(C) 1999 by Christian Ruehl Last updated: September 1st, 1999 This file is still in work and therefore incomplete!

Contents

Click on a keyword to view the corresponding sections. Grey keywords indicate that the section is not yet avaiable.

1. Introduction

1.1 A glance at the real galaxy

1.2 The tools of a Star Trek cartographer

2. The Division of the Star Trek Galaxy

2.1 The subdivison of the galaxy New! (8/26)

2.1.1 Quadrants New! (8/26)

2.1.2 Sectors New! (8/26)

2.2 Overview of the Star Trek galaxy

2.3 The Federation Update! (8/29)

2.3.1 The position of the Federation New! (8/29)

2.3.2 The size of the Federation New! (8/28) Updated! (9/1)

2.3.3 The shape of the Federation New! (8/29)

2.4 The Klingon and Romulan empires

2.5 Bajor, Cardassia and Ferenginar

2.6. Other Empires in the Alpha and Beta quadrants

2.7 The Gamma quadrant and the Dominion

2.8 The Delta quadrant

3. Journeys to Infinity

3.1 The USS Enterprise-D and 7 years of galactic research

3.2 Voyager and its voyage home

3.2.1 Overview Update! (8/26)

3.2.2 The journey's beginning Update! (8/26)

3.2.3 The territory of the Swarm

... (other subsections to follow soon) ...

3.2.4 Project: Creating a detailed map of the journey of the Voyager New! (8/28)

4. Appendix

4.1 Summary of Star Trek Distances

4.2. Sources New! (8/29)

1. Introduction

Since human beings have been looking up to the starry sky at night, they have wondered how far away from us this small, twinkling lights which we call stars might be. At the beginning, we believed in an Earth located in the center of the universe and surrounded by sphere consisting of fixed stars, but over the centuries we've learned that the stars are farer away than we have imagined in our wildest dreams. To express their distances in numbers, new measures of distance that are based on light speed were introduced, but an imagination of this giant distances is even now, on the treshold of the 21th century, still impossible. While our sun is only 8 light minutes away from us, the light of the nearest star - Proxima Centauri - travels 4 years through space before it finally reaches our eyes.

As a trekker, you're dealing with such quantities every day, because the galaxy is the playing field of this greatest of all science fiction visions. In passing distances of dozens, hundreds or thousands light years are mentioned there, and on displays and padds we can view maps of the galaxy as a part of computer images (so called "Okudagrams"), maps which clarify these distances. This "Star Trek cartographer's manual" will investigate on this - in contrast to technical gizmos, star dates etc. mostly only vague and often even faulty worked out - aspect of Star Trek. By exact calculations and an interpretation of the official maps the significance of this accepted as normal distances for the fictious life in the 24th century will be examined. However, it must be accepted that often assumptions and speculations are the sole base for a rational (that means: extensive and detailed) analysis. Because of the fact that the few texts in the internet that investigate on Star Trek distances usually have the topic "inconsistencies and errors", this manual will furthermore try to find a solution/explanation for the more or less important discrepancies. Finally, this project shouldn't be a "nitpicker", but rather help you to rediscover the deep respect for the great unknown of the universe and the final frontier (we could still experience in the first season of TNG and especially in The Motion Picture), and especially the scientific aspect of Star Trek (in my opion the main aspect beside the "mirror of humanity"), which has been definitely destroyed with the Dominion war on ST:DS9.

1.1 A glance at the real galaxy

Before we will immerse in the Star Trek universe, we still have to get to know our playing field - the galaxy. This is the smallest common denominator of the world of Star Trek and the real world - in both we live in a spiral galaxy called Milky Way that has a diameter of 100.000 light years (ly) and in the center of the bulge a thickness of approximately 5000 ly. Almost all Star Trek episodes and movies play in this galaxy, and only seldom the Enterprise passed the final frontier and left the Milky Way. This isn't surprising if we consider that even the fastest Star Trek vessel would need dozens of years to cross the galaxy. In our real world, for us the universe appears to be even much more larger, because a million years would be not enough to reach the opposite side by our current technology.

