A map of distant galaxies? This puts it in perspective!

Whoa, and I remember when the "little blue dot" used to refer to EARTH.  Nope, here the blue dot is the entire MILKY WAY GALAXY. But this really puts all the quadrant rivalries into perspective!

(Though I hope you still find this little reference to be of help…)



By Ken Croswell at ScienceMag.org ...

How to find your way home from deep space

If aliens ever abduct you to a galaxy far, far away, this map might help you find your way back home. Presented online today in Nature, the map spans more than 1.5 billion light-years, coloring the densest concentrations of observed galaxies red and areas with the fewest galaxies blue. 

Your home galaxy, the Milky Way, is the blue dot at the center. The red region above the Milky Way includes Virgo, the closest galaxy cluster, about 55 million light-years from Earth. The orange curve illustrates the key finding of the new work: It encircles galaxies that would fall toward one another along the curved white lines if space weren't expanding; the astronomers have named this huge assemblage Laniakea, after Hawaiian words for "spacious heaven." It is 100 quadrillion times as massive as the sun—equivalent to 100,000 Milky Ways—and stretches across more than half a billion light-years of space. 

… more...

My secret's out and you can order it now: The Starfleet Stellar Cartography maps/book set

UPDATE: Just need to pre-order now? Quick link is here!


Yes, I can finally say it. The big Trek "secret project" I've teased but stayed mum on in recent months is out there: the Star Trek Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library poster map set and guidebook is now on Amazon for pre-order, as ballyhooed on the front page of startrek.com today. In case there was any doubt—Star Trek non-fiction is BACK, baby!

I do not know what is cooler: that we finally got to do evolved-canon star map posters suitable for framing, that we got to do starmaps from not only various historical eras but from various alien origins ... or that I got to update and "massage" some background gaps that have bugged canon fans like me for years.

Look, I don't want to spoil everything here—there's a lot in the press release, which you can see below—but just know that we didn't reinvent the wheel. We took the bedrock work of Geof Mandel in the 2002 Star Trek Star Maps as our touchstone—indeed, we got Geof back for a massive "historical" UFP map in the set of 10—and then got artists Ali Ries and Ian Fullwood to help take it from there for the various vibes needed. Together, they sweated a lot of our details—and that cover you see here does not begin to reveal the depth of what we get into.

You get the set of ten 2x3 maps I oversaw, plus the hardback guidebook I authored (at left)—all in the guise of a curated collection from the analog and digital archives of Memory Alpha. In those pages, we update for the Prime universe since 2002 (real-time) as of 2386 (canon time), we tie together a lot of threads like that whole confusing "Alpha Quadrant powers" thing, and we even deal with the onetime "Delphic Expanse" of Enterprise and, in a special update, JJ's Romulan subspace supernova.

What I may be most singly proud of, though, is for the first time finding a way to choreograph the known elements of the Dominion War onto that grid in a way that makes sense—including all that "threatened Federation homeworlds" business—and not only illustrate some major canon battles but make sense of those onscreen DS9 wall maps, too.

You guys who have read my "Fistful of Data" column in Titan's UK-turned-US Star Trek Monthly magazine since 1998 know my belief that most all canon hiccups can really be solved—and more simply than you think. This is actually my fifth time to work on a Trek maps project—the last four all with Geof in some way, amazingly, and the last three licensed ... and in all of them I got to put my credo into practice for that era.

I am so proud to have my name on this monster, and for everyone who worked on it—including my very patient becker&mayer! book editor Dana Youlin and art director Rosanna Brockley, plus CBS' John Van Citters, of course. They are veterans of lots of projects both in and out of franchise properties, including fellow background nerd David Goodman's incredible Federation: ... 150 Years book last year... but this was the most intense title for Dana and Rosanna yet. You'll soon see why!

The only bummer on the whole thing is that it won't release until Dec. 3, 2013—just in time for holiday gift-giving, of course—but you can pre-order now, exclusively at amazon.com (and no money due til it ships!). If you do hurry up and jump on now, every pre-order sends a signal to CBS and Amazon, etc., that we want more of this new-wave creative but intense non-fiction "gap filling," as I call it—since it may be some time before we get any on-screen Prime Universe backgrounding again. (For one thing, I do know that tabletop or paper-and-dice Trek space gamers will just have to have a set.)

