Reconsidering firepower for the neu-Canon

[Patroklos]

Whether or not the galaxies would be too small to see in the background depends entirely on where the camera is and what zoom it has.
Hubble deep field:

I don't think its a photo at all but rather some artificial map program. A program that would be optimized to let you see things in the field of view clearly. Just my opinion, no water need be held by it.

I'm not suggesting such a thing. I never even thought about this. My impression was that the galaxy in the center of the screen is the Star Wars galaxy, that he pointed to a point inside this galaxy and that there was Kamino.

The whole dame scene is ridiculous on its face. The idea that you would look at a screen that size and an galaxy at that resolution and point to it with a human finger and think you are distinguishing anything meaningful regarding an individual star or planet even is farcical. Assuming his finger touched the damn screen (it did not) we are talking about billions of stars and thousands of sectors under his fingerprint.

Its like me pointing at a globe the size of a pea from ten meters away and saying "Look, there's the Walmart in Richmond VA!" And now some of you want to make sweeping assumptions based on such a declaration? Please.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Given there relative sizes, they cannot be big galaxies far away. If they were, they wouldn't look that big. Again, I'l use Andromeda as a reference, a spiral galaxy bigger than the Milky WAy at a distance of several million light years...you need a telescope to see it even as a faint elliptical smudge. You need a really good telescope to get a decent image of it. I would know, I took a lot of pictures of Andromeda during my Astronomy degree.

You seem to be under the impression that you are viewing a photograph and the optics of real time viewing apply. We may be, but unless you think the colors we see (uniform bluish) are reality the image is obviously digital in some respect.

Irrelevant. False-colour images do not change relative positions and/or sizes of objects. The clue is in the name - false-colour not false image. And if it is not an actual image, rather a diagram...why include the two satellite objects if they are actually just background objects?

And again the average distance is irrelevant as there is nothing that says in this specific instance the SW galaxy doesn't have to match an average.

I'm not talking about average distances, I'm using Andromeda as an example to show that those two objects must be close to the main galaxy - MUCH closer than Andromeda is to the MW given how they appear.

As for a really good telescope, I am pretty sure in a universe where slave boys build self aware AI robots out of throw away spare parts in the equivalent of bumfuck Sudan even he has a better telescope that the most advanced equipment of our professional astronomers today. And he probably got it out of the bottom of a Space CrackerJack box. Your experience with our technology are meaningless here.

That's a total fucking red herring. How good their telescopes are is totally irrelevant. I was using it as an example of how small Andromeda is in the sky, that you need a good telescope to get a decent view of it, with the naked eye it's a faint smudge at best. Thus indicating that those two objects are FAR closer to the SW galaxy than Andromeda is to the MW. Learn to fucking read.

Alyrium gave you a link, so I'll address the last bit. Galaxies are objects of roughly similar size to the Milky Way. We use it as a baseline the same way we use the Sun as a baseline for stars. A "major" galaxy (which is a turn-of-phrase I used, it is not AFAIK an actual term) is one like ours, tens of thousands of light-years across, hundred million plus stars, and orbiting a common centre of mass of a group or cluster, as opposed to satellite galaxies which orbit a larger body.

You keep saying companion and satellite. Even if these are dwarf galaxies you have no evidence that these are in any way linked to the SW galaxy rather than say speeding by at a close approach or about to barrel through it. The best we can say is they are probably not exiting a collision give the lack of deformations but even that, depending on the distances you don't know and its relative velocity which you also don't know, is possible.

If they are speeding by on a close approach, then they are not background objects, concession accepted. If they are on a collision course, they are still very close and not background objects. Also accepted. Yes, we can't say either way for certain, but in any of those possibilities they are close enough to be included in images of the main SW galaxy and used as a reference point for star systems, hence the "twelve parsecs south/beneath (can't recall exactly which wording) the Rishi Maze" line.

It doesn't really matter whether they are orbiting the SW galaxy, or approaching to collide with it, or doing a flyby, they are still close enough to be considered as one system of galaxies and included in images and maps of the main galaxy.

As I explained above, for those two objects to be anything other than satellite galaxies (and hence dwarves, given the apparent size) they would have to be either extremely close (by intergalactic standards) or monstrously large. The example I gave above of Andromeda, bigger than the Milky Way, three million-odd LYs distant, and is relatively tiny in our sky is a good illustration

So why are these to be assumed to not be extremely close or monstrously large?

If they are extremely close we woudl expect to see some gravitational interaction. And for them to be monstrously large, well, if they are indeed very large but far away they woudl have to be, at an estimate, many times larger than even the largest galaxies we've observed anywhere in the universe.

And if the two objects were similarly-sized galaxies that were very close, they would have to be very close, tens or hundreds of thousands of light-years at most, simply to look that big. Plus I suspect that having two other similarly-massed galaxies in such proximity would really mess up the nice pretty spiral structure due to the gravitational pull.

Fair enough. did the LA art department know that? If we can excuse away break neck rotation speed that way we can do that to pretty much anything.

No they probably didn't know that. Then again, I doubt they knew the galaxy was supposed to have companions, so they went with "what will look roughly like a galaxy."

Have you ever seen a galaxy from outside it? No? Then shut up with this "it doesn't look like a galaxy to me" crap. As for your wall of ignorance on the true size and apparent size, well, if they are dwarf satellite galaxies (which all evidence and formerly-canon sources state) then they must be a long way out of the SW galaxy's disc to see it with that apparent size. And if it is another similarly-sized galaxy, then it would have to be absurdly close to the SW galaxy to be that large and clearly visible (with the aforementioned gravitational pull disrupting the spiral structure)...or the Rebel fleet is a long way outside the SW galaxy.

Ummm, yeah. All of us have seen a galaxy from out side it. There are pictures posted all over this board of them. How do we not know what they were looking at was an absurdly small and close dwarf galaxy not pictured in the screen grab because its behind the center galaxy?

Fine, that was a bad turn of phrase on my part. As for why it can't be an absurdly small and close dwarf galaxy, it has what appears to be a spiral structure being viewed nearly edge-on. You don't get (AFAIK) dwarf spiral galaxies that small or that close.

Hell, how do you know there are not a million other SW dwarf galaxies outside the FOV of that image or obscured by the ones we see? Why does the TESB scene have to include one of these two?

We don't see any others in the panning shots of the Rebel fleet at their meeting point. AS for being many others, there could be, the old stated number was seven satellite galaxies.

I like the idea of small dwarf galaxies that our protagonists can visit. It gives us an opportunity to have some interesting story lines regarding them that I am sure will be left up to my imagination as they are squandered by canon writers. The fact that they might be fun or interesting doesn't mean we get to make wild assumptions about them.

Alyrium and I are not making wild assumptions...we're stating canon evidence to support a position that was formerly canon and has no current canon evidence showing it isn't true. You and watch-Man are making the assumptions of "they could be background objects/all three could be very small."

To summarise:

1. It was formerly canon that the SW galaxy had multiple dwarf companion/satellite galaxies (ROTS ICS had a reference to them, as just one example)
2. This was seen on screen in AOTC and probably in TESB
3. What we saw is broadly consistent with what we have observed of the real universe
4. The statement about the satellites is no longer canon
5. HOWEVER there is no canon evidence contradicting the original statement.

Where is our "wild assumption?"

[jwl]

Whether or not the galaxies would be too small to see in the background depends entirely on where the camera is and what zoom it has.
Hubble deep field:

I don't think its a photo at all but rather some artificial map program. A program that would be optimized to let you see things in the field of view clearly. Just my opinion, no water need be held by it.

Just note that when I say "camera", I could mean an actual camera, or I could mean a Virtual camera system, the point the picture is taken from in a comic book, or anything else. Regardless, the program within the film will have some kind of virtual "camera", and where you put it decides the proportions of the galaxies relative to the main one.

On the note of the spinning galaxy, are you sure it's spinning? It looks like the ship is moving to me.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Whether or not the galaxies would be too small to see in the background depends entirely on where the camera is and what zoom it has.
Hubble deep field:

I don't think its a photo at all but rather some artificial map program. A program that would be optimized to let you see things in the field of view clearly. Just my opinion, no water need be held by it.

If it is an artificial map program...again, why include the other two objects unless they are significant?

We have an original canon statement giving a size. That is no longer canon but it is not contradicted by anything in the new canon. I see no reason to assume it is no longer true. When we say things are "no longer canon" we are talking about events, characters, ship classes. I see no reason we should throw out previously-stated details of the galaxy itself.

Then we disagree in this aspekt.

To me - as I have never known your "original canon statement" - it is irrelevant. I do not regard it as valid as long as it is not contradicted by valid canon. I simply do not know it - leaving me with nothing but the the six Star Wars films and the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series and film.

That's not a joke. I have seen all Star Wars films. I like all Star Wars films and I can't await the next Star Wars film. Surly, I have heard of the EU. But nothing more. I have not one single Star Wars book in my book-shelf. I do know nothing from the EU.

