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Location of Andoria ?

  • Thread starter Captain pl1ngpl0ng
  • Start date
C

Captain pl1ngpl0ng

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Im a little confused as memory-alpha place Andoria at 11 light years from Sol/earth
and also inform that Vulcan is 16 light years from Sol/earth

So Andoria is closer?

This picture are also from memory-alpha... "the explored galaxy" star chart.
Andoria looks extremely far from Vulcan here, which are close to earth, so this must be wrong?
The_Explored_Galaxy_Andoria_Vulcan_and_Earth_location.jpg


Also from this picture it looks like everything are on the same arm (Orion-Cygnus Arm),
there may be several arms here tho..
Do we know for certain that Andoria are located at the Orion Cygnus Arm
or can it be at the Sagittarius Arm?

And also.. it's in the Alpha Quadrant right?

Let me rephrase all this:

If Earth address are:
Virgo Supercluster-
the Local Group-
Milky Way-
Alpha Quadrant-
Orion Cygnus Arm-
the Solar system.

What are the address to Andoria ?
 
Many references to distances are from actual dialogue, so all the usual players would appear to be extremely local - next-door neighbors to Earth, really, sharing the exact address.

Modern onscreen graphics tend to reproduce the views of the Star Charts booklet by Geoff Mandel: this layout of local space is seen in DS9, VOY and DSC all, and is the basis of some location ideas in ENT as well, even if only implicitly. It's also used in the ST Online game and in the movie Into Darkness, among others.

The view above is an earlier take, Andrew Probert's way of paying homage to earlier fan maps (the most famous one of which was by the same Geoff Mandel). It also seems to reflect actual art department ideas, though - or at least the art department, which famously maintained a coarse map on its wall, seems to have agreed with Probert's take here on many things. For them, in any map where the galactic core is up, the Klingons are to the lower right and the Romulans to the upper right, and the Cardassians to the left. This isn't at odds with Probert's art above yet, although he doesn't include Romulus (for whatever reason - perhaps he only listed UFP worlds and considered the Klingons UFP members) or Cardassia (for the obvious reason of it not having been invented yet).

But Probert's art isn't "right". The stars with names taken from the real world aren't at their correct positions at all. Some of this Probert inherited from Mandel's earlier maps where there was an unfortunate coordinate translation error that rotated an otherwise realistic placement of stars. Some is due to artistic liberties taken by Probert. The location of Andor or Andoria could be either of those - the older maps had it at Epsilon Indii, to honor a choice made in the early Star Fleet Technical Manual by Franz Schnaubelt, but Mandel later put it at Procyon (which is 11 ly away). Now, there's no star named Epsilon Indii, but there is Epsilon Indi, which is 12 ly from Earth.

Why the change? Perhaps because Mandel would have been aware that Epsilon Indi already played another role in Trek lore, a victim of the Triacus marauders in TOS "And the Children Shall Lead" - the failure to mention Andorians in that episode might have been damning. But Mandel then slapped the Epsilon Indi identity to another Trek location, Draylax... But I digress.

Vulcan in basically all maps resides at 40 Eridani (a location favored by fandom since time immemorial, and at the quoted 16 ly distance). That Probert's map above would have it at the wrong spot relative to Earth is possibly due to Probert quoting Mandel's earlier map, the one with the coordinate rotation error. And Andor could be rotated to that funny and inappropriate place the same way, assuming it was indeed Epsilon Indi in Probert's mind still.

So, to recap: there's a modern understanding of which stars are the Andorian and Vulcan homestars. There's no direct dialogue reference to either, though, nor explicit graphics equating them with those stars. There are, however, many explicit references to Vulcan being exactly 16 ly from Earth, reinforcing the idea that it is 40 Eridani. But there's no reference to Andor(ia) being 11 ly away - this is mere conjecture from the conjectural idea that it would be orbitin the real Procyon.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Oh, and "is the Alpha Quadrant right?"...

Well, Probert's map above, flawed as it is for being based on a flawed original, still serves as the basis of many modern things. There was actual effort made to make it fit atop the modern Star Charts map of the Alpha/Beta surroundings of Earth. If you adjust the scale just right, Earth, the Romulans and the Klingons drop in their "correct" places - which then allowed Mandel (or, rather, a group of fans working with him, me included) to drop previously unassigned Trek locations to slightly less than arbitrary places. That is, they were dropped where Probert's map left them. "Unreal" locations such as the First Federation and the Kzin Patriarchy are where Probert put them, even if the rest of his map is screwed and all the real stars are in the wrong places.

Conversely, somebody supposedly upgraded Probert's map so that when it again appeared onscreen in early DS9, it now featured Cardassia. Right where it currently sits in the Star Charts family of maps! It's an iterative process...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Thank you so much for this information @Timo very much appreciated!
and @Kor ... yes, "Out there, thataway." ...is probably the best direction to give =)
 
That's a bit relative - mankind will no doubt be snuffed out long before any truly observable movement happens.

Of course, star maps will be drawn and redrawn with the gradual changes in mind, perhaps in "epoch" editions every fifty or hundred years or so. But a hundred epochs will still not see significant changes, except perhaps in the case of "rogue" stars that wander against the general trend. Such a star crossing the Romulan Neutral Zone might be politically interesting, say. Although it seems the RNZ will be gone in less than an epoch...

Certainly we have no reason to assume Vulcan would not be 16 ly from Earth in every Trek era, from ENT to the far future of DSC Season 3. Sol and 40 Eri A aren't moving at a full 1/1000th of lightspeed relative to each other or anything.

