💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~sloum › geminilist › 002568.gmi captured on 2020-09-24 at 01:06:51. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Luke Emmet luke at marmaladefoo.com
Sat Sep 5 16:17:22 BST 2020
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On 04-Sep-2020 16:16, acdw wrote:
On 2020-09-04 (Friday) at 11:47, Luke Emmet<luke at marmaladefoo.com> wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_quadrant#/media/File:Galactic_quadrants.png
Could it be the shocking truth one of these pages on wikipedia is wrong?
Also its not unknown for my understanding to be deeply flawed. I'm
inclined to go with the page about galactic quadrants as it has a
diagram, but to be honest if anyone has expertise in this area, it would
be great to clear this up, so normal service can continue.
I had no idea about this, and lo and behold you're right -- though, with more research, I *think* (the astonomical writings I'll put below are hard to figure out) that it's due to a difference in frames of reference.
Apparently, most astronomical observations are made from the "equatorial coordinates" -- which are extensions of the terrestrial equator out into space. I'm guessing "NQ2" refers to Gemini with that system.
However, "galactic coordinates" use the plane of the galaxy (mostly) as the equator, which means that from that perspective, things are in different quadrants -- I think in this system, Gemini is in NGQ3.
Yes you're right there are different reference systems, so coordinates will vary accordingly. What I couldn't get from those links is anything to resolve the naming question or whether a constellation could be both in quadrants named both "NQ2" and "NGQ3" in different schemes.
In 50 years time the historians will wonder why there was a fundamental naming quirk within the hypertext system that replaced the web. No one will know about the wikipedia pages and the naming convention will become re-mythologised to take on other cultural symbolism.
Or maybe not.
- L