Your lack of knowledge of the EU is irrelevant. Under the old canon structure the EU was canon unless it contradicted the films, the statement of there being satellite galaxies agrees with the films, therefore it is canon. Also, you don't get to set what is canon, so simply saying "i haven't heard it, I don't regard it as valid" is bullshit. Now, the old canon statements are gone, leaving us with just what we saw on screen, which agrees with the canon statement.

It looks like a galaxy might be depicted based on information available to the filmmakers. You, however, are looking at it from several decades later, during which we launched the Hubble Telescope and built a bunch of other telescopes and in general learned a lot more about galaxies. Add to this fact that there really isn't anything else it could be. As Alyrium said earlier, nebulae don't look like that, protoplanetary systems don't look like that.

As I have said earlier: I'm not an astronomer. I do not know much about astronomy. And when I saw TESB, to be honest, I really didn't thought much about it. But - call it intuition - I never had the thought that what I saw could be a galaxy. I mean I always knew that planets, stars and galaxies are moving and that they can reach high velocities on their orbits. But I knew too that they need time for a whole orbit. I mean Earth needs a whole year to orbit around the sun. And look at what was seen in TESB. This thing needs less than a day for a whole rotation. Now lets assume that it is a dwarf galaxy with 15.000 ly across. That means it has a 47.000 light year circumfence. An object at the rim of such a galaxy would have to have a velocity of 47.000 light years a day to be able to orbit around its center in a day. As I have said: I haven't put much thought into it. But that this is not possible was so obviously that the thought that this could be a galaxy never crossed my mind. And this has nothing to do with what we know about galaxies now. It's not as if I have seen so many galaxies in movies from the NASA.

Intuition is not evidence.

However, if you want more evidence they left the galaxy, we see a good chunk of the sky from the Rebel fleet's position, and there is no analogue tot he Milky Way as seen from Earth. If they were still inside the SW galaxy, we would expect to see some visual sign of this in the form of a Milky-Way-type spread of visible gas and dust in a band across half the sky (or more). We see none, ergo they are not in the galaxy.

Or the visuals are not accurate as we have never seen such - even when they were in the galaxy without a doubt.

If you want to accept that the visuals aren't accurate, then your complaints about the rotation speed can be dismissed on the same grounds.

As I have repeatedly said (and you have distinctly failed to respond to), those two objects cannot be merely "galaxies in the background" because they appear too damn big.

That's the thing I can not understand. Let's assume that the Star Wars galaxy is only a dwarf galaxy with a diameter of 15.000 light years and the other two galaxies are galaxies with a diameter of 200.000 light years. How far away have they to be from each other to get an image as was seen in AotC?[/quote]

I will explain using the sun and the moon as examples:

The Sun is much more massive than the moon, that is easy enough to understand. It looks the same size because it is a lot further away - 150 million km versus 400,000 km. Now, the Andromeda galaxy is bigger than the Milky Way, 120,000 light years across, roughly. It is, however, two and a half million light-years away. So the ratio of diameter to distance is roughly 20:1...and it appears as a small smudge in the night sky of Earth. Those two objects, if they are background objects, either have to be much closer to the SW galaxy to appear that large (like the Moon as seen from Earth) or they have to be much larger than Andromeda to be far that easily visible and far enough away to just be background objects.

Now, whilst I can't immediately answer the hypothetical you posed, I can give you some idea. A galaxy of 200,000 light years diameter would have an apparent size of 3 arc minutes (1/60th of a degree) when viewed from 2 million light years (closer than Andromeda). Those two objects appear a lot biger than that, so they are either far bigger than 200,000 ly diameter or far closer.

[Patroklos]

Irrelevant. False-colour images do not change relative positions and/or sizes of objects. The clue is in the name - false-colour not false image. And if it is not an actual image, rather a diagram...why include the two satellite objects if they are actually just background objects?

The point is that all your quibbling about how a REAL image in a REAL picture would look is based on your assumption you are looking at a real picture in the first place. Its damn well obvious that its altered in some respects, so your insistence that observations you are making based on your assumptions regarding optical astronomy equipment are relevant remain dubious at best.

There is no evidence that this is a raw optical image. There is some evidence it is not.

Answer me this; When you are looking to locate a location to travel to do you pull up a optically accurate photo representation of the relevant geographic area? No. You are likely pulling up a 2D image of a non flat surface optimized to convey information to the viewer (ie not exactly spatial reality) to do so. So while aspects might be irrelevantly distorted for practical purposes and short distances for us think about the implications of doing that on a three dimensional space representation of a space as large as a galaxy.

I was being glib above regarding how stupid it is for Obi Wan to point at a screen like that and say "There's KAMINO!!!" I was assuming the resolution of the image is what made that stupid like he was pointing at a top down map. What he was actually doing is pointing at a galaxy map with that galaxy significantly tilted on its axis. He is literally pointing down a 3D plane. Multiply the things he could possibly be pointing at by 1,000,000+.

I'm not talking about average distances, I'm using Andromeda as an example to show that those two objects must be close to the main galaxy - MUCH closer than Andromeda is to the MW given how they appear.

Why you think the Milky Way or Andromeda matter in discussing these fictional galaxies is baffling. A real world example, we get it. You seem to be oblivious to the limited utility that provides.

That's a total fucking red herring. How good their telescopes are is totally irrelevant. I was using it as an example of how small Andromeda is in the sky, that you need a good telescope to get a decent view of it, with the naked eye it's a faint smudge at best. Thus indicating that those two objects are FAR closer to the SW galaxy than Andromeda is to the MW. Learn to fucking read.

Its you getting called out for being a simple minded unimaginative idiot. Nothing in any way shape or form suggests we should apply anything regarding image capture by your pathetically primitive astronomy equipment to what we are looking at in the SW universe. We don't even know it is an image capture vice a completely computer generated model of a volume or space. You are acting like the Jedi Archive is the equivalent of a hard back paper Encyclopedia Britannica and when asked about the galaxy Obi Wan was just flipped to the one stock image on page 55 of volume G.

You have no proof that this is a photo or otherwise real world source image. Your attempt to treat it as such is self serving and ultimately self defeating.

If they are speeding by on a close approach, then they are not background objects, concession accepted. If they are on a collision course, they are still very close and not background objects. Also accepted. Yes, we can't say either way for certain, but in any of those possibilities they are close enough to be included in images of the main SW galaxy and used as a reference point for star systems, hence the "twelve parsecs south/beneath (can't recall exactly which wording) the Rishi Maze" line.

1.) in a 3D space they could be colliding with the SW universe from back to front. The point was your continuous use of the words satellite and companion are unscientific. There can be galaxies of all sizes in close proximity and neither term is appropriate to apply to them. You are a making an assumption, another in a long and tragic line of them.

It doesn't really matter whether they are orbiting the SW galaxy, or approaching to collide with it, or doing a flyby, they are still close enough to be considered as one system of galaxies and included in images and maps of the main galaxy.

Which I already said (if they are indeed close), but for someone trying to beat people to death with your astronomy bonifides you should have never made the assumptions you did regarding what system the galaxies are in.

If they are extremely close we woudl expect to see some gravitational interaction. And for them to be monstrously large, well, if they are indeed very large but far away they woudl have to be, at an estimate, many times larger than even the largest galaxies we've observed anywhere in the universe.

Interesting claim. What's the math?

No they probably didn't know that. Then again, I doubt they knew the galaxy was supposed to have companions, so they went with "what will look roughly like a galaxy."

And you think the writers and artists of AOTC clones knew about companion galaxies? They just put shit on screen to make it look interesting with no thought of whether they were in the background or not. Or not. We will never know, and YOU don't know either.

We don't see any others in the panning shots of the Rebel fleet at their meeting point. AS for being many others, there could be, the old stated number was seven satellite galaxies.

We didn't see that other galaxy in the AOTC screen in the TESB shot either. By that logic if they were staring at the dwarf galaxy we should have seen the main galaxy or the other dwarf. If they were staring at the main galaxy we should have seen the other dwarf but ESPECIALLY the main galaxy.

The fact is that despite the panning we only saw a small percentage of the sky, and we have no idea what was obscured by the object we are viewing either. There could be anything behind there. Or Nothing. There is nothing that can be discerned from this line of reasoning.

Alyrium and I are not making wild assumptions...we're stating canon evidence to support a position that was formerly canon and has no current canon evidence showing it isn't true. You and watch-Man are making the assumptions of "they could be background objects/all three could be very small."

I am making some assumptions. I am not, however, trying to beat you over the head with them. I am mostly telling you what we don't know, not what I unquestionably know. Shall I go back and add up all the times the both of you said "assume" and then continue to pretend that should be taken as a cold hard fact subsequently? Its quite a few.

