stories (which never made it past the research stage).

To carry things a bit further (this from far too much time spent on 'hard' science and astronomy sites: of those 40,000+ stars within 160 light years, only about 2000 are relatively sun like. You can actually cross about half of those off the list of potential 'suns' for earthlike worlds right off - they're unstable, they have companion stars in weird orbits, too young, or too old. As to whats left...if the quiet murmers of the actual planet hunters are to be given credence, at least half of those probably have planets - but you need a planet of the right size, the right 'range of distances from that star, and a stable orbit. That last is the current killer - something like 90% of all the extra solar planets found to date are either 'scorchers' or have wildly eccentric orbits (50% eccentricity is not uncommon). In our own solar system, the orbital eccentricity of the inner planets is...well, only a couple of percent. Very, very few of the exo planets discovered so far can boast of that. An eccentricity of 10% would give the ideal locations on an earthlike worls summers hotter than the sahara desert and winters substantially colder than northern siberia. But, to cut it short...of those 40,000 stars, odds are only a dozen or so at most will have anything like an earthlike world circling them. Some of the other systems could be well worth visiting...

 

[Ravana]

Ah, but the absence of worlds with terrestrial environments doesn't necessarily mean there isn't something there worth the trip. Though in most cases it would have to be something pretty spectacular for it to be anything other than a way station, as most would feature the same resources, and bulk transport of raw materials would be uneconomical if the same could be found in any system you visit. On the other hand, if your limit on single-stretch travel is 6 ly, you'll need those "gas stations" all over the place in order to get anywhere at all. (Which is why I've found that number to be especially convenient for fiction writing.)

While it's true the percentage of "relatively" sun-like stars is fairly small, this isn't necessarily a crippling factor in itself, since anything from class A on down can be expected to stick around long enough for a solid planetary system to form around it and, potentially, for life to develop (however long that takes: it's hard to judge from a single example). (And leaving out the A stars would only reduce the total insignificantly anyway.) While the most attention has gone to the G (and K, and to a lesser extent F) stars, nothing I'm aware of would prevent a tiny M-class star hosting life-bearing planets… they'd just have to orbit closer. In fact, if one assumes life takes a longer rather than shorter period of time on average to develop, it's the smaller ones we ought to be looking at. Unfortunately, small and dim makes it a lot harder to see what you're after.…

Which is also why most of the planets we have seen aren't what we'd consider suitable: it's easier to spot the big ones (through gravimetrics)… and, while we've finally become able to see planets directly (through watching transits–thank you, Kepler!), there are still two major hurdles that have prevented us from building up our catalog of promising candidates. (1) The observations don't get reported until the planet is seen transiting three times–so a minimum of three years for a planet with an orbit like Earth's. This is a big reason why most of the planets we've spotted so far are unsuitable: they're just too close to their star. Though a bigger problem is (2): the entire system has to be edge-on to our own to be able to see a transit in the first place. Which means that 99%+ of them we flat-out can't spot this way, no matter how long we look.

In fact, given these two parameters, the number of planets that have been reported is nothing short of astonishing: Kepler hasn't been up a full three years yet, so everything they've announced to date has an orbital period less than Earth's, in spite of which it has already spotted over 2,300 planets… and while, admittedly, most of them are not "Earth-like," the sheer multitude suggests that planetary systems themselves are all but inevitable, and what we've seen to date is not so much "the tip of the iceberg" as it is a snowflake on the tip of the iceberg. If that.

The other factors you mention are far more important. The high number of star systems that are binaries or multiples lops off a full third of the number before you even get started: it isn't impossible for some of these to have well-developed planetary systems (the existence of trinary star systems proves it's possible for one or more smaller bodies to orbit a pair of larger ones, even without directly observing planets–and the existence of sextuple systems proves there's no good reason to stop at three…), but that probably isn't the best way to bet… especially not if you want a planet with an orbit that keeps roughly the same amount of radiation falling on it at all times. And, yes, eccentricity is a major problem as well… mitigated slightly, perhaps, by the planet only needing to stay somewhere within the "habitable zone": as long as it didn't stray from that, the eccentricity doesn't matter as much. (After all, it's axial tilt that causes Earth's seasons: we're actually closest to the sun in January. Something to make all us Northern Hemisphere residents feel warmer right now. ) But, yeah, an eccentricity of 50% would be a real bummer. And as you say, that isn't even a high number.

Still, with estimates of habitable-zone planets in the Milky Way now running into the half-a-billion-and-up range, I imagine we'll come across one or two eventually. Maybe even some that are close enough to matter some day.