Within this giant galaxy, our sun is only a tiny point of light in infinity, that gets lost in 100 billion similiar points of light in the Milky Way. Nevertheless we are able to determine our position in the galaxy exactly - the sun ist located in the local arm of our galaxy, app. 30.000 ly away from the center of the Milky Way, where a black hole is supposed to be. The rotation of the galaxy and therefore the position of Earth is shown differently, however, usually Earth is located exactly in the middle of the lower half of the Milky Way.

Well, our short tour through the galaxy already ends because it is well known that we're still at the beginning of the exploration of space: currently, we haven't even explored our own solar system completely and can only dream of all these faint stars in the sky - or we watch Star Trek and virtually go where no one has gone before, to glance at a possible future of humanity and at the infinite wonders of the universe.

2. The Division of the Star Trek Galaxy

2.1 The subdivision of the galaxy

Because our galaxy is so incredibly large, we need a further subdivision to determine galactic positions exactly, that can of course be done by - not very meaningful - galactic XYZ coordinates with the origin in the center of the Milky Way. While we haven't subdivide the galaxy in smaller sections today, because in view of the tiny part we have explored yet it simply isn't necassary, two different subdivisions are constantly used in Star Trek, whose meaning, however, was often contradictious at the beginning, but has been fixed exactly in the meantime: the quadrants and sectors.

2.1.1 Quadrants

Already in the era of The Original Series, the expression "quadrant" was used for an exact determination of locations in the Star Trek universe. However, this cartographic term which literally refers to "a quarter" was used for completely different three-dimensional volumes during this time: sometimes a quadrant stood indeed for a quarter of the galaxy, but all too often for considerably smaller regions, too. In this connotation, the size of a quadrant corresponded more to the size of a sector, as the "quadrant 904" in [TOS] The Squire of Gothos indicates. Up to the beginning of The Next Generation and also in the first movies the "quadrant" wasn't defined unambiguously and was used contradictiously. Finally in Star Trek VI, the current - and correct - quadrant system was introduced, which declares that "the galaxy is subdivided into 4 quadrants, from whose each, by viewing the galaxy from the top or the bottom, is a 90 degrees piece of cake." (Star Trek Encyclopedia) An insider information on this movie even implies that the system was mainly introduced to justify Captain Sulu's claim that "he is in the Beta quadrant and currently the only Star Fleet ship in the quadrant."

An interesting irregularity that at least once the authors1 didn't take into account is the unusual designation of the quadrants. They are arranged neither clockwise nor counter-clockwise. Instead, the lower left quadrant is called "Alpha", the lower right one "Beta", the upper left one "Gamma" and the upper right one "Delta". Whether this was originally a mistake that wasn't corrected afterwards to keep continuity or if it was dramatic intention to degrade the quadrant of the classic empires of the Romulans and Klingons to a "secondary quadrant" (after all, the Federation is mainly located in the Alpha quadrant!), is unfortunately unknown, but surely needs further consideration. 1The said error happened in the episode [VOY] Message in a bottle, where the location of the USS Prometheus was more than once said to be "the  Alpha quadrant", but on the Milky Way map in the astrometric lab, the position of this ship was undoubtedly the Beta quadrant! Consequently, this episode uses a counter-clockwise quadrant subdivision, that hasn't been used in any episode, movie or offical book.

With the fixed quantities (a quadrant is a quarter of the galaxy), we can determine the dimensions of one quadrant - it is unbelievably large, even for the sophisticated science of the 24th century (what is seldom taken into account by the authors). A quadrant has a width of 50000 ly (near the middle dividing line) and the same length (in the middle as well). How large this is even at the end of the 24th century  are clarifying some speed calculations:   Travelling through a quadrant (50000 ly) at warp 6 at warp 8 at warp 9 ati warp 9.6 127 years 49 years 32 years 26 years

Even a subspace transmission (warp 9.9999 with amplification) covers this distance in more than three   months. Consequently, only the fact that Earth, the Federation and most of the other empires are located at the frontier between Alpha and Beta quadrant makes it possible that we hear something about other quadrants at all, and it isn't surprising that the two remaining quadrants - Gamma and Delta - were not  explored until the era of DS9 and Voyager started and then only with "tricks" like worm holes and intergalactic shifting waves.