To summarise:
1. It was formerly canon that the SW galaxy had multiple dwarf companion/satellite galaxies (ROTS ICS had a reference to them, as just one example)

Fair enough

2. This was seen on screen in AOTC and probably in TESB

Negative. Things you interpret as such were onscreen but as has been pointed they have problems. You not knowing what is in the foreground or the background of the AOTC picture being one or them, the rotation speed of TESB object being another. The fact that you are being hyper sensitive to the reality of optic capture in the first but hand waving the second tells me you are cherry picking your arguments.

3. What we saw is broadly consistent with what we have observed of the real universe

Like a galaxy rotating at orders of magnitude the speed of light (assuming WATCH-MAN's math is correct)?

4. The statement about the satellites is no longer canon

Yep.

5. HOWEVER there is no canon evidence contradicting the original statement.

Please point to the cannon evidence that any dwarf galaxies that may or may not exist are indeed satellites.

Where is our "wild assumption?"

We can start with how big the SW galaxy MUST be. And how far away galaxies MUST be from each other. And then go to how they MUST be satellites (you already addressed this), how the AOTC image MUST be photo realistic and so on and so on.

Whether or not the galaxies would be too small to see in the background depends entirely on where the camera is and what zoom it has.
Hubble deep field:

I don't think its a photo at all but rather some artificial map program. A program that would be optimized to let you see things in the field of view clearly. Just my opinion, no water need be held by it.

If it is an artificial map program...again, why include the other two objects unless they are significant?

For the same reason Google Maps often greats me with a representation of the entire damn world including places like Greenland and Antarctica. upon opening it Exactly none. Why does it insist on displaying large expanses of oceanic water when I request a map to the convenience store a block away (I live on the coast)? Because it makes it easier to interpret the information. Specific to this case it probably makes it a lot easier to orient yourself in the 3D space of a galaxy map projection if recognizable background objects are discernible. Especially if they are giant galaxies. And unlike constellations on earth these are not going to appreciably move.

[WATCH-MAN]

Your lack of knowledge of the EU is irrelevant.

And - as I understand the new canon - your references to it are irrelevant too.

Under the old canon structure the EU was canon unless it contradicted the films, the statement of there being satellite galaxies agrees with the films, therefore it is canon.

Irrelevant because the old canon structure was abolished.
You may enjoy your old books, but - as I understand the new canon - they are irrelevant now.

Also, you don't get to set what is canon, so simply saying "i haven't heard it, I don't regard it as valid" is bullshit.

That's not what I'm doing. I expect that when you are making a claim about something, that you provide evidence for it. That means if you were to claim that the distance between Coruscant and Tatooine is round about 30.000 ly, I would expect that you provide evidence for this claim using still valid canon. I can't accept sources that are not regarded canon any more only because there are no outright contradictions with what is now considered canon. It is not as though as if the old canon is valid until cotraticted by new canon. As I understand the new canon, it is the other way: Only if something is confirmed by what is now considered canon, it is valid.

Now, the old canon statements are gone, leaving us with just what we saw on screen, which agrees with the canon statement.

What we saw on the screen is the only thing we have. It may agree with what was canon a long time ago. But now there is nothing left that agrees with what we saw on the screen.

As I have said earlier: I'm not an astronomer. I do not know much about astronomy. And when I saw TESB, to be honest, I really didn't thought much about it. But - call it intuition - I never had the thought that what I saw could be a galaxy. I mean I always knew that planets, stars and galaxies are moving and that they can reach high velocities on their orbits. But I knew too that they need time for a whole orbit. I mean Earth needs a whole year to orbit around the sun. And look at what was seen in TESB. This thing needs less than a day for a whole rotation. Now lets assume that it is a dwarf galaxy with 15.000 ly across. That means it has a 47.000 light year circumfence. An object at the rim of such a galaxy would have to have a velocity of 47.000 light years a day to be able to orbit around its center in a day. As I have said: I haven't put much thought into it. But that this is not possible was so obviously that the thought that this could be a galaxy never crossed my mind. And this has nothing to do with what we know about galaxies now. It's not as if I have seen so many galaxies in movies from the NASA.

Intuition is not evidence.

I never claimed that it is. But as far as I know, if math shows that something is impossible, it is is evidence. And if math shows that stars at the rim of a galaxy have to have a velocity of 47.000 light years a day, which is impossible, we can only conclude that what we are seeing can not be a galaxy. It is not relevant if we came to this conclusion by intuition - because it is so obviously that you do not have to do the math - or by doing the calculations.

However, if you want more evidence they left the galaxy, we see a good chunk of the sky from the Rebel fleet's position, and there is no analogue tot he Milky Way as seen from Earth. If they were still inside the SW galaxy, we would expect to see some visual sign of this in the form of a Milky-Way-type spread of visible gas and dust in a band across half the sky (or more). We see none, ergo they are not in the galaxy.

Or the visuals are not accurate as we have never seen such - even when they were in the galaxy without a doubt.

If you want to accept that the visuals aren't accurate, then your complaints about the rotation speed can be dismissed on the same grounds.

Maybe.

But the one is a mistake that happens in all six movies. Insofar we have no reason to attach any importance to the fact that we aren't seeing in one scene what we aren't seeing in any of the other scenes. The lack of "Milky-Way-type spread of visible gas and dust in a band across half the sky" may be a mistake. But - as we are never seeing such thing - it does not suggest that the rebel fleet's position was outside of the galaxy.

The other - the rotation - is only a mistake if we are assuming we are seeing a galaxy. It may not be a mistake if we are looking at something else - maybe something unique enough to make it a rendevouz point for the rebel fleet.

I will explain using the sun and the moon as examples:

The Sun is much more massive than the moon, that is easy enough to understand. It looks the same size because it is a lot further away - 150 million km versus 400,000 km. Now, the Andromeda galaxy is bigger than the Milky Way, 120,000 light years across, roughly. It is, however, two and a half million light-years away. So the ratio of diameter to distance is roughly 20:1...and it appears as a small smudge in the night sky of Earth. Those two objects, if they are background objects, either have to be much closer to the SW galaxy to appear that large (like the Moon as seen from Earth) or they have to be much larger than Andromeda to be far that easily visible and far enough away to just be background objects.

Now, whilst I can't immediately answer the hypothetical you posed, I can give you some idea. A galaxy of 200,000 light years diameter would have an apparent size of 3 arc minutes (1/60th of a degree) when viewed from 2 million light years (closer than Andromeda). Those two objects appear a lot biger than that, so they are either far bigger than 200,000 ly diameter or far closer.

I have to think about it and can not answer to it now.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Irrelevant. False-colour images do not change relative positions and/or sizes of objects. The clue is in the name - false-colour not false image. And if it is not an actual image, rather a diagram...why include the two satellite objects if they are actually just background objects?

The point is that all your quibbling about how a REAL image in a REAL picture would look is based on your assumption you are looking at a real picture in the first place. Its damn well obvious that its altered in some respects, so your insistence that observations you are making based on your assumptions regarding optical astronomy equipment are relevant remain dubious at best.

There is no evidence that this is a raw optical image. There is some evidence it is not.

Answer me this; When you are looking to locate a location to travel to do you pull up a optically accurate photo representation of the relevant geographic area? No. You are likely pulling up a 2D image of a non flat surface optimized to convey information to the viewer (ie not exactly spatial reality) to do so. So while aspects might be irrelevantly distorted for practical purposes and short distances for us think about the implications of doing that on a three dimensional space representation of a space as large as a galaxy.

I was being glib above regarding how stupid it is for Obi Wan to point at a screen like that and say "There's KAMINO!!!" I was assuming the resolution of the image is what made that stupid like he was pointing at a top down map. What he was actually doing is pointing at a galaxy map with that galaxy significantly tilted on its axis. He is literally pointing down a 3D plane. Multiply the things he could possibly be pointing at by 1,000,000+.

Again, if it's a map, why are the two other galaxies included?

I'm not talking about average distances, I'm using Andromeda as an example to show that those two objects must be close to the main galaxy - MUCH closer than Andromeda is to the MW given how they appear.

Why you think the Milky Way or Andromeda matter in discussing these fictional galaxies is baffling. A real world example, we get it. You seem to be oblivious to the limited utility that provides.

I'm using Andromeda as an example of what a massive galaxy looks like at a great distance. Answer? It's small. These objects are not small in the sky, ergo they are either very close, or they are so absurdly huge as to be bigger than anything we've ever seen.

That's a total fucking red herring. How good their telescopes are is totally irrelevant. I was using it as an example of how small Andromeda is in the sky, that you need a good telescope to get a decent view of it, with the naked eye it's a faint smudge at best. Thus indicating that those two objects are FAR closer to the SW galaxy than Andromeda is to the MW. Learn to fucking read.

Its you getting called out for being a simple minded unimaginative idiot. Nothing in any way shape or form suggests we should apply anything regarding image capture by your pathetically primitive astronomy equipment to what we are looking at in the SW universe. We don't even know it is an image capture vice a completely computer generated model of a volume or space. You are acting like the Jedi Archive is the equivalent of a hard back paper Encyclopedia Britannica and when asked about the galaxy Obi Wan was just flipped to the one stock image on page 55 of volume G.

