Holding
Earth orbit
Warp 9
1,516 × light Warp scale
Holding
1,516 × light Warp scale
Every star is real and in its real place: about 18,000 of them, everything you could see from Earth with your eyes plus every catalogued star within 80 light years. As the ship moves, each one is redrawn as bright as it would look from where you are, so nearby stars slide across the sky and constellations come apart.
Warp speeds follow the scale where warp 9 is about 1,500 times the speed of light. The trip times are what that would take; the flight is shortened so you don’t have to wait a day.
Star data: the HYG database by David Nash (CC BY-SA 4.0), built from the Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star and Gliese catalogues. Constellation lines and the Milky Way: d3-celestial by Olaf Frohn.
Bridge
You’re on the bridge, holding in Earth’s orbit. Choose a star, set your warp factor, and go.
Every star out there is real and in its real place, so the sky changes the way it truly would as you travel. When you arrive, the log tells you what you’ve found.
The ringed planet at the top opens the planetary survey: Starfleet’s planet classes next to the real planets astronomers have found, and the flask beside it opens the xenobiology lab, which grows a creature for any of them. The Starfleet delta opens the Kobayashi Maru, the Academy’s no-win test, and the speech bubble opens first contact: an unknown ship hails you in a language made of stories, and you have to work out what they mean. The dish opens long-range sensors: where the Voyagers and other real ships are right now. The horizon opens tonight’s sky: hold your phone up and see which of the stars over your head Starfleet knows. Under the warp slider, Warp scale races ships from Earth to the Moon, Vulcan, the galactic core and Andromeda, to show how far each warp factor really gets you.
Charting 18,000 stars…
The viewscreen lost its graphics. Your position and log are saved.