Time Immortal

Just as a follow-up on this article, I downloaded a program called Celestia, and while it’s probably not 100% accurate, it does offer a fairly decent ability to simulate…well…a particular issue that was raised concerning the identity of the planet that was discovered at the end of the mid-season cliffhanger of Battlestar Galactica, a planet that is supposedly Earth.

Here’s the constellation Orion, as viewed from Earth (more or less). The stars highlighted in green are the component stars of Orion, while the star selected in red is Muliphein (Gamma Canis Majoris), a bright giant star situated just over 400 light years from Earth.

Looks pretty normal, eh? Now let’s look at Orion from nearby Alpha Centauri.

As the Reader can hopefully see, the alignment of the stars is nearly identical. For good measure, let’s look at Orion from one other nearby star, Tau Ceti.

And here again, Orion is nearly the same as would be seen from Earth…this despite the fact that Tau Ceti is just shy of twelve light years away from us.

Now, to hammer the point home, let’s take a look at Orion from Muliphein, which isn’t anywhere near as close to us, but not all that far when compared to the distances mentioned in BSG.

I can’t actually fit all of Orion’s stars into the frame of the picture, so spread out have they become. And the shape? Forget about it; from this frame of reference, Orion is no more. But hopefully the Reader can see that constellations are not a great way to mark a planet’s location, especially if one isn’t working from the most accurate data set to begin with.

Now, just to prove that I’m not using a biased sample here, let’s try the same experiment with a more complex constellation (and one that’s relevant to BSG as well): Capricorn. Here’s the view from Earth (this time, I managed to frame Earth in the shot as well).

With that in mind, let’s now check the view from Alpha Centauri. Once again, I framed the shot a bit better — the two stars that make up the Alpha Centauri system are both visible here.

Capricorn here is a bit more spread out, and has shifted noticeably. But equally, it still retains its shape. When we move to Tau Ceti, it doesn’t turn out quite as well.

Of course, were Capricorn occluded by either the planet or its sun, it’s entirely possible that Caprica’s reference conestellation was simply not visible.

Once again, to hammer the point home, let’s visit Muliphein and see what Capricorn looks like from there.

And…it’s gone as well.

Anyhow, this was mostly just an excuse to play with Celestia, but hopefully the Reader can note that simply lining up constellations is not an easy or reliable way to identify a planet conclusively. This is especially true when one considers that pretty much by definition, one or more of the constellations that Felix Gaeta was looking for would have had to have been occluded by either the planet or its star; the Zodiac — which is comprised of thirteen constellations, twelve of which were the sources of the ancient names and symbols of the Colonies in BSG (and feature prominently in Astrology — kind of circles the sky along the ecplitic, and so would not be entirely visible save from a near-polar orbit. The planet, at least, would always be in the way of a few star patterns.

And as the Reader can see, the constellations aren’t necessarily going to be that different to begin with, at least not within the “local area” of Earth and some of the nearby stars. And if the pictures of the constellations that the Colonial officers have to work from are not accurate to begin with, then the problem only intensifies.

Now, it could be argued that based on Laura Roslin’s comment — that the constellations in the Tomb of Athena were identical to those found on the ancient flags of the member worlds of the Colonies — that the Fleet does have access to accurate depictions of the constellations. But curiously, there has not (that I can think of) been a display of those ancient flags in the show to date; there is no way to ensure that the Fleet has access to that information anymore.

So…are they at Earth? Or are they somewhere else?