...As some might notice, the map in Mandel's book is just an evolved version of Christian Rühl's map here. Or a sort of parallel evolution from common origins: Christian put the real stars on that 2D frame, and two different fits of Trek features were then done on the frame. Mandel was just able to insert a few last-minute datapoints, say, from the first season of ENT, to come up with something a tad less at odds with the onscreen reality. The later seasons of ENT then went and contradicted Mandel's map anyway. But is it? Such a thing has never been stated on screen. Also, the secret about the biological nature of the Trill wouldn't stay secret for long if Trill really were a member. The only canon data on the location of Trill would be from DS9 "Equilibrium", but that doesn't help much. All we learn is that at some point of the journey from DS9 to Trill, there are still 37 hours to go at whatever speed the Defiant is maintaining - probably as high as possible. That's probably exactly how the Klingons or Romulans would view their holdings. It's all theirs, even those empty spaces between star systems where no Klingon ship has ever bothered to travel. Not really a problem with Mandel's maps, either these new ones or his previous try from the eighties. Why? From the usual vantage point of "galactic north", the galaxy rotates clockwise, so Beta | Gamma ------------- Alpha | Delta would be the most "logical" setup if one thinks in terms of spirals. Only mathematicians and electrical engineers really prefer the counterclockwise direction... Yet there's no real reason to use a spiral setup for a square grid. It's not as if this grid in any way reflects the spiral nature of the galaxy anyway. (And really, for all we know, the names have some obscure origin like the stellar-type litany of O B A F G K M does, not alphabetical at all.) Timo Saloniemi
Since my post didn't post last night, (I hope I can remember how I worded it this morning...) I can't speak to 'how the quadrants are laid out,' my peeve is that they're 'static.' (I know we are supposed to accept them as 'approximate reference points.') However, space out there is always moving. So to keep it 'correct' shouldn't there be a notation at the bottom that reads something like: "The above is for approximate referencing only. All Federation ships should use the nearest navigational beacon for precise coordinates and navigational purposes." If we are all in agreement that we're stepping through Gene's Looking Glass into a different world, that is.
Oh, I wouldn't sweat that. None of the maps is zoomed in enough that stellar movement would make any sort of a difference; even in tens of thousands of years, the stars wouldn't move enough to actually traverse from one side of a "star symbol" (those tiny colorful circles on the paper) to the other. Before the locations of stars there grew outdated, the language used on the maps would fall to obscurity; the data storage media would fall into disuse; and for all we know, not only the Federation but also mankind, Vulcankind and Klingonkind would go extinct. Timo Saloniemi
That is an extremely valid point. I hadn't thought of that. Been spending too much time reading astronomy articles. LOL "Over here a star goes nova; over there we just saw a new black hole; and right there, well, we think that's another patch of 'dark matter' but we're not positive."