SGC, a 4 dimensional galactic Coordinate system

What is SGC?

 A simple explanation...

 SGC (Shuster Galactic Coordinate) is a system that allows you to view star positions in 3 dimensions and keep track automatically of deviations caused by the vast distances between the stars.

 The main difficulty in resolving these deviations is that the adjustment is slightly different from every point in the coordinate system. Sounds complicated, well yes, but the end result makes a lot of the work much easier and SGC resolves this in a very dynamic way.

 
 

Imagine this, you book a passage to Sirius, a double star system about 9 light years away. Your navigator, Celeste, takes a good look at Sirius and fixes it's position exactly. Now stop and consider. Celeste is looking at Sirius 9 lights away, this means 9 years in the past. She is not seeing Sirius where it is now but where it was 9 years ago. Considering that many stars travel at speeds of greater than 100 miles per second this problem can become rather huge in 9 years.

• Now suppose you take the starship to Sirius and after a few years of travel you ask Celeste for a position check. You are half way there. She takes a position check on Sirius, now 4.5 light years away. She is now looking at Sirius only 4.5 light years in the past. Now she points out our own Sun which is also 4.5 light years away and explains that both Sirius and the Sun are actually somewhere else and that we are not quite seeing them where they really are. Then she points out that Sirius would be in a slightly other position if you had stayed on Earth because then you would still be 9 light years away. You walk away shaking your head and thinking, maybe you should have stuck to a Caribbean cruise.


 This is what SGC is all about. The difficulty in creating a coordinate system that works in this galactic environment is to somehow overcome all of these adjustments for distances and apparent positions of stars. SGC does this completely by adding a fourth time coordinate and setting exact rules for it's usage. The result is that using SGC, a navigator can resolve otherwise extremely complicated positional questions with one or two formulae. And this system is standard throughout the SGC coordinate area. So any other ship or Star within the system can be included easily in the calculations. This is a huge step beyond individual trajectory computations.



 The SGC system could be used for star voyage simulations and studies of 3 dimensional relationships of stars. The SGC system can simplify and standardize inter-stellar navigation.


 
 

• SGC - Title Page

 

 
 
 

• SGC - Table of Contents