The Destiny of Deneb

[MAGolding]

Deneb is the name of the star Alpha Cygni, a star famous in science fiction including in Star Trek.

Deneb and Denebians are mentioned many times in Star Trek:

"Where No Man Has Gone Before":

MITCHELL: (without looking) Hello, Jim. Hey, you look worried.
KIRK: I've been worried about you ever since that night on Deneb IV.
MITCHELL: Yeah, she was nova, that one. Not nearly as many after-effects this time, except for the eyes. They kind of stare back at me when I'm shaving.

Furthermore, Mitchell's esper rating showed that on Deneb IV he had carried out telepathic conversations with natives.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Deneb_IV?file=Mitchell_profile_esp.jpg

This strongly implies that Deneb IV was not a primitive world that they were secretly studying but a part of interstellar civilization that they were openly visiting.

"Wolf in the Fold":

COMPUTER: Working. Kesla. Name given to unidentified mass murderer of women on planet Deneb Two. Beratis. Name given to unidentified mass murderer of women on planet Rigel Four. Additional data. Murders on Rigel Four occurred one solar year ago.

Since Rigel IV is a contacted world that is part of the interstellar civilization (Mr. Hengist comes from Rigel IV, in fact) it is quite likely that Deneb II is also part of interstellar civilization. It would be hard to hear about crimes on Deneb II if it was a primitive world nobody was allowed to go to.

"I, Mudd" :

MUDD: I sold the Denebians all the rights to a Vulcan fuel synthesiser.
KIRK: And the Denebians contacted the Vulcans.

MUDD: Worse than that. Do know what the penalty for fraud is on Deneb Five?
SPOCK: The guilty party has his choice. Death by electrocution, death by gas, death by phaser, death by hanging.

Deneb V with its harsh laws is probably not part of the Federation, but it is clearly in contact with Federation planets.

"The Trouble With Tribbles":

KORAX: That's right, and if I think that Kirk is a Denebian slime devil, well that's my opinion too.

This scene is also in the DS9 episode "Trials and Tribble-ations".

SCOTT: No, sir. They also compared you with a Denebian slime devil.

Clearly both humans and Klingons have heard about the slime devils that live on one of the planets of Deneb, a planet that is clearly open for interstellar travelers.

"The Ambergris Element":

SPOCK: Its skeleton is similar to that of a Denebian whale, Captain.

And Denebian whales should live on a Denebian planet open for interstellar travelers to visit.

"The Pirates of Orion":

Captain's log, stardate 6334.1. The outbreak of choriocytosis aboard the Enterprise seems to be under control. Doctor McCoy says the disease is no longer even as serious as pneumonia, and there should be no problem completing our present mission, representing the Federation at the dedication ceremonies for the new Academy of Science on Deneb Five.

SPOCK: I trust it will not affect our scheduled arrival at Deneb Five.

CAPTAINS LOG: Captain's log, stardate 6336.2. The Orion crew is in our brig, their ship in tow, and the Enterprise is back on course for Deneb Five.

This establishes that Deneb V is either in the Federation or else has diplomatic relations with the Federation.

And decades later in our time the Enterprise episode "Broken Bow" showed that Travis had been to Deneb before the episode and a century before Kirk's era:

TRAVIS: It took the fourth, fifth and sixth grades to get there. I've also been to Draylax and both the Denebian moons.

Thus there are at least three Denebian planets with intelligent life (colonists? or at least one native intelligent species) and civilization in TOS and TAS. Deneb V, and probably Deneb II and Deneb IV, have open contract with interstellar civilization.

But in the era of TNG?

"Encounter at Farpoint":

Captain's log, stardate 41153.7. Our destination is planet Deneb Four, beyond which lies the great unexplored mass of the galaxy. My orders are to examine Farpoint, a starbase built there by the inhabitants of that world. Meanwhile, I am becoming better acquainted with my new command, this Galaxy Class USS Enterprise. I am still somewhat in awe of its size and complexity. As for my crew, we are short in several key positions, most notably a first officer, but I am informed that a highly experienced man, one Commander William Riker, will be waiting to join our ship at our Deneb Four destination.

There is only one other mention of Deneb in dialog in TNG era Trek.

"Sarek":

RIKER: I remember studying his career in school. The treaty of Alpha Cygnus Nine, the Coridan admission to the Federation, the Klingon Alliance.

If Riker mentions those events in chronological order, the Treaty of Alpha Cygnus (Deneb) IX would happen before "Journey to Babel", possibly decades before.

And in DS9 "Whispers" a list of arrivals at DS9 includes the GHD Per'ot arriving on a trip from Deneb XX which thus can not be totally uninhabited.

In "Encounter at Farpoint" one community of the Bandi is seen - it could be their only one, indicating a drastic population drop since the era of TOS, or they could have many thousands of other cities. Are the Bandi the same people as the previous occupants of Deneb IV?

There is no mention of the Federation being able to use port facilities on Deneb II or Deneb V. Does the Federation still have access to ports on Deneb II and/or Deneb V, but want a starbase in the Deneb system? Have the people of Deneb II and Deneb V closed their ports to Federation shipping? Have the populations of Deneb II and Deneb V been wiped out somehow?

If Earth Humans have reached the Deneb system 100 years earlier in the era of TOS and 200 years earlier in the era of Enterprise, why is Deneb still on the edge of exploration, with "the great unexplored mass of the galaxy" beyond it? What has prevented Earth Humans and Starfleet from exploring beyond Deneb for 200 years?

