Question About Calculations

[Centauri5921]

Hey guys - I'm not sure if any exist, but I'm looking for a website (or, well, pretty much anything) that would help calculate the distance between two stars in space (i.e unrelated to Sol). I'm currently writing up a planetary system with numerous wormholes, and would like to be able to find out the distance between it and, say, Iota Virginis, or whatever. Not sure if anyone has any answers for that one. Thanks!

[Drashner1]

One of these might be helpful for you:

LINK

LINK

You might bump these up against each other to see if they give the same distance answers (more or less) to check accuracy. Also, I'm not sure what limits the first one particular has when it comes to known stars or distances in ly. The second seems more user friendly, but only operates between a specific list of stars. The first seems less user friendly, but may be generally applicable, at least for stars you can gather RL information on.

If you decide to use these, or find something that works better, please report back to the forum on the results. We could potentially add one or more of these to our Worldbuilding Resources pages.

Todd

[stevebowers]

My preferred method is to set the system up in Celestia, then ask that program the distance between the system and any other location. You can create a fictional system in Celestia using the distance, Right Ascension and Declination, and this will set a location with the program, which can then be used to determine distances and other relationships.

Alternately you can set up XYZ coordinates for your system, and use good old trigonometry to work out the distance between that and any other XYZ location.You only need to construct two right angled triangles to work out the hypotenuse of the third, which gives you the distance.

[radtech497]

If you've already established Cartesian (XYZ) coordinates for the systems, then you can simply apply the 3D distance formula, being the square root of (x2-x1)^2 + (y2-y1)^2 + (z2-z1)^2. The units will be in whatever you chose for the Cartesian coordinates (meters, feet, AU, light years, parsecs, or whatever). Trigonometry is not required.

Radtech497

[stevebowers]

Thanks- that's really useful. I'll try at some point to include XYZ values for as many locations as possible in the scenario, and that equation will make finding distances much easier.

[stevebowers]

One of these might be helpful for you:

LINK

LINK

You might bump these up against each other to see if they give the same distance answers (more or less) to check accuracy. Also, I'm not sure what limits the first one particular has when it comes to known stars or distances in ly. The second seems more user friendly, but only operates between a specific list of stars. The first seems less user friendly, but may be generally applicable, at least for stars you can gather RL information on.

If you decide to use these, or find something that works better, please report back to the forum on the results. We could potentially add one or more of these to our Worldbuilding Resources pages.

Todd

These are useful, too especially the first one. A definite addition to the Worldbuilding pages.