2.1.2 Sectors

In contrast to the quadrants, space sectors, that are mentioned in nearly every episode (remember Sector 001 - the solar system), are an astronomically much smaller division of the galaxy and therefore more useful for the exact determination of positions in Star Fleet's everday life - what explains their often use (although, however, in the recent seasons of Voyager and especially DS9 the Alpha quadrant was  mentioned in every second episode). Because the dimensions of a sector are, in contrast to the quadrants, not important for the episodes and this subdivision was always used for space regions of small scale, it isn't astonishing that the official definition was not determined in a episode or movie (not even as background information), but in an offical documentation.

According to the pretty general definition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia, a sector is a space region with a diameter of 20 ly, although some offical maps further specify a sector as a cubic volume. By using its diameter we can calculate exactly the needed time for travelling through a sector at different warp factors which shows that for warp civilizations, a sector is a quantity they can easily manage.   Travelling through a sector (20 ly) at warp 6 at warp 8 at warp 9 at warp 9.6 18 days 7 days 5 days 4 days

At any rate, a sector is apparently not a natural, but a artifical, systematic subdivision of the galaxy into smaller space regions, what is also supported by the Encyclopedia mentioning that "a typical sector in Federation space contains 6-10 planetary systems, although there are many more in the sectors near the galactic core." Therefore, Sector 001 should not only consist of the solar, but also e.g. the Wolf and Alpha Centauri system.

Just as the quadrants also the sectors have some irregularities in their designation, but that's acceptable in this case because of the sector numbering system of the Federation, we only know the starting point (Sector 001), but not the direction of the numbering, and the location of the numbered sectors introduced in different episodes towards each other is unknown. However, it is very likely that in view of the centuries of space exploration and already different designation systems today the system of the Federation is contradictious itself and the sectors are numbered more or less arbitrarily. With the given numbers, however, we can assume that at least some larger space regions consist of systematically numbered sectors. For sectors near the Romulan Neutral Zone, TOS used sector numbers with two digits, e.g. Sector 23, 30 and 31. The almost one century later explored sectors near the Klingon Empire however have 4-digit numbers, like Sector 2520. It is then very logical that sectors near the Cardassian Union that were not discovered by the Federation until the beginning of the 24th century, carry 5-digit numbers, e.g. Sector 21503 and 21505. Furthermore, the Star Trek Encyclopedia suggests that "some sectors kept their old designations from earlier cartographing systems the same way as we use today both the older Messier and the newer NGC numbering system." In fact, some sectors apparently haven't a number at all (like the Igo Sector and the Bajoran Sector); they were named after the dominating planetary system or most important star in the sector.

2.3 The Federation

The United Federation of Planet (UFP) is the most important planetary alliance in the Star Trek galaxy and so to speak our "home" because within Star Trek, the Federation symbolizes our cultural and moral values and the human virtues. Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation and many of the movies are therefore often playing within its borders, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine more seldom and Star Trek: Voyager (still) not at all. After 35 years we have grown fond of the Federation, but what do we actually know about its geographic characteristics?

2.3.1 The position of the Federation

The Federation - that is accepted by all offical sources - is located in the heart of the known Star Trek universe, app. 30000 ly away from the center of the galaxy, in the local arm of the Milky Way. 75% or more of the planetary alliance are situated in the Alpha quadrant, but beyond the frontier between the Alpha and Beta quadrants (the position of Earth), parts of it spill over to the Beta quadrant. Consequently, the Federation is a "connecting part" between the classic empires of the Klingons and Romulans at the "Eastern" frontier in the Beta quadrant and the "Next Generation" locations Cardassian Union, Bajor and Ferenginar at the "Western" frontier in the Alpha quadrant. But also all the other more or less large and influencable empires are located around the Federation, which is then a classic "middle power": Barzan in "the North", Trill in "the South", the Tholian Empire in "the South-West" etc. However, with the exception of Barzan, whose position is offically fixed because of the Alpha quadrant ending of the Barzan wormhole, the other statements are rather conjectural.