So the destiny of Deneb is mysterious.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Two possibilities:
- Deneb historically refers to multiple stars (Alpha Cygni, Beta Ceti, Iota Ceti, Epsilon Aquilae, Delta Capricorni, Beta Leonis), because it's just the Arabic word for tail, and most of these stars are on tails of constellations. TNG Deneb is usually treated as one of the other Denebs in licensed fiction.
- If it's all Alpha Cygni, then there may have been an expanse or subspace desert or something blocking easy travel near Deneb, and it was always the "edge of space" even in Archer and Kirk's time. I assume that the Ferengi and Cardassians lived past Deneb and is why they were relatively unknown until Picard's time, then suddenly were all near the Federation in Sisko's time.

 

[Timo]

As regard the first option, there may well be five well-known star systems named Deneb, informatively numbered from 1 to 5 (as opposed to from I to V)...

As regards past knowledge of Deneb, this could be largely hearsay, from people entitled to visit the place. Starfleet might not be among those, as there would be many parties unwilling to let Starfleet go places and able to do something about it, too.

Going to Deneb IV isn't supposed to be difficult - even old McCoy was playing doctor there for some reason. Going beyond Deneb IV in turn is said to be dependent on using Deneb IV as a base. And there may be many obstacles to doing so, foremost of them the Denebians just plain saying no. Perhaps all Denebians said no, until the Feds put enough pressure on the weakest link, the poor primitives of the fourth planet?

Or perhaps the other Denebs are elsewhere, and only the primitives here were of importance - and sheer Prime Directive concerns kept the Feds from building a starbase in the system and confusing the natives with celestial light shows?

Making a direct connection between the Deneb IV of "Farpoint" and the Deneb IV of "Where No Man" is attractive. After all, if the Bandi are telepathic, they are all the more likely to be uniquely qualified to lure in the telepathic space jellyfish, explaining why they do appear to be unique in capturing one. This way, they could control the creature without advanced technology, and Troi could mistake the powerful psi-signature of the creature for natural noise from the locals.

(Whether Gary Mitchell's posse made open contact with the planet, or merely low-profile contact with select individuals, is undecided. Kirk freely spoke with individuals on Tyree's planet and then recommended that the place be kept under Prime Directive protection. Gary could have been spying like Starfleet always does, wearing a surgically altered face if one were needed, or just saggy clothing if the inhabitants were like the Bandi we later see.)

As regards the other Deneb planets/systems/whatever, it's fortunate there are no great conflicts there: V can be a fairly advanced non-Federation world, II need not be any more advanced or cosmopolitan than the Earth of Jack the Ripper (and Deneb II City need not be on Deneb II, any more than Memphis need be in ancient Egypt), and the random mention of Deneb XX places no requirements on the place. All could be in the same system - and them sharing a system with Deneb IV is not massively problematic, either.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[φ of π]

Don't forget all the races called Terelians or Takarians...

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Going to Deneb IV isn't supposed to be difficult - even old McCoy was playing doctor there for some reason.

I don't think that McCoy was supposed to be based on Deneb IV - He was simply travelling over on the USS Hood along with Riker and Geordi.

 

[MAGolding]

A brief discussion of star and planet names.

Almost every single star visible to the (Human) naked eye from Earth - about 6,000 stars, a tiny fraction of the billions of stars within ten thousand light years of Earth - has one or more names in various Earth languages.

Arabs gave the name that is written in English as Deneb to several stars that appeared to be in the tails of Arabic constellations. Including:

Beta Ceti, 96 light years from Earth, called Deneb Kaitos, also known as Diphda.

Iota Ceti, about 275 light years from Earth, called Deneb Kaitos Shemali.

Epsilon Aquilae, about 155 light years from Earth, called Deneb el Okab.

Zeta Aquilae, about 83 light years from Earth, called Deneb el Okab.

Delta Capricorni, 38 light years from Earth, called Deneb Algedi.

Alpha Cygni, about 2,600 light years from Earth (highly uncertain), called Deneb.

As of 2017, the International Astronomical Union has approved the names of Diphda for Beta Ceti, Deneb Algedi for Delta Capricorni, and Deneb for Alpha Cygni.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proper_names_of_stars

Most of the visible stars also have Bayer designations, consisting of a Greek letter and the genitive case of the Latin constellation name. Most of the visible stars also have Flamsteed designations, consisting of a number followed by the genitive case of the Latin constellation name.

Variable stars are given designations containing Latin letters followed by the genitive case of the Latin constellation name or the letter V followed by a number followed by the genitive case of the Latin constellation name.

Many millions of stars are also listed in various star catalogs. And many stars are listed in several different star catalogs.

Thus in the Alpha Centauri system Alpha Centauri A is also HD128620 and Alpha Centauri B is also HD128621, while Proxima Centauri, or Alpha Centauri C, is also V645 Centauri.

Other nearby stars, some of which are mentioned in science fiction, have catalog designations like Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, Lutyen 276-8, Ross 154, Lacaille 9352, Struve 2398, Groombridge 34, Kruger 60, etc., etc.

A significant proportion of all star systems contain two or more stars instead of a single star. Astronomers generally refer to the brightest star in a star system as [name or designation] A, the next brightest as [name or designation]B, the third brightest as [name or designation]C, and so on.

Since exoplanets have been discovered around other stars, astronomers have designated them by the name or designation of the star, including an A, B, C, etc. if needed, followed by a lowercase Latin alphabet letter. The first exoplanet discovered around a star is b, the second discovered is c, the third d, and so on, regardless of their mass, size, or orbit. If two or more exoplanets of the same star are discovered at the same time, they are lettered in order of orbital distance from their star.

