On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Trek Fan Mapping, Continued: Five Projects Now

Sun, 30 Mar 2025 02:22:45 GMT

Works in progress, all, uploaded to DeviantArt a night or two ago:

https://www.deviantart.com/dewline-ottawa/art/Dominion-War-Base-Map-28-March-2025-1176423191

https://www.deviantart.com/dewline-ottawa/art/Coreward-From-the-Izar-Zakdorn-Line-28-Mar-2025-1176427032

https://www.deviantart.com/dewline-ottawa/art/Taurus-Reach-And-Beyond-28-Mar-2025-A-1176436890

https://www.deviantart.com/dewline-ottawa/art/Edge-of-Midnight-Disputed-Zone-28-Mar-2025-A-1176439292

https://www.deviantart.com/dewline-ottawa/art/RomulanZoneBaseMap-28Mar2025-A-1176456387

comments

Maps: Edge of Midnight Base Map Progress IV

Thu, 09 Nov 2023 03:01:35 GMT

So this is where I was as of last night:

https://www.deviantart.com/dewline-ottawa/art/EoM-DisputedZone-7Nov2023-A-993252400

comments

As regards the Challenger Seven

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 17:11:49 GMT

Some of the wreckage of that space shuttle has been found.

comments

Space Station: Dragon Endurance Arriving

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 21:08:29 GMT

https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/1578129321553788947

comments

Yuri's Night 2022

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 00:50:12 GMT

So.

Today is that anniversary.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Night

Respect to his memory.

comments

Flight and the Quiet Happy

Sun, 26 Dec 2021 00:24:36 GMT

This morning, I tried to watch the launch of the new space telescope on YouTube, but it turned out I missed the launch time by about seven minutes. I still got to see enough to make me quietly happy for most of the rest of the day.

The household range is having problems. The heating elements on top are still working just fine for frying, steaming and boiling, but the burner box - the oven - is not in good shape. I'd call the process of heating anything "sluggish" if anything. We're not sure what's caused that, and calling for help is naturally Problematic right now. So cooking lasagna was cancelled in favour of relying upon Pizza Pizza last night.

My day job is on hold until after New Year's due to lack of people available to supervise.

*shrugs*

More as it comes to mind...

comments

Exoplanets: A LIttle Statistics from CalTech?

Thu, 03 Jun 2021 03:04:46 GMT

More in space exploration.

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/giant-planets-found-in-the-stellar-suburbs

comments

A List for the End of February 2021

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 14:11:32 GMT

1. The job search continues. As I type this, I'm looking at Indeed and Jobilico. I expect to check several federal commissions, departments and agencies, a couple of crown corporations, GC Jobs, the federal Job Bank, and at least ten temp placement companies (yet again) over the rest of today.

2. I hope to listen to Ontario Today at noon, because Perseverance on Mars is the topic of the day.

3. Downloading new updates for Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher.

4. The Affinity suite is still on sale from Serif.com at half-price as I type this. About C$35 for each of the three programs in the suite.

5. Inkscape and Krita and the like are also still useful freeware, so why not get those too?

6. Listening to The Current right now. The discussion in progress as I type this entry?

Letter-writing. Actual letters through the paper-mail system. Apparently, this is making a come-back among many who have the time and enough other resources.

7. More later today as I think of it.

comments

SPACE/MAPS: More GAIA-Inspired Goodness...

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 21:00:52 GMT

...from Kevin Jardine at GalaxyMap.org via his Twitter feed!

https://twitter.com/galaxy_map/status/1334455740367560707

Maybe useful to some of you?

comments

SPACE: Exoplanet Note from MIT

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 15:31:31 GMT

For ongoing future reference:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/06/1011784/half-milky-way-sun-like-stars-home-earth-like-planets-kepler-gaia-habitable-life/

comments

MAPS: 3 Kiloparsecs Out, By Way of Waterloo

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 18:53:48 GMT

Something else that Kevin "Galaxy Map" Jardine brought up recently: there's a "travelling salesperson lab" at University of Waterloo, and they took some of Kevin's work and played with it.

https://twitter.com/galaxy_map/status/1318092187972866048

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/index.html

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/about.html

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/gaia1_data.html

https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/star/kj37859.html

comments

SPACE: Crew Dragon's Live-Crew Test Run

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:22:18 GMT

Noting comments from krpalmer and muchado about today's spaceflight milestone...