2.3.2 The size of the Federation

To say it straight to the point: according to the Star Trek Encyclopedia, the Federation has a diameter of 10000 ly. In view of this exact commitment in a official book and also in every other official documentation one could think that at least this basic size in the Star Trek universe is then unequivocally certain. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, and the problem has still increased since this still conjectural distance  has been made offical by Captain Picard's statement in Star Trek: First Contact. Therefore, the size of the Federation is today a basic inconsistency and one of the gravest errors. But what is wrong with this size? To put it in simple words: with regards to the technical limitations of the warp-driven ships of the Federation and nearly all other known empires, it is totally impossible and contradicts in many respects with the everyday life of Star Fleet that we've experienced in both TNG and DS9. Within a few days, weeks and sometimes months the vessels in these series reach their destination and travel all over the Federation. But warp speed is - and this fact is not only offically fixed, but was also confirmed by many episodes from the new series - not nearly as fast as the authors would like it to be, and therefore it would last - that admits the Enyclopedia frankly - many years to travel through the Federation. Not to speak of the fact that it would be extremely difficult and would require a highly decentralized infrastructure to hold such an inflated empire together, another, even more graver problem arises because of this: because of the offical positions of the Klingon Empire and the Cardassian Union at opposite sides of the Federation (the "Eastern" and "Western" frontier), the journeys of the Enterprise-D within one season - in one episode near the Cardassian border, in another episode in Klingon space - and the journey of the Klingon/Romulan fleets to DS9/Cardassia within a few weeks, perhaps months become completely impossible. And the Voyager would have never been able to reach DS9 after only 3 months journey from Earth, there she was put into service. How different in the episodes shown and "officially" defined times for travelling through the Federation are, following table clarifies:

Even at maximum warp a patrol ship would need several years to pass through the giant empire only once - not to speak of the fact that the vessels of everyday traffic like freighters and personal transporters mostly can only attain the travelling speed of warp 6 and furthermore have to stop at a star base after some weeks of flight for maintenance, repair or fuel (typical ships need tons of deuterium and every 3 years antimatter). These circumstances increase the horrendous travel time of decades still by many years.

However, also the TV episodes aren't all based on the same imaginations on the size of the Federation at all. Especially in The Next Generation episodes, the shown maps of the galaxy, which are usually based on the wrong offical Federation size or even include larger space regions, contradicts completely with the then shown travels of the Enterprise in the limited time (usually hours or days at maximum). But also in the other Star Trek series, maps or given distances (which indicate a known space of at least 15000 ly in diameter) don't match with the longest possible durations of the journey (which indicate a known space of 1000 ly at maximum). On ST:DS9, the beginning of a redefining of distances in the Star Trek universe is at least visible sometimes, because mostly maps of the complete galaxy aren't used anymore, instead detailed maps are used and the given distances to important Planets (Cardassia, Ferenginar, Trill) are all within 100 ly from DS9. In its amazing, three-dimensional astrometric maps Voyager hasn't included the Federation yet, but the confusion of Alpha and Beta quadrant in the sole episode that (at least should) play in the Alpha quadrant, mars the hope for the future. Because with the end of DS9 and no clear answer to the question "how big the hell the Federation is" and the upcoming series probably  not playing in the current time frame, Voyager is the only series that has still the chance to solve this problem - hopefully correctly. So how the different TV episodes and movies define the size of the Federation the following examples will explain.

Star Trek: First Contact

"The Federation consists of 150 planets, spreaded over 8000 ly"

As already mentioned, this statement seems to confirm and even specify the diameter of app. 10000 ly fixed by the Star Trek Encyclopedia and also matches with the few "offical" maps of the galaxy. Nevertheless, on no account it can be correct if this "8000 light years" correspond to a length, width or diameter of the Federation and contradicts with logical considerations, the known technical facts about warp propulsion and nearly all episodes.