You have no proof that this is a photo or otherwise real world source image. Your attempt to treat it as such is self serving and ultimately self defeating.

Oh FFS. The quality of the telescope used (or whatever computer program is used to simulate it) does not affect the actual angular size of the object. An object will appear to be 1 degree across whether you view it with the naked eye or with the fucking Hubble, when the image is scaled properly. Ergo, we can still use astronomical methods to deduce information from said image. Namely, if an object occupies a large portion of the sky, it is either relatively small and close to us (as a dwarf galaxy should be) or it is very large and a very long way off.

If they are speeding by on a close approach, then they are not background objects, concession accepted. If they are on a collision course, they are still very close and not background objects. Also accepted. Yes, we can't say either way for certain, but in any of those possibilities they are close enough to be included in images of the main SW galaxy and used as a reference point for star systems, hence the "twelve parsecs south/beneath (can't recall exactly which wording) the Rishi Maze" line.

1.) in a 3D space they could be colliding with the SW universe from back to front. The point was your continuous use of the words satellite and companion are unscientific. There can be galaxies of all sizes in close proximity and neither term is appropriate to apply to them. You are a making an assumption, another in a long and tragic line of them.

It is not an assumption, it was originally a canon statement that they are dwarf satellite galaxies. All former canon is now excluded but there is precisely zero evidence that the size and characteristics of the galaxy has changed. The terms satellite and companion are appropriate, as if the objects are orbiting the SW galaxy they are satellites (as was stated in old-canon). If they are making a close approach or colliding, then there is some gravitational interaction occurring and thus can be considered companions.

It doesn't really matter whether they are orbiting the SW galaxy, or approaching to collide with it, or doing a flyby, they are still close enough to be considered as one system of galaxies and included in images and maps of the main galaxy.

Which I already said (if they are indeed close), but for someone trying to beat people to death with your astronomy bonifides you should have never made the assumptions you did regarding what system the galaxies are in.

Again, not an assumption, since it was originally stated in canon.

If they are extremely close we would expect to see some gravitational interaction. And for them to be monstrously large, well, if they are indeed very large but far away they woudl have to be, at an estimate, many times larger than even the largest galaxies we've observed anywhere in the universe.

Interesting claim. What's the math?

It's a simple enough use of trigonometry. Using inverse Tan, we need the opposite side (in this case half the diameter of the object in question) and the adjacent side (the distance to the object) to calculate the angle, which we then double to get the angular size of the object from our position. Working out the angle is as simple as dividing the opposite by the adjacent, so for a 300,000 ly diameter (pretty much the extreme end of known sizes) galaxy at a distance of one million light years it would have an angular size of (tan^-1(150000/1000000))*2, which is 17 degrees. However, one million light years is one-third of observed average galactic separation. If we use the average distance then the object would appear to be just under 6 degrees across. That assumes average separation, which my not be the case of course, but it's also done using the largest known sizes. More to the point, the companion objects appear to have spiral structures, whilst the largest known galaxies in the 300kly diamter range are all ellipticals.

We don't see any others in the panning shots of the Rebel fleet at their meeting point. AS for being many others, there could be, the old stated number was seven satellite galaxies.

We didn't see that other galaxy in the AOTC screen in the TESB shot either. By that logic if they were staring at the dwarf galaxy we should have seen the main galaxy or the other dwarf. If they were staring at the main galaxy we should have seen the other dwarf but ESPECIALLY the main galaxy.

That last part makes no sense. Of course they would see the main galaxy is that is the object they are looking at.

The fact is that despite the panning we only saw a small percentage of the sky, and we have no idea what was obscured by the object we are viewing either. There could be anything behind there. Or Nothing. There is nothing that can be discerned from this line of reasoning.

Very well. I will concede that point.

Alyrium and I are not making wild assumptions...we're stating canon evidence to support a position that was formerly canon and has no current canon evidence showing it isn't true. You and watch-Man are making the assumptions of "they could be background objects/all three could be very small."

I am making some assumptions. I am not, however, trying to beat you over the head with them. I am mostly telling you what we don't know, not what I unquestionably know. Shall I go back and add up all the times the both of you said "assume" and then continue to pretend that should be taken as a cold hard fact subsequently? Its quite a few.

How about you actually try to dredge up something that says the physical characteristics of the SW galaxy and it's companions (which were formerly canon) are now changed by the new canon? We may have nothing to explicitly confirm it but you have nothing to deny it either.

2. This was seen on screen in AOTC and probably in TESB

Negative. Things you interpret as such were onscreen but as has been pointed they have problems. You not knowing what is in the foreground or the background of the AOTC picture being one or them, the rotation speed of TESB object being another. The fact that you are being hyper sensitive to the reality of optic capture in the first but hand waving the second tells me you are cherry picking your arguments.

The fact that you're focusing on "the reality of optic capture" is a sign you have no fucking idea about astronomy, since the optics required to gain a decent image of another galaxy (I only ever mentioned Andromeda in that context, not the SW galaxy) are irrelevant to an objects apparent size and how that is affected by the object's size as well as it's distance.

3. What we saw is broadly consistent with what we have observed of the real universe

Like a galaxy rotating at orders of magnitude the speed of light (assuming WATCH-MAN's math is correct)?

I meant the AOTC map.

[5. HOWEVER there is no canon evidence contradicting the original statement.

Please point to the cannon evidence that any dwarf galaxies that may or may not exist are indeed satellites.

Is this an answer? You want the original canon source? The Essential Atlas, for one, ROTS ICS, on the page describing the Munificent frigate, says that particular example was built at a secret Banking Clan facility half-way between the galaxy and it's nearest dwarf satellite galaxy. Happy now?

Where is our "wild assumption?"

We can start with how big the SW galaxy MUST be. And how far away galaxies MUST be from each other. And then go to how they MUST be satellites (you already addressed this), how the AOTC image MUST be photo realistic and so on and so on.

The Galaxy is shown, in maps, to have a spiral structure and has similar characteristics to the MW and Andromeda, therefore it is probable that it is o a similar size, possibly a few tens of thousands of light years larger or smaller, but certainly roughly the same size. My only comments on distances were that the two objects must be (relatively) close to the main galaxy simply to appear that large. And fine, if the AOTC image is not photo-realistic then there would be no need to include the two large background galaxies when you are looking for a star's location. Orientation wouldn't matter since it would have a coordinate system.

Thus I conclude that the two objects seen on the AOTC map/diagram are other galaxies, most probably dwarves and most probably satellites and/ore companions, thus being in line with the original canon statement.

[WATCH-MAN]

I'm not good at this.

But I try to demonstrate why I have a problem with the map as shown in AotC.

The first problem is that we do not know with which angle we are looking at the galaxy in the center of the screen.





Depending on the angle, objects behind the object in the forground can vary in their size depending on their distance to the object in the foreground.

[Eternal_Freedom]

What we saw on the screen is the only thing we have. It may agree with what was canon a long time ago. But now there is nothing left that agrees with what we saw on the screen.

Then we can fall back on observation. As I said in the post above, the SW galaxy is observed to have broadly similar characteristics to galaxies like the MW and Andromeda, ergo it is most probably in the same size range. It is observed in the AOTC map/diagram to have at least two other large bodies in apparently close proximity which were formerly stated as satellite galaxies and no new statements or evidence refuting that. So, barring any future evidence or statements to the contrary, the simplest explanation is that the SW galaxy is approximately the same size as the MW and has two or more satellite galaxies.

I never claimed that it is. But as far as I know, if math shows that something is impossible, it is is evidence. And if math shows that stars at the rim of a galaxy have to have a velocity of 47.000 light years a day, which is impossible, we can only conclude that what we are seeing can not be a galaxy. It is not relevant if we came to this conclusion by intuition - because it is so obviously that you do not have to do the math - or by doing the calculations.

You can equally assume by intuition that it's a goof by the effects guys who aren't astronomers either. This is why intuition is not evidence.

If you want to accept that the visuals aren't accurate, then your complaints about the rotation speed can be dismissed on the same grounds.

Maybe.

But the one is a mistake that happens in all six movies. Insofar we have no reason to attach any importance to the fact that we aren't seeing in one scene what we aren't seeing in any of the other scenes. The lack of "Milky-Way-type spread of visible gas and dust in a band across half the sky" may be a mistake. But - as we are never seeing such thing - it does not suggest that the rebel fleet's position was outside of the galaxy.

The other - the rotation - is only a mistake if we are assuming we are seeing a galaxy. It may not be a mistake if we are looking at something else - maybe something unique enough to make it a rendevouz point for the rebel fleet.

As I said to Patroklos, I conceded that point. However, there is no type of object I know of that would match the characteristics we see exactly, assuming no SFX goofs. If it was something truly unique, odds on it would be being studying by someone or something and thus make a fairly useless secret rendezvous point.

