Oolite Bulletins

ffutures wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 6:01 pm

spud42 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 10, 2022 10:19 am

nah , you dont get out of it that easily! its yours till the end of time, unless you ask an easy enough question.

i am wracking my memories for a chalise in sci fi. remembered a few from fantasy but that does not count...

Same here. There are grailstones in the Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer, do they count?

If we imagined [the earth] removed towards the zenith or the nadir of some observer, then, if he were at sphaera recta, he would never experience equinox, since the horizon would always divide the heavens into two unequal parts, one above and one below the earth; if he were at sphaera obliqua, either, again, equinox would never occur at all, or, [if it did occur,] it would not be at a position halfway between summer and winter solstices, since these intervals would necessarily be unequal, because the equator, which is the greatest of all parallel circles drawn about the poles of the [daily] motion, would no longer be bisected by the horizon; instead [the horizon would bisect] one of the circles parallel to the equator, either to the north or to the south of it.

They stood in a vast circular space with a floor of gleaming gold, a velvet-black ceiling and what appeared to be a single all-round window looking out onto a whitely shining surface and a purple-black sky where stars shone steadily. Above them, suspended as though on nothing, hung a massive orrery; a model of the solar system with a brilliant yellow-white ball of light in the middle and the various planets shown as glassy globes of the appropriate appearance all fixed by slender poles and shafts to thin hoops of blackly shining metal like wet jet.

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:19 am

OK, let's try this (inspired by "Cody") : an orrery was mentioned.
Three SF "orreries" - devices designed to give directional data to "Capt.A.N.Other" on their flight/ pursuit/ escape across the Galaxy. The device should give some (3-ish)-dimensional information about the target location, compared to the current velocity vector.
An example (and therefore off the table) : in Asimov's Foundation, the flight of [Irritating teenager], [pilot + wife], token academic, and the Mule is guided by a Galactic map. Later "Bail Channis" uses the same in "2nd Foundation/".
That sort of map. Either ignoring relativity (given time-free "hyper space", or something ekse that does terrible violations of Einsteinina geometry. "Bail Channis" used it for his argument about "Stars End" = Tazende", as seen from Trantor.

That sort of thing. Non-relativistic Galactic-scale maps.
Round two?

RockDoctor wrote: ↑Sun Sep 18, 2022 6:36 pm

I "get" alidades and astrolabes, (hell, I've even tried surveying sites with a plane table and alidade - a chain survey is quicker when there's only one of you), but I've never really "got" armiliary spheres. I suspect they're basically a tool for getting your sense of adding (or subtracting) hour angles for various objects at various locations. And probably wrapping around at 360/0 degrees too. Which I grant is headache-inducing, but once you've got past the headache it's not too bad. Been there, done that, got that tee-shirt, wrote tools and steered those wells to their target locations. I wrote the tools specifically to avoid having to do the maths in my head at 03:00 after a 20 hour shift.

ffutures wrote: ↑Sun Sep 25, 2022 9:42 pm

Not sure if this counts:

The Rebellion war room for the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: ad nauseam