However, one should take into consideration the tricky wording, because it doesn't contain a diameter, length or width of the Federation, but mentions the spreading of the Federation planets. In fact, a (planar/spatial) distribution of the planets over 8000 ly also allows the conclusion that the area of the Federation is meant (taking the spatial depth as neglectible). Provided that the Federation has nearly a quadratic shape, it would have dimensions of 89.5 x 89.5 ly, what is a bit too low number now. However, we will see that these assumptions match quite well with a number of Star Trek episodes.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - [019] Conspiracy

In this episode, we see in a communications room in Star Fleet Headquarters a very interesting map of the Milky Way displaying the Federation by three-dimensional boxes. The shape and size seems to correspond with the other official, but meaningless maps. However, with regards to the size of the boxes in contrast to the size of the Milky Way the boxes can't be sectors, because they are significantly too large. A sector has a diameter of only 20 ly and the whole length would then be 240 light years - a number that definitely not matches with the scale of the milky way. But what if the shown galaxy is only a background image and shouldn't be to scale with the foreground information? We will consider this possibility in the analysis of the DS9 episode which showed the map again.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - [124] The Chase

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - [019] In the Hands of the Prophets etc.

In Keiko O'Brien's school, we see some very interesting images on the wall - also a map of the Milky Way which looks somehow familiar to use. On closer examination, we see that it is indeed an extended version of the promising map from [TNG] Conspiracy! The different stars in the cubic space region and also some outside the region are now labeled, and a graduation is visible - what both helps us to interpret the map. After the boxes seemed to represent the Federation in [TNG] Conspiracy, now we can see that it indeed represents the whole explored part of the galaxy. Therefore, not only Federation planets, but also the main planets of all the other empires of the Alpha and Beta quadrants (the title of the map - the Alpha quadrant - is definitely incorrect) are marked, e.g. Bajor, Cardassia, Q'onoS, Romulus and Trill, what shows us that the map was indeed not redesigned until DS9 started. And because also some "real" stars like Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, Sirius, Rigel and Deneb are included, we should be able to determine the scale. But the calculations produce quite contradictious results, some (Alpha Centauri compared with Tau Ceti) result in small discrepancies, other stars which should be thousand and more light years away (Rigel, Deneb) don't fit at all because compared to Tau Ceti, Sirius and Alpha Centauri (distances less than 10 ly), they should be much farer than it is shown in the map. However, in view of correct distances between near stars and the consistent positions of the stars the map gives an authentic impression, and the reason for the discrepancies is found quickly: it is drawn very perspective and therefore, two-dimensional measuring of distances between far away stars in this three-dimensional map results in great discrepancies. This assumption is confirmed by the scaling lines near Bajor and the Tholian empire, which are differently scaled. Consequently, we are only able to roughly estimate distances of the most extensive and precise map ever seen on Star Trek. However, the distances between some stars, which are near each other and located at the same level, can be calculated. For example, the calculated scale for the distance Sirius-Earth is 0.2175 ly/pixel (8.7 ly / 40 pixels). The distance of the near star which orbits Vulcan then can be calculated - the result is 17.4 ly. From other sources, we know that the distance of Vulcan is 16 ly, so that the calculation - with only a small, acceptable discrepancy - is correct. Furthermore, by using the scaling lines we can calculate the scale for the Bajoran region - the lines near Bajor are 1.4 times smaller than the ones near the Tholian Empire. Thus, the scale is 0.15225 ly/pixel and the distance Bajor-Cardassia is 5.86 ly - what is again right accepting the small discrepancies (ST:DS9 TM: 5.25 ly). Without further considerations, it is obvious that this map is the most promising one in Star Trek history and it should be examined more in-depth later. By the way, the distances given in the following DS9 seasons and episodes suggest that it is used as a kind of reference map, and at least the locations of the stars towards each other we can adapt to our two-dimensional maps at any rate.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - [104] Trials and Tribble-ations

"The distance to our previous location [near Cardassia] is almost 200 ly [...] We're orbitting K-7, one of the old deep space stations near the Klingon border."

