Amateur Discoveries of Spokes of Stars

[GlobeMaker]

Summary

This essay describes an opportunity for amateur astronomers to
make discoveries with Celestia.

Details
Using Celestia 1.4.1 today on my well-endowed PC, I traveled near
our spiral arm in the Galaxy. The frame rate was from 60.01 FPS
to 23 FPS. When the maximum magnitude for stars was selected,
I looked back on the whole cluster of stars that have known positions
near the Sun. When Sol is selected with "follow" mode, the scene
was rotated. Then I saw what Selden describes in these notes:

http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/spokes.html

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... ght=spokes


What I saw were patterns of stars over large distances. Void
volumes exist in radial shapes from Sol. Some volumes of space
have "spokes" of stars. Those are regions where the star density is
high and which are aligned radially from Sol. Images of these could
be shown, but without motion, the spokes and radial voids are not easy
to see. Human vision has skill for detecting patterns that computer
algorithms do not often equal. I assert that amateur astronomers
could mount a concerted effort to catalog these spokes and voids
and then report them to astronomers. These reports would be
potentially critical of the anisotropy of the star catalogs. This
anthropic anisotropy may be due to dark material blocking some
viewing directions. Maybe there are favorite viewing areas that
were suggested by luminaries and that were then investigated by
minions.

Whatever the cause of the radial voids and solar-centric star strings,
this is an area where Celestia'a achievement in the area on
non-fictional space views can be applied by amateur astronomers.
Some amateurs, like ANDREA have discovered supernovas
(not using Celestia)

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... =supernova

The XYZ.celx program from cpotting would be useful to document the
xyz coordinates of several stars in a string of stars. Then the right
ascension and declination could also be recorded. With those
numbers, observers could look out from the Earth to see what the
spokes may be named.

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8076

Conclusion
We have a modern tool called Celestia. Serious amateur astronomers
could alert astronomers to the solar-centric facts about the modern
star catalogs. Some of these facts may be known already, but
some discoveries may be waiting there, poised to be understood using
the amazing pattern recognition capabilities of people.

The most prominent spoke starts at Sol, then Rigel, then HIP 26224,
then HIP 26199 far out on the rim. By the way, the alternate name for
HIP 26224 is Theta one Orion D. A prominent, narrow, dark void is
seen 90 degrees away from that spoke, when looking down on the
plane of the arm of the spiral Galaxy.

Three spokes are now listed like hours on a clock :
Rigel spoke at 6 pm
Wezen spoke at 7pm
Regor spoke at 8 pm
They all point at Sol (and bright Canopus, 312 LY from Sol)

Wezen spoke : Sol, Wezen, HIP35210 at the rim of the Galaxy

Regor spoke :Sol, Regor, HIP 41928 at rim.

Notes :Wezen is HIP 34444 and Regor is HIP 39953. Each spoke is
about 5000 light years long. That reaches from Sol half way to the end
of named stars. Beyond that, the stars become sparsely distributed,
so patterns are not clear.

[selden]

GM,

It's been a while since I wrote those pages, but as mentioned there, most such spokes are easily explained by attenuation due to gas and dust clouds and are not particularly surprising. It'd be interesting to see how they correlate with known nebulae, though.

[GlobeMaker]

Here are two pictures of blank areas where no stars are visible and
where there are spokes of stars. The first picture may be a bug, see
the text at the end. A bug report was files. See the Bugs Forum at
http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic ... 5&start=75


Sol is the red dot at center.

The radial shapes of star patterns are noticeable more easily when
motion is used in Celestia.

Added note 6:45PM Pacific Time, USA:
I have found a possible bug in Celestia when viewing the whole
star cluster shown above. There are rectilinear gaps between sectors
of space. It seems the octree algorithm is putting empty gaps
between regions. The linear gaps outline solid brick shaped regions where stars are,
but with visible gaps with no stars. The empty gaps are exactly
aligned with the equatorial coordinate system. If you put the
celestial grid's north pole in the star cluster at Sol, the gaps are seen to
be exactly aligned with the pole.

Your viewing position must be from 2k parsecs to 10k parsecs from
Sol. Center Sol and follow Sol. Use 5kpc and maximum star brightness.
Adjust field of view to begin to saturate a white zone. A checkerboard
pattern appears. The first picture, above, shows how it looks on low
end graphics hardware. The same problem is seen on my NVIDIA hardware