I will explain using the sun and the moon as examples:

The Sun is much more massive than the moon, that is easy enough to understand. It looks the same size because it is a lot further away - 150 million km versus 400,000 km. Now, the Andromeda galaxy is bigger than the Milky Way, 120,000 light years across, roughly. It is, however, two and a half million light-years away. So the ratio of diameter to distance is roughly 20:1...and it appears as a small smudge in the night sky of Earth. Those two objects, if they are background objects, either have to be much closer to the SW galaxy to appear that large (like the Moon as seen from Earth) or they have to be much larger than Andromeda to be far that easily visible and far enough away to just be background objects.

Now, whilst I can't immediately answer the hypothetical you posed, I can give you some idea. A galaxy of 200,000 light years diameter would have an apparent size of 3 arc minutes (1/60th of a degree) when viewed from 2 million light years (closer than Andromeda). Those two objects appear a lot biger than that, so they are either far bigger than 200,000 ly diameter or far closer.

I have to think about it and can not answer to it now.

Whilst I appreciate you want to ponder it, I admit I made an error in those calculations. The galaxy I described (while still being 60% larger than Andromeda) would have an apparenet size of about 5 seconds (slightly bigger than the three stars of Orion's Belt for a reference). Still too small an apparent size.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I think I have figured out what Watchman's problem is. He does not take statements in context. Each statement we make is isolated to him. So when we go point by point with him, and talk about scaling issues, he ONLY thinks about the camera scaling issue, and completely forgets that the very scenario he is positing (that said companion galaxies are very far away) is ruled out by other information already discussed. He fails to integrate multiple sources of information to reach the most likely conclusion. Rejects all Induction in favor of strict adherence to Deduction. Which is stupid.

So keep the following in mind while I go point by piont.

Evidence that The Star Wars Galaxy and Its Companion Galaxies occupy the same or roughly similar planes with respect to a viewer in the Still Image presented in AoTC

1. It makes no sense to describe a planetary system as "south" of a galaxy that does not exist on the same or similar X,Y plane as your own galaxy, while specifying a quadrant. It would be like describing Washington DC as south of Jupiter as if it were meaningful. It is silly. So we have to assume therefore that the galaxies are nearby. They seem to be using a spherical coordinate system if you go by the rest of their language throughout the series (given how they describe everything else throughout the series as being in the outer rim, or the mid-rim, or core etc), with North/South being defined by the rotational axis of the primary galaxy. So something south of the Rishi Maze would be an object below the companion galaxy that is within cosmic spitting distance of the primary galaxy, and floating around north of the primary galactic disk.

2) The level of visual detail. In the scene in question, both galaxies involved have the same degree of visual detail. Visual detail drops off in accordance with the inverse square law. Two galaxies that are very far away should not have the same level of detail visible as a galaxy that is much closer, irrespective of their size. I can pick out individual star clusters in both galaxies. They are not that far apart.

Eternal Freedom went into this, so i will quote him, and expand.

I will explain using the sun and the moon as examples:

The Sun is much more massive than the moon, that is easy enough to understand. It looks the same size because it is a lot further away - 150 million km versus 400,000 km. Now, the Andromeda galaxy is bigger than the Milky Way, 120,000 light years across, roughly. It is, however, two and a half million light-years away. So the ratio of diameter to distance is roughly 20:1...and it appears as a small smudge in the night sky of Earth. Those two objects, if they are background objects, either have to be much closer to the SW galaxy to appear that large (like the Moon as seen from Earth) or they have to be much larger than Andromeda to be far that easily visible and far enough away to just be background objects.

Now, whilst I can't immediately answer the hypothetical you posed, I can give you some idea. A galaxy of 200,000 light years diameter would have an apparent size of 3 arc minutes (1/60th of a degree) when viewed from 2 million light years (closer than Andromeda). Those two objects appear a lot biger than that, so they are either far bigger than 200,000 ly diameter or far closer.

Alright. The problem with the image in question is that we dont know the field of view of the camera (virtual or real) in this scene, and there is no way to calibrate it in order to find out the field of view. In a lot of cases in TV or movies, it is possible to find out what the the field of view is for the scene and calculate distances with some fairly simple math, but for a still image viewed inside a movie, that is impossible.

But this:

http://i.imgur.com/a9f2Bso.jpg

Is an image of the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is 70,000 light years across, and some 160000 light years away from us.

This:

http://epod.usra.edu/.a/6a0105371bb32c9 ... 970d-750wi

Has the Andromeda Galaxy in it. It is what looks like one of the brighter stars.

Even if the galaxy in question were absolutely huge (millions of light years across) and very far away, it would be visible as a smudge of light. It would not be visible with the same or similar level of detail as a much closer but smaller galaxy.

3) Kamino is described verbally as being beyond the outer rim. Outside the galactic disk, in the space between galaxies. They share this space (if you watch the scene with Obi Wan talking to Yoda and the kids) with other stars. Lots of them. There is a mass of globular clusters between galaxies within which kamino is contained (and its gravitational pull on nearby stars is noticeable), and that only happens in numbers like that when two galaxies are in the process of colliding. Which means they are very close together, in cosmic terms. Close enough that any difference in apparent distance to camera is not going to matter much.

4) Canon sources specifying that the Rishi Maze is a dwarf galaxy. This is from a book I dont actually have, Star Wars in 100 Scenes (canonicity argument is below, but basically everything published after this past April is canon, unless it is a reprint of old material). My reference is from wookipedia's canon database. I am trying to dig up the book now so I can get a scan.


So keep this in mind while I go back to addressing specific concerns.

Or we are looking at a dwarf galaxy with two big galaxies in the bakground.

That is possible, but it is ruled out by other evidence. Like the fact that they use one of those galaxies as a north-south Y axis navigation reference ("Just south of the Rishi Maze"). And the fact that we see as much fine detail in their galaxy as we do in the Rishi Maze companion galaxy. That part is REALLY important. If it were a galaxy a million or more light years away (see spoiler tag contents), it would be visible in the Jedi Archives sceen only as an amorphous disk, without us, the viewer, being able to see the same degree of detail in it as we do in the primary Star Wars Galaxy. The other companion galaxy might very well be displaced significantly on the Z axis, because we dont see as much visual detail.

Now, there are ways they could MAKE it have as much detail. This could be a constructed model rather than an image, and so the detail on screen would be the same. However, if that were true, then the second companion galaxy would have the same level of detail. There is also no reason to HAVE that much detail, unless they travel to that galaxy and as a result have accurate star charts etc. Basically, it would not be in the planetary archives if no one ever went there.

We also would not observe a large number of intergalactic globular clusters, within which Kamino is stated to be located, unless the galaxies were close enough that their respective gravity pulls them out of eachother's disks.
Spoiler

Sets assume for the sake of argument that the companion galaxy has an angular size equal to that of our own Large Magellanic Cloud when viewed from Coruscant. That comes to 10.75 degrees. In order to be 220 thousand light years across, like Andromeda, it would have to be very far away. Approximately 1.17 million light years.

According to this source Galaxies roughly have a size 20 kiloparsec, namely 65,000 light-years and the average distance between galaxies is 1 megaparsec (Mpc), 50 times the size of a galaxy.

When I did the actual scaling calculations, the SW Galaxy came to between 60 and 80 thousand light years across). That number also counts all galaxies, not just the full size spirals. It counts the irregulars and elipticals and dwarfs of all size. Which is why I did not use it as a source for the average size of a spiral galaxy.

A megaparsec is a bit over 3 million light years, which is the number I gave for the average distance between galaxies.

How clearly could a galaxy outside of the milky way be seen from a point between two star systems, several light years away from the next light source?

It is less a matter of seeing it clearly, more a matter of being outside your own galactic disk such that the galaxy is not occluding itself.

There is not a way of looking at this such that they are incapable of transiting to another galaxy that is nearby.

There are three scenarios:

1) They are outside their galaxy looking in
2) They are on the edge of their galaxy, looking out at another galaxy (like the Rishi Maze)
3) They are on the edge of another galaxy, looking into their own.

So, I did some digging. Yay, digging. The TESB DVD commentary states that it is in fact a Galaxy (more on that later), but I am going off the Wookipedia database for that. Leland Chee was the old keeper of the canon, specified it was The Galaxy. I am not going to operate on that assumption. First Principles Only.

Each of these possible scenarios boil down to the following.

Looking at a dwarf galaxy (I have to pick a number, so I will go with a diameter of 14000 light years). Looking at an average size galaxy of 65000 light years in diameter
Looking at a huge galaxy. Say, Andromeda sized at 220000 light years in diameter.

This is going to get a bit meta, because I have to make some simplifying assumptions and then smell check them for BS.

