Soyuz - The Southern Star

Some time ago when we were discussing Heraldry specific to New Britannia as well as a bit of astronomy as memory serves.. I had wanted to establish a Northern star in the sky. Someone (I'm sorry I forget who) had the brilliant idea of naming this star Soyuz after the shuttle @Lord British went up into space in.

The connection was later made to navigation and the 8 point star of a compass.. and thus the 8 point star in NB heraldry became the Soyuz..

Unfortunately.. there is no star in the sky right now that never moves.. and then I eventually realized.. Novia is in the southern hemisphere! (The sun travels in the northern sky!).

There is one place in our night sky that such a star can exist.. and that area is noticeably void of any significant details. For now I shall label this area the Southern Void..



and it really needs to be filled.

@Scottie you seem to be the one who'd be tasked with this.. If you were so inclined as to make the case for adding a nice bright star here.. (or even an unnamed constellation around said star.. ? )

 

Soyuz

 

@Bowen Bloodgood

You allways make me smile and marvel

 

Thanks! I knew the spelling didn't look right! Edit: Fixed in OP.

@Berek will you fix the spelling in the title please? Or someone who can?

 

You can... near the top of the thread, there should be a drop down with thread "tools." You should see "Edit Title."

 

I love this idea. Having Soyuz as the Southern Star would make a great navigational beacon, as well as some potential lore. Please make it so!

 

Ooooo never noticed that before (obviously) thanks!

Nevermind @Berek!

 

Something like this?

 

That might be a little too much like Chaos though which also has 8 points. Otherwise it'd be perfect.

 

True. Maybe only have stars on the main cardinal directions, so it looks like 4 points. Or make the smaller spokes much shorter to differentiate it.

Heck, I'm not an artist. Just concepts. lol

 

On the constellation idea I like the idea of having the inner spokes shorter. I think that'd be enough of a difference.

I had also through a constellation shaped like a hammer might be a neat reference to a piece of lore.

 

New skill tree?

 

Yes, the hammer, or a tired ranger. I wonder how many others know fictional historical astronomy?

 

Actually the thought occurs that might be technically difficult to put in a new constellation w/ overlay in that particular area because of where it actually is in the sky dome texture.



Which would be right down there along the bottom edge. A single star would be doable.. but a constellation that appears in the overlay probably wouldn't be a realistic expectation.

 

Heh! That's right,...you actually answered this before I could... The area in the northern and southern celestial hemispheres are largely void due to mapping constraints... Because the general rule is..."things get more 'expensive' for the engine the more you break apart UV coordinate edges and separate vertices" we generally avoid doing so when we can get away with it, as a matter of habit...

In this case, we're using a spherical map as a basis for the whole thing, and the only verts we're detaching from their edges in UV space are the very top ones up at either axis, which get broken into as many separate triangles as their are "sides" to the sphere...and those are arrayed across the entire top and bottom of the image, like a line of serrated "teeth" that are about an inch above the Principle Circles, and below Chaos... This avoids strange stretching and artifacts (since this sphere is used as a basis for many different sky "events"), but sadly disallows anything more definitive or recognizable than wispy blurs in those areas...just as you indicated...

Those few little stars you see within that circle are as close to the center as anything can be without potential visual oddness and distortion... And though we might be able to sneak a star somewhere in there a little closer to center, we don't really want there to be too much there that could cause people's attention to linger there for long enough to see any rendering sadness that might happen to manifest there on occasion... ^_^ I actually had to fix something about this recently because of some work I did on it that exposed those triangles due to a lack of smoothing... It caused sky sadness on the Isle of Storms, and I had to sheepishly go back and fix it...

 

A single bright star anywhere in that circle is all I ask. It doesn't need to be dead center. If it could be done that would be awesome.

 

It could be a bit fuzzy, and I'd be fine with that.
I really do love the concept of using some sort of celestial body as the LB star !

Great idea, @Bowen Bloodgood

 

Oh! @Scottie you know what I'd do.. I'd cheat! Put a small plane just inside the sky dome in front of the void with its own texture map so you wouldn't have to worry about distortions. Can either attach it to the dome or more likely just make it a child of the dome so that it rotates properly on a shared axis and there you go. Could put anything you like there. That'd work yes?

 

On earth the lack of a southern equivalent to Polaris made determining one's latitude in the Southern Hemisphere more difficult.