The long time rule in science fiction is to describe planets of other stars either by proper names given by Humans or by natives or else by the name or designation of the stars, given by Humans or by natives, followed by a number in order of distance from the planet's star. Thus in science fiction Earth is often called Sol Three, Sol 3, or Sol III.

This science fiction convention dates back at least as far as E.E. Smith's Second Stage Lensman 1941, where Nadrek comes from Palain Seven and the planets Trale and Onlo are Tralis III and Tralis VII. By the 1960s, science fiction fans would judge Star Trek partially by how well it followed science fiction practices.

In "Who Mourns for Adonais?":

CAROLYN: Here's the report on Pollux Five, Captain. This entire system has been almost the same. A strange lack of intelligent life on the planets. It bugs the percentages.
KIRK: Bugs the? Well, carry out the standard procedures on Pollux Four.
CAROLYN: Aye, sir.

CHEKOV: Entering standard orbit around Pollux Four, sir.
KIRK: Cartographic Detail, stand by. .

This shows that Pollux Five and Pollux Four are planets in the same solar system, and that Star Trek has been correctly following science fiction practices in this episode.

Timo said:

As regard the first option, there may well be five well-known star systems named Deneb, informatively numbered from 1 to 5 (as opposed to from I to V)...

That would not be observing either astronomical or science fiction conventions.

I'm having some trouble with my computer or this site and will continue tomorrow.

 

[Timo]

Science today is taking the wrong road in labeling exoplanets with lowercase letters after the star name or number, even though everybody knows they should use Roman numerals...

Arabic numerals are still free for use, though - perhaps for sorting out multiple systems by the same name.

To add to the above list of factors affecting star or planet naming, Trek has referred to places such as Beta Antares or Delta Vega. Neither Antares nor Vega are constellations: they are single stars, and should not have any adjoining stars designated with Beta or Delta no matter what.

(At most, if it turned out that Antares had a brown dwarf orbiting it, the dwarf might become Antares B while the bright original would be Antares A. One might spell out the A phonetically as "alpha", and perhaps also B as "beta" instead of "baker" or "bravo" or other current or past phonetic expansions - but one shouldn't put the Beta in front of the Antares.)

However, we may speculate that in the Trek future, Antares becomes a constellation. Fly a bit sideways at warp and you get parallax. Perhaps other stars, currently unknown to Earth astronomy, pop out from behind dust clouds with that parallax, and some wise guy decides they're part of the Antares constellation now, for lining up with that star. Or perhaps the parallax move reveals stars that are extremely close to Antares but aren't actually orbiting, so they can't be labeled parts of a binary or ternary system - and astronomers for that reason decide to consider them parts of a constellation with pronounced asterism (meaning they do not merely line up as seen from Earth, but actually cluster together no matter which direction one views them from).

Conversely, Trek has Ceti Alpha. Cetus is a constellation, but you can't put the Alpha after the name - it goes before the name if it is to designate the brightest star in Cetus. However, if some star of Cetus, say, Sigma Ceti, is a binary, then it has stars named Sigma Ceti A and Sigma Ceti B, which expand to Sigma Ceti Alpha and Sigma Ceti Beta/Baker/Bravo/Boojum/Bitcoin or whatever. And our heroes may drop the "Sigma" part when operating near Sigma and far away from all other Cetus stars, which is easy because Cetus is not an asterism - most of its stars are actually very far from each other, and only happen to line up when viewed from Earth.

I don't think that McCoy was supposed to be based on Deneb IV - He was simply travelling over on the USS Hood along with Riker and Geordi.

Perhaps. What I meant was that Deneb IV is not a location only visited by intrepid explorers - it gets all sorts of tourists and riffraff who really have no business being there other than, say, the business of purchasing some native cloth.

Some of the characters may have arrived on the Hood. McCoy left on the Hood. But nothing indicates that visits by starships would be rare, or dependent on the existence of the Farpoint station there. Picard just happens to be the bureaucrat who gets to check out Farpoint and clear it for future use as a base for treks farther out, while tellingly, the already on-the-spot skipper of the Hood is not qualified to do that. If Deneb IV really were out in the sticks, then Starfleet would make use of the rare asset it already has there, the Hood, and not waste it ferrying a retired country doctor to his senior home.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

As regard the first option, there may well be five well-known star systems named Deneb, informatively numbered from 1 to 5 (as opposed to from I to V)...

Meaning something like Denebian colonized system 1, Denebian colonized system 2, etc. etc.? But I think that such a system would be highly confusing both to Earthly science fiction fans and Star Trek characters.

As regards past knowledge of Deneb, this could be largely hearsay, from people entitled to visit the place. Starfleet might not be among those, as there would be many parties unwilling to let Starfleet go places and able to do something about it, too.

So they wouldn't let in Starfleet officers trained to a high ethical standard but they would let in random Federation civilians including occasional criminals like Harry Mudd? And in TAS "The Pirates of Orion" the Enterprise is making a diplomatic visit to Deneb V.

Going to Deneb IV isn't supposed to be difficult - even old McCoy was playing doctor there for some reason. Going beyond Deneb IV in turn is said to be dependent on using Deneb IV as a base. And there may be many obstacles to doing so, foremost of them the Denebians just plain saying no. Perhaps all Denebians said no, until the Feds put enough pressure on the weakest link, the poor primitives of the fourth planet?

I'm not sure how primitive the Bandi of Deneb IV are supposed to be since the Federation is openly doing business with them. The Bandi already know about the Federation and the Ferenghi. Thus it is quite possible that the people of Deneb IV a mere century earlier, who were possibly the ancestors of the Bandi, were also aware of Space travelers.

