I love overlapping real astronomy with Star Trek’s fictional spacescape — and have for years, as you Treklanders know.
I also love this virtual world — have you heard about it? —that Rod Roddenberry and Co. have cooked up with the Sansar folks as one of many within their virtual domain— in this case, the virtual Roddenberry Nexus museum and the Theatre for virtual programs. Complete with an audience interacting via their avatars, able to fully interact and ask questions.
Of these monthly sessions I’ve done two there so far — from hosting (and explaining!) the classic TOS bloopers last spring to, yes, a night looking at the real stars, fake stars, and history of weaving them together for Star Trek’s Stellar Cartography.
The latter, from June 13, was not just a fun experience — it was rare, unrushed chance for me to really get into this for the star nerds and Trek canonistas out there, and shine the light on what Trek art staffers Mike Okuda and then Geoff Mandel did to keep an amazing bit of canon-wrangling bound up with real astronomy.
And if you missed it — HERE’s a YouTube link for my entire June 13 talk, graphics and audience — all from within the virtual world, but just as factual. Maybe there’s way more here than you realized— both from real science, and just the history of what we’ve done with Trek starmapping.
My fellow Roddenberry podcasters John Champion and Ken Ray, the co-hosts of Mission Log, are one or the other the nominal hosts of these sessions— where you can visit with either an actual VR headgear rig, or just aboard on a Windows 2D computer screen. (Sadly, Sansar has not dev’d a 2D interface for the Mac). There are programs most every month from Roddenberry — and of course, many other specials and domains from others inside Sansar.
Just go in early and get your bearings first to save time, and “roll up” an avatar character so you can represent smartly!
