Ronn Blankenship wrote:
>
>>> From which well-known Sun-like star do the other well-known
>>> stars Sirius, Procyon, and Epsilon Eridani all appear against
>>> the background of a slightly distorted Leo, the Lion?
>>
>>3rd approximation: Tau Ceti - but Epsilon Eridani,
>>relative to Tau Ceti, would be ~30 deg from the "mean"
>>position of Leo.
>
>
>This is the answer I had in mind. I'll grant that future astronauts from
>Earth observing from a hypothetical planet of Tau Ceti might be more likely
>to assign Eps Eri to Cancer than to Leo (assuming they didn't go ahead and
>redraw everything from scratch). As a G8 V star, Tau Ceti is more Sun-like
>than Diphda, although I recall that the explorers in Heinlein's juvie _Time
>for the Stars_ discovered suitably Earth-like planets orbiting both.
>
Tau Ceti (Gliese 71) is sf's favourite star. It has an overload of planets
around it: Larry Niven's Plateau, C.J.Cherry's Pell, Gordon R. Dickson's
Dorsai series' Ceta, and Asimov's Aurora. Even Barbarella goes there
in her search for Duran Duran.
http://www.projectrho.com/smap02.html
>For the easy way to get an answer to this and similar problems, go to
><http://www.shatters.net/celestia/> and download the free program Celestia,
>
No, thanks. I am trying to write a program for myself :-)
Alberto Monteiro