I admit to being distracted myself by multiple factors:

- solving the printing-from-open-applications issue plaguing me for the last two days, successfully.
- the meeting of my Mac User Group earlier this afternoon via Zoom.
- trying to work up a custom-designed greeting card for a neighbour's imminent birthday, preferably by using new-to-me graphic design software.
- worries about the tornado watch AND warning late this afternoon in my region.
- shopping errands.
- general research and exploration of the internet.
- other stuff to be added later, maybe.

The fact is that this was an important milestone of sorts today. The revival of American spaceflight technologies used from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo with upgraded components, with some success. It's a capability rebuilt to some degree, and yet as someone who enjoyed much of the Shuttle era, I cannot help but see it as backsliding somewhat. Physics and economics and human biology and psychology will certainly have their ways to varying degrees here, and have done so these past weeks.

I do await further developments with great interest and some hope. I want to see human adventure expand its horizons, and not to see this turned into a mere escape hatch for the richest of us.

comments

ESA: Venetian Lagoon From Space

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 00:32:07 GMT

The European Space Agency maintains a Flickr account of its own. Here's one of the things they've been noticing of late via Earth-observation stuff.

comments

SPACE: A hundred BILLION suns?

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 19:51:25 GMT

Something first spotted back in 2016 is really getting attention now.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/record-breaker-supernova-2016aps-exploded-with-the-energy-of-100-billion-suns

How far away would your inhabited system have to be to be safe enough from this?

comments

TREK: Octonary Star Systems

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 13:44:24 GMT

Phil Plait takes a deeper dive than I can re: the Aia system from "PIC: Broken Pieces".
And he's right about at least one species that could manage to build something like that. Go read!

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/octonary-stars-and-broken-pieces-can-the-eight-star-system-from-star-trek-picard-actually

comments

RIP: Heather Couper, Astronomer, Broadcaster, Author

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 03:54:18 GMT

I have a book that she and her partner Nigel Henbest co-wrote: The Guide to the Galaxy. Bought it from Perfect Books years and years ago. It was and remains a great read, however much time and new information have dated it. The maps were beautiful works of cartographic art for their time and topic. Sadly, it's no longer in print, but other examples of their work remain available.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51562165

comments

RESEARCH/JOBS: If you're gonna write hard SF (or make maps for fantasy stories)...

Fri, 31 May 2019 13:53:00 GMT

...james_davis_nicoll has uploaded an endorsement to Tor's weblog that you might be interested in.

Go have a look!

https://www.tor.com/2019/05/31/better-science-fiction-through-actual-science/

...and speaking of essays on Tor.com from friendlisters inspiring unexpected finds: mcwetboy just wrote a thing on how fantasy maps might or might not fit into the worlds of the stories they're made to serve:

https://www.tor.com/2019/05/28/fantasy-maps-dont-belong-in-the-hands-of-fantasy-characters/

In the process, he pointed out a thing that I didn't know existed in any nation: Map Reading Week. If anyone knows of a Canadian counterpart, that might get my attention too!

comments

Links of Interest, As I See Them

Thu, 02 May 2019 12:39:15 GMT

James Comey on how a US president can reshape the behaviour of those around them.

Jason Kenney will have to be fact-checked as a matter of routine, for the protection of us all.

Obituary piracy is real.

Meteorite speed matters. A lot.

If you're interested in getting better acquainted with Ottawa-Gatineau at street level, check out Jane's Walk Ottawa. Especially this weekend!

More later...

comments

TREK/SCIENCE: Safe Distance from Supernovae (Trek Spoilers?)