In order to calculate anything, i have to know the camera field of view. Ideally, I would calculate it, or calibrate from another scene, but I cannot do that. The original negatives are on 35 mm film, and for the effects shots with infinite focal lengths, they used a 6 mm nikkor lens (from here: http://www.theasc.com/magazine/starwars ... lm/pg2.htm). I have to assume they did the same thing for the ending effect shot. No choice. Best I could find.

That puts the horizontal field of view of the camera at 143.1 degrees because Math

Now, Mark Hamill (and thus Luke), is 1.75 meters tall. He subtends an angle of 46.94 degrees, which puts him at a distance of about 2 meters. It may not look it in the Screenshot, but keep in mind that the visual angle of the camera is a lot wider on the horizontal and vertical axes than human vision.

So, smellcheck passed.

The galaxy in view subtends an angle of 53.5 degrees.

If it is 14 thousand light years across, then they are going to be about 13885 light years away from the center. If 65000 light years across, they will be 64465 light years away. If 220 thousand light years across, they will be about 220 thousand light years away. Basically, no matter how sliced, they are two galactic radii away from the center of the galaxy they are viewing.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/ ... 8a10ac.jpg

From which still valid canon source is this?

Where was stated that the Republic or the Empire is as big as the whole galaxy?

I tend to take the whole narrative at its word when every canon reference ever from the opening crawl to casual discussion refers to the entire galaxy as the unit of discussion in terms of scale. "Bring peace the Galaxy", "Rule the galaxy as father and son", "With the imperial fleet spread across The Galaxy in a vain effort to engage us" etc etc etc. Also, when they start talking about going to a place "Beyond the outer rim" (Kamino), and clearly indicate that it is outside the galactic disk. You also cannot have a Jedi archivist credibly think that if a planet does not exist in their archives that it cannot ipso facto exist. Clearly they have mapped the entire galaxy at minimum, even if the Republic does not contain all things within it.

You assume?

That means you do not know it and have no evidence.

No. It means that unless I have reason to believe otherwise, people tend to mean what they say.

One reference to The Galaxy is one thing. It could be hyperbole or an idiom. But when literally every single reference possible to the stellar-political unit is to The Galaxy, one must eventually reach the conclusion that The Galaxy is precisely what they are referring to.

Unless you are going to start rejecting concepts like Object Permanence.

I couldn't see, to what exactly he pointed.

That is your problem.

Can you provide evidence that he pointed to one of the galaxies in the background

....

What other evidence is there than the visual evidence of the pointing itself? Jesus Fucking Christ.



It is either that, or he is pointing into empty space.

(Annotation: I just read on Wookipedia that says "According to the map in The New Essential Chronology, Kamino is located exactly where Obi-Wan Kenobi said that it was. In the film however, he points toward the Unknown Regions, where no known systems are located." This puts into question if Obi Wan pointed indeed to one of the galaxies.)

No. No it isnt. George Lucas disregarded the EU, thus overriding everything that came before, such as references to the Unknown Regions. The New Essential Chronology is not canon anymore. Which, given that I remember what was said on previous pages by you:

If there is no valid canon source confirming this, then there is nothing Disney can change.

Disney only could establish a value.

Fuck you. You hypocritical dishonest sack of shit.

You have only refered to sources that are not considered canon anymore.

Uh, no. DIrect reference to Attack of the Clones, TESB, and Star wars in 100 Scenes, which are ALL canon references.

(I do not have "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" and do not know what it says. According to Wookipedia "Most Star Wars material released after April 25, 2014 — with some exceptions — is composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group, making it part of the "new canon."" Star Wars in 100 Scenes was released on August 18, 2014. But was it composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group? It is not listed in the Bibliography of the "Lucasfilm Story Group" entry of Wookipedia.

You did not check what was actually in that bibiography. It does not contain a list of canon source material. It is a bibliography of things talking about the new canon policy. It does not even list the films or episodes.

Here is the actual policy:

http://www.starwars.com/news/the-legend ... a-new-page

While Lucasfilm always strived to keep the stories created for the EU consistent with our film and television content as well as internally consistent, Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU. He set the films he created as the canon. This includes the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content he developed and produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. These stories are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align.

Now, with an exciting future filled with new cinematic installments of Star Wars, all aspects of Star Wars storytelling moving forward will be connected. Under Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s direction, the company for the first time ever has formed a story group to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development.

“We have an unprecedented slate of new Star Wars entertainment on the horizon,” said Kennedy. “We’re set to bring Star Wars back to the big screen, and continue the adventure through games, books, comics, and new formats that are just emerging. This future of interconnected storytelling will allow fans to explore this galaxy in deeper ways than ever before.”

In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe. While the universe that readers knew is changing, it is not being discarded. Creators of new Star Wars entertainment have full access to the rich content of the Expanded Universe. For example, elements of the EU are included in Star Wars Rebels. The Inquisitor, the Imperial Security Bureau, and Sienar Fleet Systems are story elements in the new animated series, and all these ideas find their origins in roleplaying game material published in the 1980s.

Demand for past tales of the Expanded Universe will keep them in print, presented under the new Legends banner.

What these means, for those of you (namely you) who have impaired powers of reading comprehension, is that ALL new material is by definition canon. ALL of it (with the exception of Lego things, because Lego things have interesting contracts). They would not have allowed Star Wars in 100 Scenes to be published were it not to be considered canon. That is their policy.

Again according to Wookipedia, the book provides information, both in- and out-of-universe, about major scenes from the Star Wars Saga. Are information out-of-universe canon? Are, if this book contains any information about this subject at all, these out-of-universe information?

In universe information such as "X is located at Y galactic coordinates" is canon.

Obviously, the universe itself is not plastered on 35 mm film. But the book has some production information there as a reference.

You have only refered to sources that are not considered canon anymore - as the AoTC commentary is not regarded valid canon anymore - if I'm not mistaken.

The movies are still canon. Ergo, the commentary is still canon insofar as they discuss in-universe information as it relates to the film.

Furthermore, even if he indeed pointed to one of the galaxies in the background, saying that Kamino is south of this galaxy means that it has to be outside of the galaxy he pointed to. In that case, Kamino has to be inside the galaxy in the foreground (or somewhere in the middle between both galaxies) but not in the galaxy Obi Wan pointed to.

Yes. That is exactly what I have been saying, you feckless lickspittle.

Obi Wan wanted to locate Kamino, which is located OUTSIDE the primary galaxy, in a globular cluster BETWEEN the primary galaxy, and one of its companions.

It is even VERBALLY SPECIFIED as being "Beyond the Outer Rim", meaning OUTSIDE THE FUCKING GALAXY.

But he ALSO said "Just south of the Rishi Maze", while pointing to the companion Galaxy, which means that the Globular Cluster in question MUST be beneath it, given where he pointed before.

If this companion galaxy were a LONG way away, displaced on the Z axis, such a statement would have precisely Zero meaning.

Your claim. It is your responsibility to provide evidence.

According to a page of Professor Marcia Rieke and Professor George Rieke it looks like this

That is an artists conception. A gorgeous artists conception, but it is not technically accurate. For that object we see to be a star, the rebel fleet would have to be inside the accretion disk, they would not be outside it. To be outside it, they would have to be so far away that the individual star would be indistinguishable from the background stars to the unaided eye.

Do you want to claim that 1980s visual effects were not able to create a slower rotating object? I have problems buying that. I'm convinced that someone in the special effect departement decided to let it rotate as fast as it rotates. But maybe you can provide evidence that they indeed were not able to let it rotate slower.

No, I am saying that with visual effects, there is some wiggle room for the Rule of Cool.

If there is going to be an error, the smaller error is the one most likely to occur. If they want to show stellar evolution in that frame, they could have constructed stellar evolution. Very readily. Instead, they chose something that looks very much like a galaxy, and every canon source (including the head of the Lucasfilm Story Group, incidentally) has said it is a Galaxy. It is therefore most reasonable to conclude it is a galaxy. A Galaxy that, because someone in the special effects department thought it would look cool, is rotating too fast on its axis.

We also see asteroid fields that are too dense to be realistic. Same thing.

This is pretty basic inductive reasoning.

Are there stars in the intervenine space?

My error. I did not consider the slow cosmic trainwreck of galactic collision. But yes. There are. You admitted it yourself earlier here:

Furthermore, even if he indeed pointed to one of the galaxies in the background, saying that Kamino is south of this galaxy means that it has to be outside of the galaxy he pointed to. In that case, Kamino has to be inside the galaxy in the foreground (or somewhere in the middle between both galaxies) but not in the galaxy Obi Wan pointed to.

There are also globular clusters visible in the AoTC scene. Look at the image I posted above. You will fucking see them. It is also specified verbally. Twice.

Your argument above was, that they are spiral galaxies because they have a bulge in the center.

According to Wikipedia, that is not evidence that it is a spiral galaxy.

This is a case if you not understanding what the fuck you are reading. Or using dishonest selective quoting.