Or perhaps the other Denebs are elsewhere, and only the primitives here were of importance - and sheer Prime Directive concerns kept the Feds from building a starbase in the system and confusing the natives with celestial light shows?

If the other Denebs are elsewhere, then the natives of Deneb IV would be the rightful owners of the entire Denebian solar system. Thus it would be unethical for the Federation to build a starbase in the Denebian system without getting the permission of the Bandi. And the Bandi have been negotiating for the Federation use of their Farpoint Station, which means that the Bandi contacted the Federation, or the Federation contacted the Bandi, or some third party introduced them. In any case the Bandi are not primitives who would be confused by detecting a Federation starbase elsewhere in the Deneb system, but members of the interstellar civilization who would demand payment for any Federation activity in their system.

Making a direct connection between the Deneb IV of "Farpoint" and the Deneb IV of "Where No Man" is attractive. After all, if the Bandi are telepathic, they are all the more likely to be uniquely qualified to lure in the telepathic space jellyfish, explaining why they do appear to be unique in capturing one. This way, they could control the creature without advanced technology, and Troi could mistake the powerful psi-signature of the creature for natural noise from the locals.

What makes you think that the Bandi have low technology?

(Whether Gary Mitchell's posse made open contact with the planet, or merely low-profile contact with select individuals, is undecided. Kirk freely spoke with individuals on Tyree's planet and then recommended that the place be kept under Prime Directive protection. Gary could have been spying like Starfleet always does, wearing a surgically altered face if one were needed, or just saggy clothing if the inhabitants were like the Bandi we later see.)

Gary could have been spying on a planet not yet cleared for open contact. But a mere century later the Bandi, descendants of those Deneb IV people or maybe invaders from outer space, knew about space traveling civilizations. That is a comparatively short time for a planet to advance far enough to become part of interstellar civilization.

As regards the other Deneb planets/systems/whatever, it's fortunate there are no great conflicts there: V can be a fairly advanced non-Federation world, II need not be any more advanced or cosmopolitan than the Earth of Jack the Ripper (and Deneb II City need not be on Deneb II, any more than Memphis need be in ancient Egypt), and the random mention of Deneb XX places no requirements on the place. All could be in the same system - and them sharing a system with Deneb IV is not massively problematic, either.

If Deneb II was no more advanced in Kirk's era than Earth was in 1888 AD, why would the Federation computers know about Kesla, the name given to an unidentified mass murderer of women on Deneb II? The computers know about Red Jack and Jack the Ripper on Earth and Beratis on Rigel IV because those planets are members of the interstellar civilization of Kirk's era and share a vast amount of data. Nobody mentioned Deneb II City; Kesla was said to be a mass murderer of women on planet Deneb II. As for Deneb XX, the departure point is given as Deneb XX, not any other Denebian planet nor the Deneb system in general.



Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

Science today is taking the wrong road in labeling exoplanets with lowercase letters after the star name or number, even though everybody knows they should use Roman numerals...

I agree, but not exactly. With current techniques only the larger planets in most solar systems can be detected. Thus if they were given Roman numerals in order of distance from their stars the numerals would often a have to be rearranged as new, smaller, planets are discovered. But it is desirable to make certain that astronomers all agree to change the planetary designations to agree with the science fiction scheme whenever all the planets in a star system have been discovered.

Arabic numerals are still free for use, though - perhaps for sorting out multiple systems by the same name.

Since most stars visible from Earth have many names from different cultures, and most stars visited by federation starships will have many names and/or catalog designations from many different Federation worlds, if two different star systems have both have the same name and both need to be known by that name, the common name can be used in conjunction with one of that system's many other designations. If Gruxnub is the native name of two different stars, for example, they can be called Gruxnub Wodmip and Gruxnub Haxtar, using names or designations given by other societies, to tell them apart.

To add to the above list of factors affecting star or planet naming, Trek has referred to places such as Beta Antares or Delta Vega. Neither Antares nor Vega are constellations: they are single stars, and should not have any adjoining stars designated with Beta or Delta no matter what.

(At most, if it turned out that Antares had a brown dwarf orbiting it, the dwarf might become Antares B while the bright original would be Antares A. One might spell out the A phonetically as "alpha", and perhaps also B as "beta" instead of "baker" or "bravo" or other current or past phonetic expansions - but one shouldn't put the Beta in front of the Antares.)

You know, there really is an Antares B, discovered in 1819 and confirmed in 1846.

Remember that stars all orbit the center of the galaxy, so the line from Earth to Vega, and the line from Earth to Antares, are constantly shifting. Thus a number of stars would be discovered by Earth astronomers that look very close to Vega and to Antares. These could make Antares and Vega real binary stars, or they could be optical doubles or opticla binaries that merely happen to be lined up with Earth and the other star at the moment. So they need to be studied over time to see if they are real companions or merely optical doubles.

So in addition to Antares B, the real companion of Antares A, I have heard of a number of stars that were merely optical doubles of Vega, and no doubt astronomers will someday use knowledge of positions and velocities of stars to compute which stars will be optical binaries of Antares and Vega in the reasonably near future. And so maybe Star Trek astronomers will create constellations consisting of Antares and Vega and other stars along with past and future optical binaries of those stars. Beta Antares might be the second brightest star, as seen from Earth, in that hypothetical "Antares constellation", and Delta Vega might be the fourth brightest star in that hypothetical "Vega Constellation".

