Has anyone ever messed with this, describing the directional relationship of stellar objects like stars, clusters, nebulae and the like? I know you wouldn't use north, south, east, and west in a three dimensional environment, so what the hell would you use? I get the spherical navigation part where you would set a course along a side by side circle and then along an up and down circle. I think there was an episode of Star Trek where somebody was explaining that to somebody else, expressing course directions as 124 mark 83 degrees or whatever, which makes total sense, but how would you say Star X exists 12.7 parsecs "west" of Star Y. Or "up" or "down" or something. I feel like in a space-faring society there would be a simple nomenclature that kids learned in kindergarten, but obviously we haven't had to mess with this yet on Earth. I messed with using the galactic core as a reference point, trying to describe stars as being in either a proximal or distal direction from there. And the galactic plane as a way to measure "up" or "down," but doesn't really work. And then there's the astronomical measures of declination and right ascension, which work great but only from a single fixed point. Thoughts? Ideas? Something official I haven't been able to find on Google yet?
You may have found these in your search, but I'll share them just in case they have something new to share with you From a Reddit thread for the question: How do directions work in space? And here is another article entitled A NASA Engineer Explains How You Give Directions in Space
In my universe I have something very simple. I've got the standard North, South, etc. And then Faward and Baward, being, you guessed it, basically forward and backward. This is in reference to an object/spacecraft. So, someone can say; "We have incoming enemies on our North West Faward." Which would mean their upper left corner.
To give relative directions, take any rotating object, be it a star or a planet. "Up" is defined as the orientation in which the object spins clockwise, and that is your Y axis. X is 90 degrees perpendicular to that. Then your Z axis is the direction from your star to a fixed reference point, such as the galactic centre, or in our galaxy, Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the centre. So if you say A is 12.7 light years from B in the direction x,y,z, then you work out the coordinate system of B and you apply x,y,z on those axes you've worked out above. It will work with any rotating body because the standard by which the axes are defined has been universally (or galactically) agreed.
Jack Campbell, a retired naval captain, came up with an interesting variation on modern nautical terms for his space opera series. He retained most of the terms like fore and aft. As well as port, but starboard became star ward. This works for insisted navigation, but not interstellar transits. Pulsars are often used as a galactic positioning system. They are easily identifiable for triangulation.
They're also the most accurate "clocks" in the universe. Rotation rate is consistent to a zillionth of a second or something. Thank you, all for suggestions. The resources are helpful but not really what I'm looking for. I'm not worried about coordinates or positioning or the telescopic things like right ascension and declination, which even I know how to navigate on my little 5 inch Newtonian telescope (which works great btw, if I didn't live in a city). I'm looking for something a little more conversational that characters would use to describe the location of things. Like two stoners on a "road trip" who keep getting lost. "We should hit up Caprica and we hit Picon and Airelon, bruh." "Naw, wrong direction, bruh. Airelon is [west] of Picon, not [east]." "Facts, bruh?" "Facts, bruh." Something like that. I actually wrote a short story when as a teenager about some space stoners who wander into a demilitarized zone and start the largest war in galactic history. They kept captured and become the biggest symbolic heroes ever. Far out, bruh.
Spinward/counter-spinward? (in the direction of/counter to the galactic spin) Centreward/rimward? (To/away from the galactic centre) Upward/downward? (Above/below the galactic plane) Would those three work?
Do you need "absolutes" in a situation like this? "We should hit up Caprica and we hit Picon and Airelon, bruh." "Naw, wrong direction, bruh. Airelon is way over towards Pica, we need to shoot towards Peon if we're gonna make Picon and Airelon, bruh." "Facts, bruh?"
No. That was the best/worst example I could think of on the spot. If an actual example pops up in the WIP I'll post that. They could, sure. This is one of those things were I feel somebody needs to invent interstellar exploration first before the terms can be identified. That's better than anything I've come up with, but it doesn't account for the third dimension of up and down. Maybe some form of "depth," like submarines use to for their three dimensional environment, albeit limited. A plus/minus measure from the galactic plane, maybe. I don't remember off hand how thick our galaxy is, but I think it's around 10K light-years at the bulge tapering out to 1K or so. That's "thin" relatively speaking. Another thing too is that most of the matter is contained within the spiral arms, at least in our galaxy, so largely you'd be traveling along a curve, but that brings up the relative scope of space-travel. I've never really defined it in my own world, but I never done that prestigious sci-fi schtick were there are zillions of planets and zillions of people and armada have zillions of ships that cause zillions of deaths. I hate that crap. I think there's a line in one of the Star Trek NG movies, the one where they go back in time, and Picard is explaining to one of the lay people that they've explored "only" 7 or 8 thousand lightyears of space around Earth. I like that model a little better, but it's all arbitrary. I tried to make a map once overlayed over a picture of a barred-spiral galaxy but it looked pretty silly in two dimensions, unless all the territories decided they were going to layer themselves.
To an extent, they already have been. Spin is used to define "north" (and therefore up on a planetary map). A planet's north is defined as being the orientation where the body spins in a clockwise direction. An orbit that follows this direction is prograde, while the opposite is retrograde, and retrograde orbits (such as that of Naptune's moon Triton) lose energy and gradually get closer to the body, eventually breaking up when it gets close enough. That's also why Pluto's orbit is said to be highly inclined, because it's inclined relative to the Sun's plane of rotation. When its inclination is given as an angle, that's what it's relative to.
