A Quick Spin Around the Big Dipper by Summer Ash.
From the post:
From our perspective here on Earth, constellations appear to be fixed groups of stars, immobile on the sky. But what if we could change that perspective?
In reality, it’d be close to impossible. We would have to travel tens to hundreds of light-years away from Earth for any change in the constellations to even begin to be noticeable. As of this moment, the farthest we (or any object we’ve made) have traveled is less than one five-hundreth of a light-year.
Just for fun, let’s say we could. What would our familiar patterns look like then? The stars that comprise them are all at different distances from us, traveling around the galaxy at different speeds, and living vastly different lives. Very few of them are even gravitationally bound to each other. Viewed from the side, they break apart into unrecognizable landscapes, their stories of gods and goddesses, ploughs and ladles, exposed as pure human fantasy. We are reminded that we live in a very big place.
…
Great visualizations.
Summer’s post reminded me of Caleb Jones’ Stellar Navigation Using Network Analysis and how he created 3-D visualizations out to various distances.
By rotating Caleb’s 3-D graphs there would be more stars in the way of your vision but it might also be more realistic.
Just as a thought experiment for the moment, what if you postulated a planet around a distant star and the transparency of the atmosphere for observing distant stars? What new constellations would you see from such a distant world?
Other than speed of travel, what would be the complexities of travel and governance across a sphere of influence of say 1,000 light years? Any natural groupings that might have similar interests?
Enjoy!