Boxy vs Disky ellipticals:
What this basically means is that boxy ellipticals all have random orbits and as a result, the galaxy is basically boxlike or spheroid. The Disky Ellipticals are mostly revolving around something, and as a result are are flattened. They dont have a bulge in the center and a disk of stars surrounding them, they are a squashed sphere. You can see the progression here:



With respect to bulges:

Historically, before we had badass telescopes, the bulge in the center of many galaxies was thought to be an elliptical galaxy with disk of stars around it. Now we know that those are spiral galaxies. The bulge can look a lot like an elliptical galaxy by itself. As in the spiral galaxy Messier 81



This is referred to as a Classical Bulge. It tends to be devoid of dusk and gas, and be populated by very old stars.

Then there are disky bulges. These bulges have non randomized orbits (like say, around a black hole) and as a result look more like a flattened spheroid.

Either way, you are still talking about spiral galaxies.

According to Wikipedia, that is not evidence that it is a spiral galaxy.

No. You just cannot read.

And if they are smaller than you thought?

Or if they are farther away than you thought?

If they are smaller, they still have a spiral or at least lenticular structure, which means they are not THAT much smaller. You still end up with a primary galaxy that is tens of thousands of light years across, and FTL speeds measured in millions of C for that Coruscant-Tatooine transit (even if the Star Wars Galaxy is only 10000 light years across FTL speed is still somewhere in the realm of 1-2 million c)

If they are farther away, well then we have to know how far to get anywhere.

Nothing in any way shape or form suggests we should apply anything regarding image capture by your pathetically primitive astronomy equipment to what we are looking at in the SW universe. We don't even know it is an image capture vice a completely computer generated model of a volume or space. You are acting like the Jedi Archive is the equivalent of a hard back paper Encyclopedia Britannica and when asked about the galaxy Obi Wan was just flipped to the one stock image on page 55 of volume G.

You have no proof that this is a photo or otherwise real world source image. Your attempt to treat it as such is self serving and ultimately self defeating.

Dont be an idiot. If you are trying to navigate in the immediate environs of your local galaxy, why on earth would you include a galaxy millions of light years away in the stock image, and use it as a cartographic reference for where something is?

You wouldn't.

Ergo, the companion galaxy must be nearby.

1.) in a 3D space they could be colliding with the SW universe from back to front. The point was your continuous use of the words satellite and companion are unscientific. There can be galaxies of all sizes in close proximity and neither term is appropriate to apply to them. You are a making an assumption, another in a long and tragic line of them.

Yes, they could very easily be colliding from back to front, but they are still going to be close enough that when using linear scaling on distances measured in kiloparsecs, the change in Z axis displacement wont matter much.

If he is using the wrong term, that is fine. You know what he means.

Interesting claim. What's the math?

He already did it, dipshit. That is what the whole "andromeda galaxy" diversion was.

But... now that I think about it... there might actually be a way around the scaling problem.

When I use images for scaling, I tend to do it as if the camera is the observer. So I have to know its FoV before I can do much of anything (if I were using a 360 degree panorama, I actually could just set the scale to 360), because the images I am seeing are not actually scaled to life size. I cannot use my own visual field.

Here, with this image, assuming it is a faithful representation, I dont have to worry about that. It is the fucking universe, I can actually just use a damn protractor tool, because theoretically, anyone standing on a random point in that galaxy has an identical field of view. I can do the calculations from the perspective of someone looking up at their own night sky. The actual scale of the image itself does not matter, so long as the image is itself To Scale.

The Rishi Maze subtends an angle of 57 degrees from some random point in the outer rim of the Star Wars Galaxy.

I will posit some scenarios vis a vis range.

30,000 light years
Actual Diameter: 32577 light years

300,000 light years
Actual Diameter: 325770 light years

3,000,000 light years.
Actual Size: 3257700 light years

It does not actually matter in what direction that second galaxy is displaced, so long as someone on that random point I selected is looking in the right direction, that is the angle it will subtend.

It is also worth noting that when you go through frame by frame, because I totally just did that, the image moves, and you will note objects occluding part of the visual field. Asteroids from the look of it. That does indicate somewhat that we are looking at an actual image, maybe not originally in visible light, but it is, in universe, supposed to be a live image. Even if it is a matter of Rule of Cool with respect to observed velocities.

And you think the writers and artists of AOTC clones knew about companion galaxies? They just put shit on screen to make it look interesting with no thought of whether they were in the background or not. Or not. We will never know, and YOU don't know either.

Actually, we can know exactly what the writers of AoTC intended, because they flat out fucking tell us. They are intended as companion galaxies. Might it be a retcon? Sure. There have been a lot of retcons in Star Wars, even in just the new canon material. Just as likely, we could not see them in TESB due to occlusion. Or rather, that is the rationalization we pretty much have to go with.

For the same reason Google Maps often greats me with a representation of the entire damn world including places like Greenland and Antarctica. upon opening it Exactly none. Why does it insist on displaying large expanses of oceanic water when I request a map to the convenience store a block away (I live on the coast)? Because it makes it easier to interpret the information. Specific to this case it probably makes it a lot easier to orient yourself in the 3D space of a galaxy map projection if recognizable background objects are discernible. Especially if they are giant galaxies. And unlike constellations on earth these are not going to appreciably move.

Your argument makes no sense.

Google Maps is a universal map, in the sense that it covers the entire planet in terms of navigational coverage. The oceans do help you orient. If the blue outline of the oceans were not there, the map would make no sense.

But including nearby galaxies in a galactic map and using them for orientation would be like telling someone that the pub they are looking for is south of the moon. An object three million light years away, or even 300 thousand, is navigationally irrelevant, unless you actually go there. Unless there are things between you and it, or, it is between you and a place where you might want to go.

[WATCH-MAN]

Alyrium Denryle, as I am seeing it, your problem is circular logic.

You take things, you are supposed to prove, as a premise for your next argument. But if your premise is false, your argument fails too.

Let's look at your first explanation

It makes no sense to describe a planetary system as "south" of a galaxy that does not exist on the same or similar X,Y plane as your own galaxy, while specifying a quadrant. It would be like describing Washington DC as south of Jupiter as if it were meaningful. It is silly. So we have to assume therefore that the galaxies are nearby. They seem to be using a spherical coordinate system if you go by the rest of their language throughout the series (given how they describe everything else throughout the series as being in the outer rim, or the mid-rim, or core etc), with North/South being defined by the rotational axis of the primary galaxy. So something south of the Rishi Maze would be an object below the companion galaxy that is within cosmic spitting distance of the primary galaxy, and floating around north of the primary galactic disk.

Premise of your arguments:

• • • • • • • • • • Obi Wan described a planetary system as "south" of a galaxy.

Problem:

• • • • • • • • • • It is not proven that Obi Wan pointed to what appears to be a galaxy in the background in AotC.
                    
                    If he did not pointed to what appeares to be a galaxy in the background, he did no describe a planetary system as "south" of a galaxy.

That's why - for your argument to make sense - you should have proven, that he pointed to what appeares to be a galaxy first and only then you should have make your argument.

But your attempt to prove that Obi Wan pointed to what appears to be a galaxy in AotC comes only 1.873 words later.

And it stays only an attempt because you fail to show that Obi Wan pointed to what appears to be a galaxy.

You provided this nice image:

• • • • 

I admit that in that two dimensional image of a three dimensional space, the tip of the finger of Obi Wan is over what appears to be a galaxy.

The problem is that you do not account for the perspective.

The camera from which we are seeing the tip of the finger from Obi Wan is clearly above and at the right side of Obi Wans head.

The question now is, where the fingertip of Obi Wan would be if looked from his point of view.

The next question is if the tip of the finger is deciding or the direction of his outstretched finger.

Accounting for the camera to have to move a bit down (the finger will appear to move higher on the screen) and a bit to the left (the finger will appear to move from the left side to the middle of the screen), the finger tip of Obi Wan is neither above what appears to be a galaxy nor is it "south" of said galaxy.

Accounting for the point he is directing to with his finger - and not the point, his fingertip is hovering over - it seems to me that he is pointing to the middle of the upper edge of the screen.

Accounting now that - as Patroklos already explained - it does make little sense to point with a human finger at this small screen depicting three galaxies and think you are distinguishing anything meaningful regarding an individual star or planet, it seems possible that Obi Wan did not try to point to a star but to activate a function of the map program with a gesture to the middle of the upper edge of the screen.

It seems as if Obi Wan had looked at the map already before Jocasta Nu joined him. That means he had already zoomed to the position where he expected to find Kamino. With his gesture - pointing to the middle of the upper edge of the screen - it seems - he only browsed back to that view.

To me that assumption makes more sense than to assume that he pointed with his broad human finger at this small screen and the computer zoomed in to this point exactly as much as Obi Wan needed it. For this, a finger at this small screen simply is not accurate enough. That the computer knew to which quadrant exactly he had to zoom, indicates merely that this was preprogrammed and only called up with Obi Wan's gesture.