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 02:25:08 GMT

Since the topic came up in in last week's episode of Star Trek: Discovery...thanks to the suggestion of the Emperor Emeritus of the Terran Empire...which was rightly condemned by the rest of the people at that particular table.

https://twitter.com/marsrader/status/1120097175197900801

50-100 lightyears. And that's even before we get into the discussion of subspace effects propagating far faster compared to normal-space damage-waves, as established in Trekkish lore in movies VI and XI.

Noting also this list:

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

Alpha Lupi, cited in Michael Burnham's backstory in "The Red Angel", is definitely on that list. A good thing that it's about 460-465 lightyears away from us. Eta Lupi/Cerberus is about 150 lightyears closer to us...but still at least as safe, given current theory on supernovae.

(Would IK Pegasi be in Breen territory? Apparently not, going by Geoffrey Mandel and Jed Whitten. More likely, it's on the far side of what the former had pegged as Breen space in 2002.)

comments

GALAXY/SPACE/MAPS: More from Kevin Jardine...

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 01:55:56 GMT

He's making more progress...

http://gruze.org/galaxymap/poster4/

If you wonder what he's talking about...

http://galaxymap.org/drupal/blog

https://twitter.com/galaxy_map

comments

TREK/MAPS: Doctari Alpha Thoughts

Sun, 31 Mar 2019 23:36:10 GMT

Yes, I'm citing Discovery episodes "The Vulcan Hello" and "Perpetual Infinity" here.

The Xarantine Sector-Stack, with Xarantine orbiting Zeta Leporis (per ST: Star Charts)...and I am wondering about Doctari Alpha and HD 38382...?

It's about 83 ly from Sol away per HIPARCOS, 85 ly per GAIA DR2. Spectral type: F8.5V. There *is* a direct line-of-flight possible between HD 38382 and Zeta Lep less than 15 ly...

http://whitten.org/index.php?x_c=-50&y_c=-50&z_c=0&xy_zoom=20&z_zoom=160&m_limit=20&select_star=19279&image_type=normal&image_size=2000&max_line=15&trek_names=1

Trekmapping exercise continued: If we stick with HD 38382 as the primary of Doctari Alpha...

All distances derived from the planetariium-ware program Celestia v. 1.6.1 (2009). I would dearly love to have Gaia Sky working properly on any of my computer gear right now for this...

Sol-Alpha Lupi - 465 lightyears
Alpha Lupi-HD 38382 - 488 ly
HD 38382-Zeta Leporis - 15 ly
HD 38382-Sol - 83 ly

comments

13 December 2018 - Exoplanet Count

Fri, 14 Dec 2018 02:06:53 GMT

Per exoplanet.eu:

3912 planets so far.

comments

SPACE: Ross 128 b, One Year Later?

Fri, 14 Dec 2018 02:02:30 GMT

So this was in the news a little over a year ago:

https://newatlas.com/temperate-earth-sized-exoplanet-discovered/52207/Exoplanet

Eleven light-years and a bit, and I'm wondering what research about that planet is underway at the moment.

comments

Canadian Boots on the Moon?

Sun, 18 Nov 2018 21:17:16 GMT

Been meaning to get back to this subject for a few days.

I might suggest that if the USA gets those Trumpist tariffs out of the way, we might be able to do more and more useful things towards that lunar goal and others relating to space exploration in general.

Whether or not lunar communities of any sort are actually useful...well, that's another debate that's been going on for a few decades, right? It might be better to set up a new major telescope on the Moon than on disputed soil in Hawai'i. No?

comments

Mapping Our Galaxy: Some More Progress

Sat, 25 Nov 2017 16:03:06 GMT

On the progress of nailing down where the exoplanets are, from 2012 and 2014, thanks to the University of Puerto Rico:

2012 - http://phl.upr.edu/library/notes/astellarsystemmapforexoplanets

2014 - http://phl.upr.edu/library/notes/themap

From Kevin Jardine's Galaxy Map Blog:

http://galaxymap.org/drupal/node/248

If you're writing for the Green Lantern books, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Star Trek, the Orville, Marvel's various space titles, the "Honorverse", or any other space-based project...I'd call these links recommended reading.

comments