Re: BSG+ Centauri A, B, C and Cally (was Re: Anyone else notice...)

"M. Halbrook" <mdhalbrook@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:Xns9A87CC811197Bmdhalbrookyahoocom@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 was responding to Brad]

> What you've YET to address in this argument is the fact that, seen from
> Alpha Centauri, Would the Zodiac look the same?  Wouldn't the
perspective
> change from any angle but an earth out view?

On a galactic scale, hundreds of light years is a very short distance and
most of the brightest stars are that short distance away.  Many are less
than 100 light years.  Of the 90 brightest stars in our sky (excluding our
sun), half are within 150 light years away.

Curiously -- and it inspires some confidence in BSG's writers and science
advisors -- Orion is an exceptional case.  It's one of the brightest and
most recognizable of all the constellations.  Yet among the 7 key
brightest
stars in it, the closest is 240 light years away from Earth.  The others
are
430, 720, 800, 800, 900, and 1,300 light years away from Earth.

Let's say you drew an axis from Earth to the middle star in Orion's Belt,
that star being Alnilam, the one that's the farthest 1,300 light years
away.
Now imagine us travelling toward it, and stopping in say 750 light years.
We still see Alnilam, much brighter now because it's only 550 light years
away. But the constellation Orion, as we called it, doesn't exist.  Its
stars are all over the place now, including the other two belt stars.  To
see the stars that were 240, 430 and 720 light years away from Earth,
you have to turn your ****p around, or if you settled on a habitable planet
wait for the opposite season or travel to a different hemisphere.

If we'd even travelled 240 light years along that axis, we would lose
the closest star in Orion.  It'd be off 90 degrees in some other part
of the sky and in some constellation foreign to us.  Other stars in Orion
would also be off many degrees.  Those 90 brightest stars from Earth
would ALL be in different places, some much brighter, others dimmer.
That's just travelling a mere 200 light years or so, still our backyard
in galactic terms.  The brightest constellations all look different.

If you were to move from our solar system to one, say, 40 or 50 light
years away, the effect will not be as great as going 200-240.  But it
will still yield significant changes in the arrangement of many of the
very
brightest stars in the sky, and therefore the constellations.  It's not
just
increases or decreases in brightness of certain stars, it's that they can
be separated 45 or 90 or even 180 degrees in the sky, and be in very
different-looking constellations.

Alpha Centauri will have the smallest possible changes, but positions
of the closest bright stars will be noticeably affected.  It's not the
issue
though.  Once Starbuck finds Alpha Centauri (if indeed that's what
she saw), it'll be easy for her to find Earth.  From where Galactica is
now, only 150 light years away perhaps, the constellations look very
different.  It's mostly a fluke that Orion looks the same, but the show's
writers and advisors picked the right constellation to make the fluke
plausible.