We'll talk more, but for now know this:  If Stellar Cartography floats your boat and you are headed to Vegas Khhaaann in August, please stop by the panel already planned on this book and fire away on your questions. There'll be lots more to say and detail as we go along.


FULL PRESS RELEASE:

47North and becker&mayer! announce STAR TREK^TM Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library

Officially licensed, georgeously illustrated collection featuring ten original, fully removable large-format maps of the Star Trek universe

From the publishers of Star Trek Federation: The First 150 Years comes a stunning new map collection straight from cartography archives of Starfleet Academy: STAR TREK Stellar Cartography: Starfleet Reference Library (47North/becker&mayer! On-sale: December 2013; ISBN-13:, ISBN-10: 1, $79.95).  These beautifully reproduced maps provide a rare opportunity to view the expanse of Federation space (and beyond) through the multiple lenses of the Galaxy's key players—visually expanding the Star Trek universe in never-before-seen ways. Compiled by Star Trek expert Larry Nemecek (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion) with illustrations by Ian Fullwood, Ali Rees and Geoffrey Mandel, STAR TREK Stellar Cartography: Starfleet Reference Library will release in December 2013.

The original maps include an ancient Vulcan map, a Klingon Empire map from the pre-Organian Peace Treaty era (in the native Klingon), an official Romulan government map of the Empire, a native Cardassian Union map from the occupied-Bajor era, along with Federation maps from the modern era. Housed in a handsome clamshell case and paired with a fully-illustrated reference book providing detailed information on planets, systems, and topography, this 48-page collection, licensed by CBS Consumer Products, will have something for Star Trek fans of all ages.

No Star Trek fan will want to miss this definitive collection. Visit www.amazon.com/StellarCartography to find out more about STAR TREK Stellar Cartography: Starfleet Reference Library and to pre-order this deluxe special edition book in advance of December. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Larry Nemecek is an author, editor and Star Trek consultant. He wrote the New York Times bestseller Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion. Nemecek edited the Star Trek Communicator magazine for eight years, contributed to Star Trek Fact Files in the UK, and served as a consultant on Star Trek: The Experience in Las Vegas. He lives in Burbank with his wife, Janet.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATORS

Ian Fullwood lives and works in rural Herefordshire, England, and has clients both at home and in the USA. With more than 20 years of experience in technical illustration and commercial art, Ian's love of the technical has taken him from traditional earth bound engineering type illustrations to the far flung galaxies of the Sci-Fi genres, illustrating more recently the maps of the Star Trek Stellar Cartography and previously Star Wars Vehicles, Weapons, Droids and Planets.

Ali Ries is a 3D digital artist from Salem, Oregon. Coming of age in the NASA era of Gemini and Apollo anchored her artist roots in space. Like many children of the Sixties she was mesmerized by Neil Armstrong’s historic first moonwalk, wishing she could be standing beside him in the grand adventure.

When Star Trek premiered on network television her future was paved with dream of some future in the world of Sci-Fi and Fantasy art or special effects. With the equivalent of a mental Hubble platform, Ali began creating astronomical star scapes, nebulae, and other space scenes as real as the night sky.

Today her work is used on book covers, television projects and other media around the world, including the recent SyFy network project, BSG: Blood and Chrome, Riddick 3 and Star Trek Fandom movies.

Geoffrey Mandel began his career as an art department P.A. on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Since 1995 he has worked as a graphic designer for films and TV shows, including many projects in the Star Trek franchise and various genre shows, such as The X-Files, Space: Above and Beyond, and the 2005 film Serenity, a spin-off the cult sci-fi series Firefly. In his spare time, Mandel designs and illustrates props, blueprints and star maps for various science fiction franchises, including the Serenity blueprints, and maps of the Star Trek, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica universes.

™ & ©2013 CBS Studios Inc. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About 47North

47North is an Amazon Publishing imprint specializing in books for readers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.  47North offers a wide array of new fiction and cult favorites, from urban fantasies to space operas, alternate histories to gothic and supernatural horror.

About becker&mayer

For over 30 years, becker&mayer! LLC, the largest book packager in the U.S., has created hundreds of innovative nonfiction books and book-plus products for adults and children in formats that integrate paper components, digital content, electronics, audio, and other specialty features for publishers worldwide. www.beckermayer.com