Of course Delta could be the name of a corporation, and Vega, an Earth family name, could be the name of a corporation. So maybe Delta Vega in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is the "delta" (fourth?) planet owned by the Vega Corporation, or maybe the planet orbited the 124th star owned by the Delta Vega Corporation and its full designation was something like Delta Vega 124 III.

However, we may speculate that in the Trek future, Antares becomes a constellation. Fly a bit sideways at warp and you get parallax. Perhaps other stars, currently unknown to Earth astronomy, pop out from behind dust clouds with that parallax, and some wise guy decides they're part of the Antares constellation now, for lining up with that star. Or perhaps the parallax move reveals stars that are extremely close to Antares but aren't actually orbiting, so they can't be labeled parts of a binary or ternary system - and astronomers for that reason decide to consider them parts of a constellation with pronounced asterism (meaning they do not merely line up as seen from Earth, but actually cluster together no matter which direction one views them from).

As you see, I have suggested something like that above.

Conversely, Trek has Ceti Alpha. Cetus is a constellation, but you can't put the Alpha after the name - it goes before the name if it is to designate the brightest star in Cetus. However, if some star of Cetus, say, Sigma Ceti, is a binary, then it has stars named Sigma Ceti A and Sigma Ceti B, which expand to Sigma Ceti Alpha and Sigma Ceti Beta/Baker/Bravo/Boojum/Bitcoin or whatever. And our heroes may drop the "Sigma" part when operating near Sigma and far away from all other Cetus stars, which is easy because Cetus is not an asterism - most of its stars are actually very far from each other, and only happen to line up when viewed from Earth.

That is possible.

This discussion in Ex Astris Scientia assumes that the writers of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan simply decided that Ceti Alpha sounds better than Alpha Ceti.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/bayer-names.htm

Maybe there is an "Alpha Ceti constellation" like the "Antares constellation" and "Vega constellation" and there is a star designated Alpha Alpha Ceti that was changed to Ceti Alpha to avoid confusion.

Maybe the Preservers transported Europeans to some distant world and those Europeans named constellations after Earth constellations. And Federation astronomers, desperate for relief from endless lists of star catalog numbers, decided to designate stars in those constellations by Bayer type designations if they didn't have better known names. But to avoid confusion, they put the Greek letters after the constellation names instead of before them. Thus they named Ceti Alpha, Ceti Beta, Ceti Gamma, etc. so they wouldn't be confused with Alpha Ceti (Menkar), Beta Ceti (Diphda), Gamma Ceti (Kaffaljidhma) , etc.

Perhaps. What I meant was that Deneb IV is not a location only visited by intrepid explorers - it gets all sorts of tourists and riffraff who really have no business being there other than, say, the business of purchasing some native cloth.

And Deneb V is visited by riffraff like Harry Mudd.

Some of the characters may have arrived on the Hood. McCoy left on the Hood. But nothing indicates that visits by starships would be rare, or dependent on the existence of the Farpoint station there. Picard just happens to be the bureaucrat who gets to check out Farpoint and clear it for future use as a base for treks farther out, while tellingly, the already on-the-spot skipper of the Hood is not qualified to do that. If Deneb IV really were out in the sticks, then Starfleet would make use of the rare asset it already has there, the Hood, and not waste it ferrying a retired country doctor to his senior home.

Timo Saloniemi

I'm sure the Hood was not going all the way home for McCoy but merely taking him partway.

Ex Astris Scientia discusses the good and the bad aspects of star names in Star Trek. And you will note that I have suggested explanations for some of the mistakes in star naming.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/bayer-names.htm

Some people may take my suggestions for a possible "Antares constellation" or a "Vega constellation" and suppose that there is also a "Deneb constellation". Thus there might be stars like Beta Deneb and Gamma Deneb and Delta Deneb, etc. with planets. So Deneb II might be Delta Deneb II, Deneb IV might be Omicron Deneb IV, Deneb V might be Beta Deneb V, and so on, but shortened to only include part of the full names. They might be right, but that could lead to confusion. Most of the "Deneb constellation" stars would have at least five planets, making for multiple Deneb Vs, even more would have at least four planets, making for multiple Deneb IVs, and almost all would have at least two planets making for multiple Deneb IIs.

Most astronomy books have table listing the brightest stars as seen from Earth with information about them. Thus most amateur astronomers and stargazers know a bit about the stars that look brightest from Earth. And of course a large proportion of early science fiction space opera writers and readers would be amateur astronomers and stargazers. So from the early days of science fiction space operas it was widely assumed that Deneb was Alpha Cygni. It is a science fiction convention that Deneb is Alpha Cygni.

Thus we should assume that all the Deneb planets in Star Trek orbit Alpha Cygni. And it is quite possible that something strange happened to the planets of Deneb between TOS and TNG.

 

[Admiral Archer]

It's funny that I found this thread, as my brother and I are currently working on a fan production which heavily features Deneb and its involvement with the Federation, based upon stories we had made up for various role playing games over the past twenty or so years. When we were kids, my brother insisted on creating his own "race" similar to the Klingons or Vulcans, and I had the old Star Trek Star Charts book, so we picked Deneb and the Denebians out as the culture he would flesh out, given their nearly non-existent background in canon. I'll keep everyone posted as the production moves along.

 

[Tim Thomason]

The Prime Directive is kinda out the window in a star system that features one warp-capable species and other pre-warp species. Because on the road to becoming warp-capable, they undoubtedly made contact and regular visits to their interplanetary neighbors.

I wonder if the planet Valakis/Menk was intended to be in the Menkar/Alpha Ceti/"Ceti Alpha" system.