This quote does not directly contain the size of the Federation, but because the Cardassian and Klingon Empires directly adjoin the Federation in the "West"/"East" and therefore the distance between these two empires defines the diameter of the Federation, we can indeed say something about the size of the Federation by analyzing the given distance. Consequently, the Federation must have a horizontal diameter of less than 200 ly according to the statement. We can even specify this assumption: according to the map of the Bajoran Sector in the ST:DS9 TM Starbase 375 (which marks the border of the Federation in the Alpha quadrant) is located app. 30 ly away from DS9 (we can ignore the distance between DS9 and the Defiant at the moment of time travel because it can't be more than a few light years). Thus, a Federation diameter of app. 170 ly is used in this episode, what is quite encouraging, but doesn't match with the statements in other episodes. However, we can argue that Dax' distance was a very roughly rounded and K-7 is located in the "lower part" of the Federation-Klingon border what would increase the distance to DS9 considerably and therefore the apparent (horizonal) Federation diameter would become distorted.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - [146] Valiant

"The training mission should last 3 months [...] Our mission was to fly around the whole Federation [...]"

This statement also indicates a much smaller and more logical Federation diameter and contradicts with the offical, but meaningless 10000 light years. Of course, to travel 10000 ly (taken as diameter the perimeter would actually be still considerably larger) in 3 months is completely impossible, even for Defiant class vessels (maximum speed warp 9.8). However, it is very interesting that the given facts match very well with the assumption that the 8000 light years mentioned in Star Trek: First Contact are the area, not the diameter of the Federation. For a correspondence of both figures (the Federation perimeter based on the 8000 ly in First Contact is 358 ly) the average speed of the Valiant during her 3 month journey would have been warp 8.9 - a speed that doesn't contradicts with the other information given in the episode and is a very logical one because we know that Defiant class vessels have integrity problems at speeds of warp 9 and higher (as said in [DS9] The Search) and therefore warp 8.9 must be the longest sustainable speed for Defiant class vessels (at least for those ships which have an warp core corresponding to the original Defiant specifications). This seems to indicate that 358 ly are in fact the largest possible perimeter of the Federation - and a diameter of 8000 light years or even more is therefore impossible at any rate.

However, despite all speculations and assumptions, we shouldn't forget that a too small Federation is as improbable as a too large one. It is an official fact that their are 150 Federation members - all with their home planets and possible colonies, so for all these planets a certain space is needed. Although it is already too large for the shown travel times, in my opinion a diameter of 1000 ly would be realistic, taking into consideration that, although nearly all stars have planets in the Star Trek universe (as said in one episode), not every planet is of class M and not every class M planet is inhabited by an intelligent species that has already invented warp propulsion and wishs to be a member of the Federation. Remember, not even our home planet accomplishs all of these conditions at the moment. That is then a reason for the fact that the Federation hasn't grown significantly in the last hundred years - there are about 50 new members since 2265. However, the new members must be mainly Alpha quadrant planets, because the borders of the Beta quadrant are fixed - the Romulan and Klingon empires surely wouldn't allow an extension. The placement of the Federation is therefore another reason for the (relatively) constant size and also determines its characteristic shape.

2.3.3 The shape of the Federation

3. Journeys to Infinity

3.2 Voyager and its voyage home

3.2.1 Overview

¹Because Voyager's odyssey didn't exactly begin on January 1st, 2371, but not until stardate 48315.6, the yearly distance is too high in this case - in the remaining time up to the end of 2371, Voyager would only be able to travel 685 ly on average. 1000 ly are nevertheless a good estimation if we assume that in the first year, Voyager used its warp engines more extensively (maybe because the crew was still homesick?) taking into consideration that Voyager's maximum speed is warp 9.975 (6667c).

²In the episode [TNG] The Price, 70000 light years were given for the distance Barzan - ending of the Barzan wormhole in the Delta quadrant. Takar II, a planet that is located near this ending, is visited at the beginning of the third season by Voyager (in [VOY] False Profits). The calculated distance from Earth then is 72000 ly. Consequently, the reason of the discrepancy can only be the distance Barzan-Earth. Actually, the position of the Alpha quadrant ending of the Barzan wormhole (and therefore Barzan) is marked in some official maps much higher in the Alpha quadrant than Earth - resulting in a shorter distance of Barzan-Takar II than Earth-Takar II.