Timo Saloniemi
 
...Vulcan in basically all maps resides at 40 Eridani (a location favored by fandom since time immemorial, and at the quoted 16 ly distance). That Probert's map above would have it at the wrong spot relative to Earth is possibly due to Probert quoting Mandel's earlier map, the one with the coordinate rotation error. And Andor could be rotated to that funny and inappropriate place the same way, assuming it was indeed Epsilon Indi in Probert's mind still.

So, to recap: there's a modern understanding of which stars are the Andorian and Vulcan homestars. There's no direct dialogue reference to either, though, nor explicit graphics equating them with those stars. There are, however, many explicit references to Vulcan being exactly 16 ly from Earth, reinforcing the idea that it is 40 Eridani. But there's no reference to Andor(ia) being 11 ly away - this is mere conjecture from the conjectural idea that it would be orbitin the real Procyon.

Timo Saloniemi

In England, your statement that 40 Eridani as the location of Vulcan has been favored by fandom since time immemorial would not necessarily be legally correct. In England the first Statute of Westminster in 1275 defined time immemorial as since before the beginning of the reign of King Richard I on 6 July 1189.:hugegrin::nyah:

You say there are many explicit references to Vulcan being exactly 16 light years from Earth. I know of two references in canon, in two 4th season episodes of Enterprise.

In "home" on the planet Vulcan:

TUCKER: You're sorry. You brought me sixteen light years just to watch you get married to someone you barely know.

http://www.chakoteya.net/Enterprise/79.htm

"Daedalus":

EMORY: Sub-quantum teleportation. You step on to a transporter on Earth, a few seconds later, you're on Vulcan.
TUCKER: That's over sixteen light years.

http://www.chakoteya.net/Enterprise/86.htm

So can you list any other mentions of Vulcan being 16 light years for Earth?
 
Maybe it's like those subway maps, the distances between stops aren't to scale, just regularly spaced.
probably more like those maps yeah... well.. i think i just gonna follow Kor's lead : "Out there, thataway." =)
at least we can be certain of that Andoria are in the Milky Way, around this quadrant somewhere.
 
Why the change? Perhaps because Mandel would have been aware that Epsilon Indi already played another role in Trek lore, a victim of the Triacus marauders in TOS "And the Children Shall Lead" - the failure to mention Andorians in that episode might have been damning. But Mandel then slapped the Epsilon Indi identity to another Trek location, Draylax... But I digress.

Actually the Star Trek Maps from 1980 put Andor and Triacus both at Epsilon Indi with Triacus being the third planet out from the primary and Andor the eighth planet. There is no menton of what sort of interaction (if any) the two planets had, but does state that Triacus' "pirate civilization" predated the Vegan Tyranny. It's unclear if the andorians were starfaring at that point or if the denizens of Triacus had taken any interest in them.
 
Memory-Alpha has Vulcan and Andoria at 40 Eridani and Procyon respectively because of Star Charts, one in Enterprise which is unreadable, but M-A counts it anyways because there was a picture of it taken at a prop auction, and from star charts shown in Discovery, both from or based off the 2002 Star Charts book.
 
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In England, your statement that 40 Eridani as the location of Vulcan has been favored by fandom since time immemorial would not necessarily be legally correct. In England the first Statute of Westminster in 1275 defined time immemorial as since before the beginning of the reign of King Richard I on 6 July 1189.:hugegrin::nyah:

You learn something new every day... Thank you!

So can you list any other mentions of Vulcan being 16 light years for Earth?

To round it up to "many", I'll just add the "four days" travel time estimate from ST:TMP - a movie overburdened with obscure references to fandom assumptions. Using the silly cubed formula for warp speed, Kirk's refitted ship would cross 16 ly in four days at her now-supposed (but never stated) non-fatal top speed of warp 12...

Of course, with any more realistic formula, four days will look like very poor going. But that befits the movie situation just fine, too: the ship has been through hell, and Scotty may in fact be apologetic about it taking so long to get to Vulcan!

Actually the Star Trek Maps from 1980 put Andor and Triacus both at Epsilon Indi with Triacus being the third planet out from the primary and Andor the eighth planet. There is no menton of what sort of interaction (if any) the two planets had, but does state that Triacus' "pirate civilization" predated the Vegan Tyranny. It's unclear if the andorians were starfaring at that point or if the denizens of Triacus had taken any interest in them.

The problem with putting them in the same system is that it contradicts the idea of the raiders "marauding across the galaxy" and thus reduces the threat posed by the monster that supposedly either is the Triacans or is what the Triacans became... I think separating the two locations was a good idea.

Although of course we still have to worry: if Triacus can strike at Epsilon Indi, then the neighboring Earth would be at great risk as well. Did the ancient Andorians perhaps save also Earth with their dearest blue blood? Putting Andor at Procyon won't remove that issue: Now it falls upon Draylax to save the hides of both the pink- and the blueskins, back in the day!

Timo Saloniemi
 
It's wherever the plot needs it to be.

Background space maps are just set dressing. The Next Gen one in the OP was from a time long before HD where it'd never be readable on-screen. The modern Discovery ones were transferred from a book by someone without a clue of Discovery's setting (it features things like the path of the Enterprise-A in the latter movies, which won't happen for 35 years) and again isn't meant for close up study (they also have blocks of text from random Wikipedia articles to make them look busy)
 
OTOH, using these "standard" maps is also the path of least resistance - so we're now well stuck in the assumptions of the Star Charts regarding distances and directions, as those are right in front of our eyes wherever we look.

It's just that it's extremely seldom that distances or directions would actually matter in terms of plot, least of all in the current show and its jump drive... When was the last time we heard of a heading to a Trek location?

Timo Saloniemi
 
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