 

[Timo]

Meaning something like Denebian colonized system 1, Denebian colonized system 2, etc. etc.? But I think that such a system would be highly confusing both to Earthly science fiction fans and Star Trek characters.

Very confusing, yes. But as long as we don't see the Roman numerals typed out on screen, we can assume other numerals and other purposes.

The way our characters abbreviate stuff is confusing to start with, giving us stars named Omega or planets named M-113. This nicely reflects the real world of confusion, from the high-level parallel systems of astronomical designation, down to the way a street address may be "Main", "443 Franklin Delano Roosevelt Boulevard (South)", "Fire Response Sector 34" and "Construction Site 46229A" at the same time...

So they wouldn't let in Starfleet officers trained to a high ethical standard but they would let in random Federation civilians including occasional criminals like Harry Mudd?

Most (astro)political entities probably would prefer it that way, yes. No to invasion armies, but red carpets for harmless lowlife and other potential traitors to defeat said armies.

And in TAS "The Pirates of Orion" the Enterprise is making a diplomatic visit to Deneb V.

And I mean to dispute that the familiarity with, say, Denebian Slime Devils could ever be used to establish familiarity with Deneb, let alone familiarity stemming from regular contact - so individual diplomatic visits should not be used as "further" arguments to cement such familiarity.

I'm not sure how primitive the Bandi of Deneb IV are supposed to be since the Federation is openly doing business with them.

Capellans seemed primitive and world-savvy at the same time, too. It doesn't seem as if the PD would categorically preclude contact with primitives, and conversely, PD protection explicitly extends to beyond contact and into matters of self-determination in interstellar affairs.

OTOH, with their knowledge of the Ferengi, the Bandi think they have leverage against the Feds settling in. That Farpoint had to wait until 2363 or so could thus be taken as the result of such leverage, rather than as a sign that First Contact with the Bandi was made in 2362.

If the other Denebs are elsewhere, then the natives of Deneb IV would be the rightful owners of the entire Denebian solar system.

Perhaps, perhaps not. In ST:INS, the Federation has ownership of a system that has known "natives" (who later are revealed to be mere squatters)...

Thus it would be unethical for the Federation to build a starbase in the Denebian system without getting the permission of the Bandi.

Or then unethical for them to ask, because that would rape their childhood or whatever - the PD appears highly complex overall, and unintuitive even if straightforward in cases like this.

What makes you think that the Bandi have low technology?

The sudden appearance of apples on the Groppler's desk. If the Bandi had high technology, this should never have raised eyebrows. But apparently something is wrong in the context that Riker sees.

Gary could have been spying on a planet not yet cleared for open contact. But a mere century later the Bandi, descendants of those Deneb IV people or maybe invaders from outer space, knew about space traveling civilizations. That is a comparatively short time for a planet to advance far enough to become part of interstellar civilization.

How so? Shouldn't "making contact" be an affair taking about three minutes on the average?

On the other hand, if Mitchell was spying on Deneb IV, then the precedent of the episode "First Contact" might suggest Deneb IV was on the very verge of making contact one way or another. Perhaps with spaceflight technology (as they could certainly have some while still living in clay huts, established in "Inner Light", and "some" would be enough especially in the case where the Other Denebs are in the system), perhaps because space powers were moving in (and the Federation basically never does anything to stop non-Starfleeters from interfering with primitives, and in "Angel One" even appears to be forbidden from doing so!).

Again, possibilities abound. So basically, I'm just enumerating possibilities and trying to avoid treating any individual incident as proof for any particular scenario.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

But it is desirable to make certain that astronomers all agree to change the planetary designations to agree with the science fiction scheme whenever all the planets in a star system have been discovered.

My vote goes to that model as well! Let's hope there will be a vote...

If Gruxnub is the native name of two different stars, for example, they can be called Gruxnub Wodmip and Gruxnub Haxtar, using names or designations given by other societies, to tell them apart.

Then again, this seldom works so neatly ITRW. So we still struggle with the concepts of, say, "Indies" or "pepper"; the interstellar community of Trek might be even worse off in trying to come up with sufficiently distinctive distinctions.

You know, there really is an Antares B, discovered in 1819 and confirmed in 1846.

I didn't. Whoops, and thanks!

Remember that stars all orbit the center of the galaxy, so the line from Earth to Vega, and the line from Earth to Antares, are constantly shifting.

I trust the UFP Office of Astrography has worked out an epoch system to divide the constant shifting into manageable chunks, though. And if shifting within the past two millennia has not had acknowledged effect on Earth constellations, the UFP probably won't need to acknowledge any within its mere centuries of existence or potential centuries of future...

So they need to be studied over time to see if they are real companions or merely optical doubles.

Although not in Trek, where one can simply go there and look. Or ask somebody who has been there. So the future of constellation-building is somewhat in doubt in that universe, and we might be forced to conclude that Beta Antares sprung up before Earth had access to warp scooters the American Continent Institute could assign to its field workers.

Of course Delta could be the name of a corporation, and Vega, an Earth family name, could be the name of a corporation.

Or a cute acronym or whatever. In both these specific cases, I certainly tend to favor this "corporation" model. Beta Antares is closely tied to the Antares Shipyards, after all, while Delta Vega in the 2250s-60s seems to exist in different locations in two different timelines that branched as late as 2233 - perhaps by executive decision of the VEGA corporation, swayed by different political developments in the different universes. (Say, the Klingon war was duly taken care of in the universe where VEGA then boldly set up Delta in the far frontier, but the political situation was more precarious in the one where VEGA decided to build up gradually and had Delta fairly close to Vulcan.)

