May/June 2011 Lite Challenge Entry - Luyten 7002 Survey Report

[Greason Wolfe]

The Wolfe is back in towowowown, the Wolfe is back in town . . . .

That's right, after 2+ months of craziness at work and in my personal life, I'm finally back. I know I promised myself I'd only be working on one project at a time, but this was too sweet to pass up. I've got some very specific ideas about how I intend to detail the "main portion" of the map, and I can already see a couple things that I will have to fix, but I figured I'd get this show started . . .

“Captain Ellington?”

“Yes?”

“If you have a moment, Sir, the LAR is seventy-five percent complete, and I have some preliminary reports for you.”

“Let me guess, another losing hand, yes?”

“Actually, Sir, with the exception of a few anomalies, we may have hit the jackpot this time.”

Captain Horatio Ellington looked up from the pile of paperwork he’d been skimming over, one brow arching in surprise. Four years and twenty-seven systems with nothing to show for their work other than a few iron-rich asteroid belts had started to wear on the crew of the CFS Canopus. It had started to wear on him as well. They’d set a new record for failure, and Horatio had taken it upon himself to extend their mission despite orders to return home from the Division of Colonization. Motioning his First Lieutenant into the stateroom, Horatio pushed the paperwork aside. “Let’s see what you have, Lieutenant Reese.”

“Of course, Sir.” Lieutenant Reese made his way to the wall display and called up the reports. “As you know, sir, we found one terrestrial planet in the third orbital slot. Long Range surveys suggested that it might be worth our time to take a closer look at it. As it turns out, those surveys were correct. The atmosphere is a bit on the thin side, but breathable. Gravity and temperature is within reason. Short days, a long year. All in all, Sir, it’s workable in terms of colonization.”

Horatio studied the read-out for a moment, nodding in agreement with the Lieutenant’s conclusion. “Tell me about these anomalies.”

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[ravells]

WB Wolfe! Hah! I like the 'Image Loading...' line!!!

[Greason Wolfe]

@ rav : Thanks, it's nice to be back. I won't go into all the details of why I was gone. Suffice it to say I was EXTREMELY busy with everything else.

I'm still in the process of correcting some of the technical data, and, in the process, decided to re-format a few things about this entry. First and foremost, I wanted the system diagram to be a little more correct in terms of size, and distance. Unfortunately, getting the distances truly proportional would make the image horrendously large, so I had to tweak those a little bit. Still, they are fairly close (approximately the cube root of the actual distance) as are the sizes (again, approximately the cube root), and now give a hint of orbital eccentricity. I also wanted to give myself more room to work to include greater detail in the technical data section as well as in the planetary display. Lastly, I wanted to give this more of a "computer screen" look in terms of overall proportions. When all is said and done, I may have to upload the final WIP image through my sister's computer (it's a connection speed thing).

Also . . . I have a typo in the title. It should read as "Luyten 7002 Survey Report" instead of "Luyten 2007." If one of the mods would be so kind as to fix that for me, I'd be appreciative.

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[Greason Wolfe]

One more quick update for today. Straightened out the Technical Data section, though there are a few numbers I am sure are wrong. The math just wasn't working out very easily, so I fudged them as best I could. Too bad my astrophysicist buddies aren't around anymore. In any event, the next updates are likely to appear as individual parts of the image as I'm almost certain that after I start adding in the planetary imaging, the file size will become too large in terms of memory for me to upload successfully until I have access to a faster connection.

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[Greason Wolfe]

So I lied, one more update for now. Started building up the planetary display section. I'm thinking I might enlarge the globe portion to fill in a bit more space, but not too much larger. The main portion is broken down into High Altitude Reconnaissance Sweeps to get a basic picture of what the world looks like. The idea came from an episode of Battlestar Galactica where they are searching for Starbuck. I've still got to set up a detailed map for the top right corner of the planetary display section in relation to one of those anomalies that were mentioned earlier.

As a side note, I've been particularly inspired by this challenge for some reason and have a short story in the works that I may include as an additional attachment at some point.

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[Troedel]

This is very good and will be even better. Great entry!

[tilt]

wb wolf .... woooo... and nice idea.. personal I'm partial to the info about axial tilt.. bigger letters there please *lol* .. changed your title for you

[Greason Wolfe]

wb wolf .... woooo... and nice idea.. personal I'm partial to the info about axial tilt.. bigger letters there please *lol* .. changed your title for you

@ tilt - Thank ye kindly, I appreciate that.

Not much of an update here. I enlarged the global view to be consistent with what I plan for the detailed view in terms of size, and added a few of the "bells and whistles" to give more of a "window" feel to the various portions of the map. Have a few more "bells and whistles" to add at the bottom and then I'll be working up the detailed view. Hope to have everything wrapped up in the next few days, then I'll get serious about writing that story.

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[Greason Wolfe]

Added a few more "bells and whistles," changed some of the previous "bells and whistles" to get a more consistent feel and reformatted the global view window for the same reason. The only major thing left is the Low Altitude Photographic Survey window to go in the upper right corner of the HARS window and a few markers. Might try to come up with an application icon, but that will be a last little tweak that will have to wait until the remainder of the map is done.

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[Ares96]

This is very nice. However, it appears you've just copy-pasted planets from the local solar system in a different order. If you search for them, there are other planet photos on the web.