original "The Imperium" wall map

[charly4949]

On this original map (measured about 21"x16") it appeared as if it were a real star chart overlayed by a map of the Imperium. A few real stars/nebula was labeled on it.. Pelican Nebula, Deneb, Antares, Terra, Alpha Crucis, Spica, Hyades and Canopus. I've been playing with Carina Software's Voyager program and got to thinking that if I could figure out the location that would duplicate the layout of the objects on this map, you would have a real star chart of the Imperium. Does anyone have any ideas on the possible stellar location this chart was made from?

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi Charly !

I fear the real star mappings to the TU maps are pretty scrambled, so either it could be assumed, that just the names of some common sky objects are re-used for some planetary systems or the map represents a bit of the very weird jump space geometry

E.G. the real Deneb is around 1000 parsec away from earth. In the TU map it just a jump-176.

Best regards,

TE

P.S.
Very welcome to this board

 

[kafka47]

Didn't Harold Hale at least come up with a fix for that with his Children of Earth supplement...

Anyhow, this is where Traveller ventures into Space Opera territory. If I want realism, there is always the 2300AD map to consult plus tons programs that are out there doing much the same thing. Cthulhu Rising and our buddy CofI Dalton just to name a few.

I reconcile with real life is that the Solomani had so many stars with Vilani names that they decided the Solomanize the worlds and leave the Star names in the original Vilani hence the 3I tradition of naming systems after their Main World, not the Star(s) they orbit...also makes star charts easier to read.

 

[TheEngineer]

What kind of fix ?

 

[kafka47]

The fix was to designed to keep in line with current star positions and names by as much as possible mapping the Rim correctly.

 

[Merxiless]

My understanding of what Harold did was to use topology to keep distances roughly equivalent, via jump lines.

It works on a subsector scale, for the local area, I did it myself, back in the day, independantly from him, based on Real world stellar data (funny thing, we both lived in the Dayton area in the 90s.)

The process I used (not sure what he did, we only gamed together one Traveller session with a mutual friend named John) was to convert gliese data to coordinates via trigonometry. Then convert that to a cartesian grid, then convert that to a hex grid, then draw in the jump lines.

I realized halfway through:

1) Too much work, for the payoff in detail. Way too much work.

2) If I was going to do this again, I'd design my own SFRPG and use a 3-D coordinate system from the beginning, a la SPI's Universe RPG (TSR Bug Hunters, same map data more or less), or Iron Crown's Space Master.

3) Way too much work.

I'm somewhat of a backyard astronomer. What really pisses me off is the lack of respect for real world stars in most sci fi. Even Paramount's recent (a few years ago) Star Trek Star Charts is WAAAY off.

You'd think people would get a clue. It's not hard to get real world sources.

A helpful little program that I use even 10 years later is CherryView. These two guys that are fans of C J Cherryh wrote it up. You can program stars for it yourself. It's ancient, but that and the venerable (and rightly so) Jim V's Traveller mapping programs are all I personally need for any traveller campaign.