As for Ceti Alpha, my personal preference is for this to be some other Cetus star and not Menkar, which is an ill-fitting red giant. Although extensive terraforming and downright construction of planets might sidestep the related problems in the Trek universe..

Maybe the Preservers transported Europeans to some distant world and those Europeans named constellations after Earth constellations.

Me likes!

I'm sure the Hood was not going all the way home for McCoy but merely taking him partway.

Perhaps. My point is just that Starfleet had a surplus of starships at Deneb IV, making its status as an astrographical far frontier unlikely and a status as a logistical frontier preferable instead.

Some people may take my suggestions for a possible "Antares constellation" or a "Vega constellation" and suppose that there is also a "Deneb constellation".

It could also be postulated that there exists or existed a Denebian empire, much like there once existed an Orion one. The names Deneb and Orion might be utterly unrelated to Earth astronomy, then - perhaps native names, perhaps Universally Translated perversions of native names. Perhaps evidence of the empires was first encountered at Deneb/Orion or something relating to those places?

Basically, we would then be having Indians far away from what we now consider India. Or perhaps Roma far away from Rome?

Thus we should assume that all the Deneb planets in Star Trek orbit Alpha Cygni.

Then again, Khan was assumed by scifi tradition to have been selectively bred for superiority, but now he is genetically manipulated, and in the exciting spinoff DesiParaCBSflix will launch in 2045, he will be considered three-dimensionally printed, without contradiction and with mere assumption that terminology and audience expectations evolve with time.

And it is quite possible that something strange happened to the planets of Deneb between TOS and TNG.

This I find preferable in every scenario - strange is at the core of Star Trek, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

The Prime Directive is kinda out the window in a star system that features one warp-capable species and other pre-warp species. Because on the road to becoming warp-capable, they undoubtedly made contact and regular visits to their interplanetary neighbors.

Indeed, the very fact that the rest of the system is buzzing with activity will probably make it hopeless for Starfleet or other such organizations to enforce any sort of a quarantine on the primitives to begin with.

I wonder if the planet Valakis/Menk was intended to be in the Menkar/Alpha Ceti/"Ceti Alpha" system.

Wow, that would really be something! But "Twilight" sort of preempts that, as the human refugees are the only people living at Ceti Alpha in the late 22nd century. Even if the Menk slaughtered all the Valaki in an uprising and then died of lack of a vital enzyme from Valaki sweat, the refugees would explicitly have to worry about all the interstellar contacts the Valaki previously made.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

My vote goes to that model as well! Let's hope there will be a vote...

Well, maybe some rich science fiction fan will set up a fund to pay/bribe members of the IAU naming committee if they follow the conventions of science fiction.

Then again, this seldom works so neatly ITRW. So we still struggle with the concepts of, say, "Indies" or "pepper"; the interstellar community of Trek might be even worse off in trying to come up with sufficiently distinctive distinctions.

There are the West Indies and the East Indies as well as India.

Timo wrote:

At most, if it turned out that Antares had a brown dwarf orbiting it, the dwarf might become Antares B while the bright original would be Antares A.

I wrote:

You know, there really is an Antares B, discovered in 1819 and confirmed in 1846.

I didn't. Whoops, and thanks!

James Blish didn't know about Antares B either. In his novelization of "A Piece of the Action" he assumed that Beta Antares meant the same thing as Antares B and said that Antares was a single star and Kirk was just making up Beta Antares. But in the episode Spock said he was familiar with the Beta Antares culture - they must have wrote that after the script copy sent to Blish.

I trust the UFP Office of Astrography has worked out an epoch system to divide the constant shifting into manageable chunks, though. And if shifting within the past two millennia has not had acknowledged effect on Earth constellations, the UFP probably won't need to acknowledge any within its mere centuries of existence or potential centuries of future...

I am not talking about changing constellations. I am imagining that astronomers might create tiny "constellations" consisting of famous stars and other stars that are so very, very close (in angle) to them that they have been or could be mistaken for companions of those stars if their distances are not known. That is a many times tinier scale of angles than the size of constellations.

Although not in Trek, where one can simply go there and look. Or ask somebody who has been there. So the future of constellation-building is somewhat in doubt in that universe, and we might be forced to conclude that Beta Antares sprung up before Earth had access to warp scooters the American Continent Institute could assign to its field workers.

That is not necessarily true. The farthest visible to the naked eye stars in a constellation are often hundreds of times as far away as the nearest ones. Astronomers assumed that all apparent double stars were optical doubles with the components merely lined up with each other as seen from Earth - until Sir William Herschel announced the discovery of binary systems where the stars orbited each other in 1803. Then astronomers began searching for true binary systems. And many binary systems were suspected that later turned out to be mere optical doubles. In my search for a Delta Vega I found out that there have been enough false companions of Vega for there to be a Delta Vega in a mini constellation consisting of such optical doubles of Vega. And that is probably true for most prominent stars. And astronomers might not care about the vastly different distances to the stars in such hypothetical mini constellations any more than present day astronomers seek to abolish present constellations because of the varying distances to their stars.

Another possibility is that future astronomers might create constellations consisting of all the stars within a specific distance of a famous star, or all the stars within the sector that contains that star. Thus there could be a "Rigel constellation" consisting of the stars in Rigel Sector, a "Antares constellation" containing the stars in the Antares Sector, and so on. But that would not explain Delta Vega, since neither Vulcan's system nor the galactic edge would be in the Vega Sector.

