The night sky, as seen from Pern!!!

[Mayhem]

I just found this and though people may be interested to see it. It is a collectiom of star charts that show which stars would be seen from Pern.
Pern StarMaps (http://www.igd.fhg.de/~wkresse/pern/)

[Bronze-Dragonrider]

Thanx Plat, that really is interesting! :ok: Great to know what the skies of Pern really would look like.

[Hans]

Good post Plati! I knew about that guy, he's a German architect who "dabbles" in Pern :)

I also know there's another site/page on the same subject, but I can't find the url right now :(

[Mayhem]

Cool innit! I'm sure you'll find it eventually Hans, tried Google? Thats where I found this :D

[Wolfegar]

PreKHarper posted this link (http://www.rukbat3.co.uk/pic/rukbat3pic.htm) on my board in this thread (http://s2.invisionfree.com/Wolfegar_Forum/index.php?showtopic=245&view=findpost&p=2192102). Some of you might find this interesting as well.

*Time passes as I review the star maps.*

Way Cool, PlatinumDragon22!

[Bronze-Dragonrider]

Cool! Nice computer rendering of Pern, thanx for the link! :bouncy:

[Bertrand]

Wow, now I'm seeing stars :faint:


Cool maps :ok: *wonders who took the trouble to make them*
But still, its cool :good:

[Mayhem]

Cool picture of Pern!
:ok:

[Beisla]

Very :cool: links!

[Steven B]

Thanks, Hans, for pointing me at this thread. Well found Platinumdragon22. :good:

I've seen Wolfram Kresse's page before. The maps are accurate and look really good. They show what you can do with a powerful computer and some good rendering software. These maps show what the sky looks like from Rukbat today. The stars will have moved slightly in the few thousand years between now and the time of the 9th Pass because of their proper motion. For most of the bright stars, though, this effect will hardly be noticeable on the map.

The "RA" and "DE" coordinates on these maps represent Earth coordinates projected onto the sky from Rukbat. There's no reason why Pern's polar axis would point in the same direction as Earth's. You get a good fit to the descriptions of the sky in "The Skies of Pern" if Pern's axis points close to the star Nu Ophiuchi - which lies in the uninteresting area in near the top right hand corner of Wolfram's "RA 0, DE 90" map.

Orion is my favourite constellation visible from Pern because it survives the journey to Rukbat just about intact (the belt turns into a triangle). By contrast, the stars beloging to Scorpio and Saggitarius are spread all over Pern's sky.

I really like the rendered Pern too. (You can tell I'm an enthusiast for that by my Avatar!)

Steven.

[DuchessPariah]

Verra verra interesting.

Thank you. :)

[Hans]

Thank you, Steven!

[Bronze-Dragonrider]

Oooh!!! I LOVE your Avatar Steven! :bow: :applause:

[Mausey]

Many thanks for all the links. The planet was wonderfully done. Lots of time and energy went into all the sites and pictures.

[C_ris]

Thanks for both of the links! The picture of Pern is awesome!!!

[AnnMarie]

Fantastic links! Thanks for sharing!

[Jesserli]

Anne has some star charts that I got the chance to see when I visited her at Dragonhold - are those yours, Steven? I can't remember if she said they were or not.

These are pretty impressive because of the clarity of the imaging and design.

[Steven B]

Oooh!!! I LOVE your Avatar Steven! :bow: :applause:
Thanks Bronze-Dragonrider. :)

I don't have any sophisticated rendering software, so I painted a globe and photographed it! This is a picture of the Pern globe I gave to Anne a few years ago.

Steven.

[Steven B]

Anne has some star charts that I got the chance to see when I visited her at Dragonhold - are those yours, Steven? I can't remember if she said they were or not.

These are pretty impressive because of the clarity of the imaging and design.

Thanks Jesserli. :bouncy:

Were these some large wooden disks with plastic dials on them, or some small paper charts with transparent dials on the front? Either of these are mine. Both of these are Planispheres showing how the sky would look from Pern at various locations. The dials allow you to dial up a particular time of day and day of the year. I made the large wooden disks for Anne several years ago when she was completing "The Skies of Pern". Those things are a one-off - made from several computer charts mosaiced and glued together with hand-written notes added. I made the smaller charts in 2003 using a computer graphics package, so they could be more easily printed and transported. Anne sold some of them at DragonCON last year. There aren't many of these charts in existence, because they all have to be processed through my printer and put together by hand. :typing:

Steven.

[Jesserli]

Thanks Jesserli. :bouncy:

Were these some large wooden disks with plastic dials on them, or some small paper charts with transparent dials on the front? Either of these are mine. Both of these are Planispheres showing how the sky would look from Pern at various locations. The dials allow you to dial up a particular time of day and day of the year. I made the large wooden disks for Anne several years ago when she was completing "The Skies of Pern". Those things are a one-off - made from several computer charts mosaiced and glued together with hand-written notes added. I made the smaller charts in 2003 using a computer graphics package, so they could be more easily printed and transported. Anne sold some of them at DragonCON last year. There aren't many of these charts in existence, because they all have to be processed through my printer and put together by hand. :typing:

Steven.


*grin* I think they were the older ones, since I visited her in April of 2002. I was very impressed with them!

[Ryuu]

I've made some images from other programs--one of which I can't remember was a rather crude imager and gave me the idea of the Dragon&rider constellation I mentioned in TS&FL (kept bombing when I tried to place the cursor over Sol for some reason). I've since found some much better programs. I wonder what this guy was using.

for those interested....

Winchell Chung's 3d starmaps & calculations for the real geek ;) ChrisG might like this--I do :D *warning* lots of math!

http://www.projectrho.com/starmap.html
and check out the links he provides from his website

http://www.projectrho.com/smap07.html
http://www.projectrho.com/smap12.html
www.projectrho.com/smap12.html (http://www.projectrho.com/smap12.html)

some good sites Chung recommends that I've checked out:

It's full of stars (http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/7472/ifosweb/index.htm)

Thomas York's 3d-stars (http://www.zubenelgenubi.34sp.com/3dstars/3dstars_about.html)

others that I've checked out:

starstrider (http://www.starstrider.com/)

starry nights (http://www.starrynight.com)

[Steven B]

Wowee! Thanks Ryuu. Those links look fantastic! :applause:

I also found this link http://www.extrasolar.net/starmap.asp, which I found from your first URL, good fun. You can dial up any star and see a map of the sky from it. I was wondering about creating star maps for the stars in the nine star league, and this page lets you do just that. The map for Deneb is a bit disappointing, though. It's too far away for the Hipparcos catalogue to be of any use. We'll need to wait for GAIA (http://astro.estec.esa.nl/GAIA/) to get a good map for Deneb.

By the way, I have a copy of Starry Night Pro V4.0. I find it is fantastic for simulating the night sky, or for travelling through the Solar System, but it doesn't quite get its star maps right when you travel outside the Solar System (e.g. it overestimates the apparent magnitudes of stars that are close to the Sun but far away from you). Perhaps this problem has been fixed in the latest version, V5.0, but I haven't tried that version?

Thanks again for those web links.

Steven.

[Bronze-Dragonrider]

Wow, all those sites are very imressive, surprisingly in-depth. :applause:

[fuzzypaws]

Awsome!!! Now where is my handsom bronze rider to take advantage of my innocense under those same stars. He may think it is all his idea, but trust me I attack first.

[dae]

hey there cool thanks for the links :D

[Mayhem]

I have Starrynight Backyard V3.1. Need a different version some day! Cost is prohibitive though! Those other sites are cool!