³In the ST:DS9 TM, the location of Voyager at stardate 51461.6 - probably during the events in [VOY] Message in a Bottle, where  Voyager is able to contact Star Fleet for the first time - is said to be 62000 ly. Let's check this. Because since the travel through Borg space (calculated distance to Earth 62500 ly at the beginning of the 4th season) already a half year has passed and Voyager can travel 500 ly on average during this time, the given number matches with my calculations and shows that at least calculated figures in technical manuals are exacter than in the series - in said episode, a distance of 60000 ly is given.

⁴In the season finale of the 5th season [VOY] Equinox, Captain Ransom mentions that Equinox and Voyager are still 35000 ly away from Earth. This value is higher than the calculated one, so we can only assume that Ransom wanted to round the number to an easy to remember number or that he perhaps only estimated the distance.

With these locations, we then know all positions of the planets visited by Voyager and of the passed territories. Therefore, the "offical" Delta quadrant is paradoxically much better known than the Alpha and Beta quadrants.

However, considering the calculated distances and the resulting map, it is obvious that Voyager is now, at the end of the 5th year of its journey, at the border of the Delta quadrant and will reach the Beta quadrant in the next year. If the authors will take this into account (we shouldn't forget that they mixed up the Alpha and Beta quadrants in [VOY] Message in a Bottle) is unclear - we'll see.

3.2.2 The journey's beginning: 70000 or 75000 ly?

Unfortunately, some distances of Voyager's journey aren't so unambiguous and clear as the technical manuals suggest. While all new offical material (e.g. the ST:DS9 TM and the Star Trek Fact Files) uses 75000 ly for the distance Earth - Voyager's starting point in the Delta quadrant, that is a journey of 75 years (and therefore a travel speed of 1000 ly/year), in the pilot [VOY] Caretaker the distance was still said to be 70000 ly, a journey of 75 years again. In this case the reason for discrepancies couldn't be the distance Bajor-Earth (remember that the Voyager was brought to the Delta quadrant from the Badlands, but of course wants to return to Earth), because Bajor then would have to be much too far in the upper Alpha quadrant or in the Beta quadrant to shorten the distance to the Delta quadrant, what is not the case. Assuming that 70000 ly also meant the distance to Earth, we would have an average speed of less than 1000c, what is a quite incredible, considering the technical possibilities of the Voyager (maximum speed warp 9.975, that corresponds to 6667c). Therefore, for all calculations, a distance of 75000 light years is used.

3.2.3 The territory of the Swarm

At stardate 50252.3, Voyager is still app. 72750 ly away from Earth, the ship reaches the extensive territory of the Swarm. To fly around this region of space would take them several months, therefore the crew decides to cross it at a narrow place - as we can see on the map shown in that episode, which corresponds to the right-hand image. Unfortunately, no scale is given for calculating the exact dimensions of the region, but we have at least two remarks (made by Chakotay) about the time needed for crossing. 1. The crossing will last 4 days at very high warp speed. 2. Sustaining warp 9.75 for 12 hours, Voyager has travelled a third of the distance. With the first statement, exact calculations aren't possible, but perhaps with the second. However, the question arises if the  the maximum speed of Voyager is meant (warp 9.975) or really warp 9.75. To simplify the process and because the first speed is nearly 3 times as high as the latter one (what would make the territory too big), we use the speed said in the episode, even if it could be a slip of the tongue. In 4 days, Voyager then can travel 27.4 ly. If this is a third of the distance, the whole route is app. 82 ly. Comparing this route (on the map 38 pixels) with the whole shown territory of the Swarm leads to a dimension of the shown region of nearly 570 ly - and borders aren't visible. After all these calculations, we certainly know that the territory of the Swarm is really quite large, but it seems to be considerably smaller than for instance Borg space and is limited to a length of less than 1000 ly, because the crew never met the Swarm again.

3.2.4 Project: Creating a detailed map of Voyager's journey

Goal: Creating a map of the size 1000x1000 ly that shows the journey of Voyager in 2371 - a precise detailed map with all locations visited by the ship during this year

Tools: Season guide with stardates (e.g. the STD Voyager Guide), calculator, image retouching  program that supports displaying distances and angles of lines (e.g. Corel PhotoPaint 4)

Remark: Beside the thumbnails, for every step the original map (1000x904 pixels) is avaiable. Download them with a click on the small images. Because the maps are all 4 bit gifs, the files are not larger than 30 kbytes and download should be therefore quite fast.

