Celestia Forums

Can anyone direct me to any serious attempts at outlining hypothetic galactic navigation systems. That is, assuming interstellar travel becomes commonplace however many hundreds of years in the future, what systems for describing locations in the galaxy might be in use for navigation. For instance, I know Star Trek divided the galaxy into sectors, so, like, the planet Vulcan might be somewhere in Sector 72 or something. How might something like that work?

Hi Nick, heres a link to more info on how Star Trek do it-it isnt necessarily consistent though between episodes,film,series
http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Stellar_Cartography#United_Federation_of_Planets_et_al.
At the moment ,the best we have are names for the different arms of the milky way-this seems a sensible approach to me,cheers Jestr

While it may seem ego-centric -- it's centered on the Sun -- probably the best coordinate system for the near future is the galactic coordinate system used by astronomers. That avoids all the confusion and inconsistancy caused by making up your own.

I find Selden's Galactic Graticule (especially the green one) useful for establishing coordinates.
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celesti ... cules.html