Or a cute acronym or whatever. In both these specific cases, I certainly tend to favor this "corporation" model. Beta Antares is closely tied to the Antares Shipyards, after all, while Delta Vega in the 2250s-60s seems to exist in different locations in two different timelines that branched as late as 2233 - perhaps by executive decision of the VEGA corporation, swayed by different political developments in the different universes. (Say, the Klingon war was duly taken care of in the universe where VEGA then boldly set up Delta in the far frontier, but the political situation was more precarious in the one where VEGA decided to build up gradually and had Delta fairly close to Vulcan.)

As for Ceti Alpha, my personal preference is for this to be some other Cetus star and not Menkar, which is an ill-fitting red giant. Although extensive terraforming and downright construction of planets might sidestep the related problems in the Trek universe..

I always found it hard to believe that the Vulcans would let a planet in their own system, and possibly very prominent in their sky (T'Khut?), be named Delta Vega. Of course if the VEGA corporation wanted to promote ski strips to a cold planet for tourists tired of the Vulcan heat, they could pay the Vulcan government for the right to rename the world Delta Vega. Presumably the Vulcans might think that accepting the payment for changing the name was logical.

I wrote:

Maybe the Preservers transported Europeans to some distant world and those Europeans named constellations after Earth constellations. And Federation astronomers, desperate for relief from endless lists of star catalog numbers, decided to designate stars in those constellations by Bayer type designations if they didn't have better known names. But to avoid confusion, they put the Greek letters after the constellation names instead of before them. Thus they named Ceti Alpha, Ceti Beta, Ceti Gamma, etc. so they wouldn't be confused with Alpha Ceti (Menkar), Beta Ceti (Diphda), Gamma Ceti (Kaffaljidhma) , etc.

Me likes!

There could be several worlds with Earth humans transplated by the Preservers or settled after the discovery of warp drive, that have named new constellations in their skies. And that could explain some the problematic star names listed in Ex Astris Scientia.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/bayer-names.htm

Perhaps. My point is just that Starfleet had a surplus of starships at Deneb IV, making its status as an astrographical far frontier unlikely and a status as a logistical frontier preferable instead.

It could also be postulated that there exists or existed a Denebian empire, much like there once existed an Orion one. The names Deneb and Orion might be utterly unrelated to Earth astronomy, then - perhaps native names, perhaps Universally Translated perversions of native names. Perhaps evidence of the empires was first encountered at Deneb/Orion or something relating to those places?

Basically, we would then be having Indians far away from what we now consider India. Or perhaps Roma far away from Rome?

Deneb and Orion are easy to pronounce for beings with human like vocal cords. So it would be plausible for those names to exist independently of Earth.

But it is a science fiction convention that Deneb refers to Alpha Cygni, so an independent alien name of Deneb should only be a last resort when explaining the problems of Deneb.

Then again, Khan was assumed by scifi tradition to have been selectively bred for superiority, but now he is genetically manipulated, and in the exciting spinoff DesiParaCBSflix will launch in 2045, he will be considered three-dimensionally printed, without contradiction and with mere assumption that terminology and audience expectations evolve with time.

I wrote:

And it is quite possible that something strange happened to the planets of Deneb between TOS and TNG.

This I find preferable in every scenario - strange is at the core of Star Trek, after all.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Only one comment at this time of the local night, on Delta Vega:

To assume that Delta Vega would be in the same system with Vulcan creates far more problems than the opposite assumption.

1) No individual or organization on a planet/moon that shows Vulcan as something more than a bright dot could remain ignorant of the fact that Vulcan is gone. Least of all should we assign such ignorance to a hero character!
2) That is, even with the apparent extensive cloud cover, there would be hours upon hours of communications traffic at emergency frequencies. That, or the jamming noises of Nero's drill (evident at close range, even if only manifesting as comms silence farther out).
3) OTOH, said cloud cover would make it virtually impossible for Spock to see the death of his home planet. So Nero counting on such does not make sense. Better to assume an "Alderaan moment" where Spock visualizes the loss telepathically - and we know such telepathy has a range of lightyears.
4) Regardless of communications, only a moon within Vulcan's gravitational influence could present the observed view to the loss in real, physical form. But we learn that, apparently due to the strange properties of red matter, this influence changes radically when Vulcan collapses, threatening to swallow a starship that moments earlier had no trouble maintaining orbit above Vulcan. So the moon should be shaking enough to wake up Scotty regardless of the amount of alcohol he ingested the previous evening.
5) There's no timeline need to assume Delta Vega would be close to Vulcan - the hero ship was in the process of leaving the system when we last checked, is already capable of low warp before we meet her again dropping Kirk off to Delta Vega, and has had plenty of plot time to move to another star system.
6) That is, Spock had orders to rescue Pike and, failing that, to go to Laurentius. After the cut to Nero torturing Pike, we meet Spock discussing how it is futile to rescue Pike, then giving orders to warp to Laurentius, then kicking Kirk off the ship. We can assume Spock tried to shadow Nero at warp, but he declares Nero would have to drop out of warp for a rescue to be possible, so apparently Nero is outrunning him in a warp chase. He'd be far from Vulcan already, then.

(But in what direction? Nero is headed "back" to Earth, while Laurentius is somewhere else and makes it impossible for the rest of the fleet to be there in time. Delta Vega would most probably be off to the side of the Vulcan-Earth run, rather than beyond either of its endpoints, then. But that still leaves a lot of sky to consider.)

For having Delta Vega in the Vulcan system, perhaps just Goldilocks-far away so that Scotty doesn't notice the tremors and hears silence rather than jamming, Spock would initially have to chase at impulse. But that wouldn't solve the issue of Vulcan looming large on the sky, as that's necessarily much closer than our Goldilocks.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRoss]

Hey, cool research!