Notes:

• make the blues lighter
• fix the scaling (the brighter stars should be larger, but something's broken)
• add a marker representing the galactic center?
• rogue perspective?
• a human timescale for any of this just doesn't work out. We're well past the point of "several human lifespans"
• could potentially incorporate the linear velocities with distances to "rewind" time. Probably not worth it unless I open the timescale up to geologic lengths

Star chart with parallax!
(The stars are moving. Looping the video is recommended. It may be easier to see motion at the edges than the center)

This is from the perspective of something moving in a circular orbit ~10000 AU from Sol. That's way, way, way past whatever sense of distance I have.

Sol, the sun, could explode, and it would take almost 2 months to even notice

It's absolutely wild that the data to construct something like this even exists. Most (almost all?) of it was actually collected within the past 10 years (Gaia was launched in 2013).

I can't begin to grasp the amount of math, engineering, physics, computing, and such that goes in to something like this. The amount of collaboration necessary to bring sophonts from all those fields together. The amount of effort required to build, grow, and maintain communities across decades.

Gonna go cry now because everything about this is too vast.

Thanks 

Bri continues to be flabbergasted that humans have been able to do anything even close to modern astronomy.

Took the star charts from last week and decided to shift the reference frame slightly so it was ~1 AU away from Sol — basically simulating Earth. Then I made another chart with the reference frame shifted ~1 AU in the opposite direction. Now we have two charts separated by about half a year. In theory, we could use the resulting parallax to figure out which stars are closer.

The only star that moved is Sol.

increase the distance to ~2 AU, about half an AU past Mars

The only star that moved is Sol.

increase the distance to ~5 AU, a little more than halfway to Saturn

The only star that moved is Sol.

increase the distance to ~100 AU, well past Pluto and slightly further than Eris

The only star that moved is Sol.

increase the distance to ~1000 AU, Sol could vanish and it would take ~6 days to notice

Finally, we see some small movements from other stars.

Absolutely amazed at what astronomers have done

lotsa paperwork, so no further data investigation today 

Did go for a walk and ponder some things. Mulling over how/where a seed value can be incorporated for RNG:

• making an initial list of which stars have gates
  • possibly seed some rogue planets
• selecting the exact address scheme from a few possible variations
• assigning numeric values to specific glyphs
• leaking a partial catalog as a hint
• inclinations of stars as they orbit the Milky Way
• inclinations of "planets" (which are entirely generated)

Also had some thoughts for what data to allow myself to have, and a way of explaining the acquisition of some of that data:

• the view of the night sky from a planet
• the view of the day sky from a planet
• possibly the position data of (select?) stars near the planet

Still mulling over environmental (and stellar) hazards, along with the communication protocol and sensors the gates may have.

Trying to strike a bearable balance between "staying true to reality" and "this is all made up", as well as "the exercise is borderline impossible for a sole amateur" and "oops! all the answers were given away!".