Step 1: Calculating the distances, based on the yearly average speed

The overview of Voyager's odyssey already shows some basic locations in the Delta quadrant calculated by the assumption of a travelled distance of 1000 ly/year on average and based on the jumps in some episodes. By using furthermore the stardates of the episodes, we can even determine the travelled distance between two episode (on average) or the exact distance to earth in a particular episode. Although concerning the usual maps of the whole galaxy or at least one quadrant, we can accept low discrepancies and the rough list of the main locations would be sufficent, some examples from the first seasons will show, how we can calculate the exact distance of for instance the subspace rift planet or the mysterious nebula and then create an exact map of a year's journey.

1. First we need the stardates of the episodes, e.g. from an episode guide. For episodes without stardates we simply calculate the average of the stardates of the previous and the following episode. (for two or more episodes without stardates a similiar method is used - just divide the amount of the first two avaiable stardates by 2, 3, 4 etc. and then add it to the first stardate to get the exact dates for the episodes between)

2. Because we assume a yearly distance of 1000 ly and a year officially consists of 1000 stardate units, the calculation of the distances is rather simple: the travelled distance corresponds to the time (in stardate units) between two episodes. So just subtract two stardates to get the distance. The distance to Earth we calculate by decreasing the episode's stardate by 48315.6 (the stardate when Voyager's journey began) and then decreasing 75000 ly (the distance when Voyager's journey began) by the result. Therefore we then get 685 instead of 1000 ly for the travelled distance in the first season, because Voyager didn't started its odysee at the beginning of the year, but in April 2371.

The following list is an except of the distances table of 2371, the year of which we want to create a detailed map. Of course, this calculations can be used for every other season. However, you should take into account that the calculated numbers are to be considered as only partially realistic, because they're based on pure statistics and don't include shore leaves of the crew, "hard times" and changing speeds.

Step 2: Creating a basic map with grid and legend

Step 3: Drawing Voyager's bearing

Step 4: Drawing the locations

Our detailed map of Voyager's journey within one year is then complete. In the example, only the first 4 locations are calculated and drawn in to clarify and simplify the procedure. However, feel free to accomplish the map or to create own detailed maps of other seasons using this description and the basic draft.

4. Appendix

4.1 Summary of Star Trek distances

Although distances and especially maps are often conceiled or avoided on Star Trek (most probably because of the many errors and discrepancies), there actually are are some distances mentioned. However, mostly they are not directly given, but have to be calculated using the given warp factor and time, or, in other cases, the star is known and therefore the distance can be looked up in a stellar atlas.

dQ=Delta quadrant, gQ=Gamma quadrant

Remarks: Due to this distances we can assume that the colonies of the Federation (with exception of Rigel) and the "classic" empires of the Romulans and Klingons (look at Gamma Hydrae entry) are all within 200 ly away from Earth. Lacking of every indication what the distance Earth-Bajor or Earth-Cardassia might be until recently, since the ST:DS9 TM the distances of this "Next Generation" locations from the "core planets of the Federation" / "the inner perimeter of the Federation" (whatever this means concretely) is clearer.

4.2 Sources

Beside then known sources - the official books, of which especially the new ST:DS9 TM with its maps and many given distances is a great help, and of course the TV series and movies - I am using the following books for this project:

30 Years Star Trek Official Collector's Issue (contains quite useful poster map)

Illustrated Space Atlas by A. Rükl (distances of "real" stars)

Great Atlas of the Stars by Patrick Moore (distances of "real" stars)

The Milky Way by Nigel Henbest (contains the only "real" map of the galaxy I know)

Because there are only a few websites which deal extensively with distances in the Star Trek universe or Star Trek cartography (with the exception of inconsistency pages), the following list of useful websites is quite short.

Sector 001 (great scans of offical maps)

Annorax' Database (extensive, very beautiful self-created maps)

© 1999 by Star Trek Dimension / Christian Ruehl. Last updated: 9/1/1999