Ergo: Obi Wan did not pointed to what appears to be a galaxy. He did not described Kamino's position as somehwere "south" of a galaxy and we can not extract anything meaningfull about the position of Kamino from that scene.

We only know that Kamino's position is beyond the Outer Rim, about twelve parsecs outside the Rishi Maze, toward the south.

But we do not know what exactly the Out Rim is nor what the Rishi Maze is.

Here again, you do not provide evidence that the Outer Rim is the Outer Rim of the one Galaxy and the Rishi Maze is a dwarf galaxy.

But you make this unproven facts to the premise for further arguments.

And only here and there you mention something which could be regarded as an attempt to prove your position:

Canon sources specifying that the Rishi Maze is a dwarf galaxy. This is from a book I dont actually have, Star Wars in 100 Scenes (canonicity argument is below, but basically everything published after this past April is canon, unless it is a reprint of old material). My reference is from wookipedia's canon database. I am trying to dig up the book now so I can get a scan.

But this nt conclusive. Which canon sources? You are using the plural. But then you are only mentioning only one book.

The problem is, I adressed said book and the question if it is canon already:

I do not have "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" and do not know what it says. According to Wookipedia "Most Star Wars material released after April 25, 2014 — with some exceptions — is composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group, making it part of the "new canon."" Star Wars in 100 Scenes was released on August 18, 2014. But was it composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group? It is not listed in the Bibliography of the "Lucasfilm Story Group" entry of Wookipedia.

Again according to Wookipedia, the book provides information, both in- and out-of-universe, about major scenes from the Star Wars Saga. Are information out-of-universe canon? Are, if this book contains any information about this subject at all, these out-of-universe information?

Insofar please provide evidence that the book "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" is valid canon.

Althoug I explained - that according to Wookipedia the fact allone that it is released after April 25, 2014 is not enough to make it canon - that it had to be composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group - your only argument that it is canon is the fact that it was published after April 2014.

You did not show that it was composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group.

That's why I asked you to show that the book "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" is valid canon, that it is not one of those exceptions and that it was composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group.

You did not.

But you provided the following quote claiming it would explain the actual canon policy:

While Lucasfilm always strived to keep the stories created for the EU consistent with our film and television content as well as internally consistent, Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU. He set the films he created as the canon. This includes the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content he developed and produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. These stories are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align.

Now, with an exciting future filled with new cinematic installments of Star Wars, all aspects of Star Wars storytelling moving forward will be connected. Under Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s direction, the company for the first time ever has formed a story group to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development.

“We have an unprecedented slate of new Star Wars entertainment on the horizon,” said Kennedy. “We’re set to bring Star Wars back to the big screen, and continue the adventure through games, books, comics, and new formats that are just emerging. This future of interconnected storytelling will allow fans to explore this galaxy in deeper ways than ever before.”

In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe. While the universe that readers knew is changing, it is not being discarded. Creators of new Star Wars entertainment have full access to the rich content of the Expanded Universe. For example, elements of the EU are included in Star Wars Rebels. The Inquisitor, the Imperial Security Bureau, and Sienar Fleet Systems are story elements in the new animated series, and all these ideas find their origins in roleplaying game material published in the 1980s.

Demand for past tales of the Expanded Universe will keep them in print, presented under the new Legends banner.

But this says next to nothing about what is canon.

It says what was the old canon policy and that EU isn't canon anymore.

If at all, it confirms what Wookipedia says: Only what was composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group is canon. Because it is their task to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development.

And here we are at the same question again:

Was the book "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group?

And a next question arises from your quote: Was the book "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" presented under the new Legends banner? They say n your own quote that they will continue to print things that are not considered canon - but present them unter the new Legends banner.

The book "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" could be a continuation of the EU as a Star Wars legend without being part of the official Star Wars canon. The fact that it was released after April 2014 is meaningless. You can not conclude from that fact alone that the book is considered canon.

Until these questions aren't answered, there is no reason to assume that the book "Star Wars in 100 Scenes" is valid canon.

Or look at this argument.

The movies are still canon. Ergo, the commentary is still canon insofar as they discuss in-universe information as it relates to the film.

That's not conclusive. Yes: The movies are still canon. But that does not mean that the commentaries to them are canon too. Details the commentaries are adding to movies, details not shown in the movies, are not canon anymore.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Ok. You have basically gotten to the point that you are rejecting object permanence in order to engage in "Nuh uh" trolling. Fuck you, and your couch. No cookies for you. You are being ignored.

[WATCH-MAN]

More circular logic:

According to Wikipedia, object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed.This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology that addresses the development of infants' and children's social and mental capacities. There is not yet scientific consensus on when the understanding of object permanence emerges in human development.

1. You fail to explain what developmental psychology has to do with this debate.
2. If you want to argue that objects already seen in the Star Wars movie can continue in their existens when off screen, you are right.
   
   They can continue to exist.
   
   But it is possible too that their existence ends off-screen.
   
   A character who was last seen still alive can die offscreen. A building can be destroyed. We may never know what exactly happened. But we know that time does not stand still off-screen. Things happen - even if we are not looking. This means that we can not expect that all remains as we have seen in the last piece of canon - be it a movie or book or whatever else.
3. Your circular logik begins, where it seems as if you want to argue that something has to exist even off-screen, without proving that it existed on-screen at all.
   
   Of course: If the Star Wars movies showed that Kamino's position is "south of" one of the galaxies seen on the map in AotC, it remains at this position even off-screen. It continues to exist there even when we cannot observe it any more.
   
   But the question you have to answer first is, if the Star Wars movies showed that Kamino's position is "south of" one of the galaxies seen on the map in AotC.
   
   Only then can you argue that Kamnio's position as was shown by the Star Wars movies continue to stay where it was shown.
   
   The only still valid canon evidence you provided was the scene where Obi Wan pointed at a screen. You claimed he pointed at one of the galaxies, explaining that Kamino's position is south of the point. But the image you provided showed that he did not pointed to one of the galaxies.

[Alyrium Denryle]

So, from here on in, I am only going to be responding to the adults in the room. To that end, hi Patroklos. This response will be fairly comprehensive, as opposed to the short and quick response I did earlier (to you anyway).

You know, there is nothing that says that archive screen was even to scale. For all we know those are other stellar objects they were looking at before minimized in the background or shifted out of the way via touch screen. You are making a lot of assumptions, when what you should be saying (all you can accurately say) is you have a theory that is plausible.

There is that possibility, yes. It could be a constructed model of some sort. And while we cannot know for certain (we cannot even know for certain that the gravitational constant in the star wars universe is the same as ours), we can combine different sources of information and narrow down the options until we converge on the most likely. So here goes.

The map moves. When doing my analyzes earlier, I went through frame by frame. When you do that, you realize that the rest of the frame (the monitor, really) is in a fixed position on screen, while the cosmic objects are moving very very slightly. If this were a computer model, having them do that does not make sense, and even if the motion is not technically accurate, that it exists is all serves as some evidence that it is a live construct--either current, or archival.

There are objects in the extreme foreground. Between the real or virtual camera in the map image, and the galaxy, there are a series of large opaque objects that occlude the star wars galaxy. There is no reason to put those in the foreground of a computer generated map construct, but they make sense if you conclude they are extra-galactic asteroids (which can exist) or rogue planetoids in the relative foreground of a live (or archival) image.

Cartographic Reference. You dont mention irrelevant landmarks when navigating. I have beaten this into the ground, but if the Rishi Maze were sufficiently far away, it becomes pointless to use it as a reference at all. Let alone call something "just south" of it. Instead, you use a local reference, or say "it is just north of the galactic plane" or something like that. The only way it makes sense is if the Rishi Maze shares at least some of its X,Z coordinates and is offset on the Y axis.

Direct Statements. The DVD commentary says the Rishi Maze is a nearby companion galaxy. The guy guy who currently heads the LucasFilm Story Group that determines canon and formerly kept up the Holocron (the massive continuity database) for LucasFilm said as much. New canon material (And yes, Star Wars in 100 Scenes is canon, because nothing published after this past april is non-canon as per Disney's new policy. Canonicity is now a binary status with Canon material being published and non-canon material not being allowed at all) says as much. Which means that the image we see is to scale or close to it.

Also if that screen is to scale they could be equally large galaxies at different distances in a binary or other multiple system. That is a thing.

That could be true, not necessarily dwarfs, but unless absolutely huge they still need to be in cosmic spitting distance because of the way the geometry works out. Providing it is a scale image, the distance will be equal or approximately equal to the galactic diameter.

And yes, galaxies that are not in any system at all (either binary or satellite) do collide and or pass each other comingling and/or capturing stars and material from each other all the time. Stars can get stranded between the two as they are pulling away as well. that's irrelevant as whether there is a dwarf satellite or just one in close proximity presumably you could still travel to it, but that does mean there can be a star outside the galaxy but close enough that can be traveled to even if there isn't a dwarf galaxy close enough to be traveled to itself.

Whether they are true companions, a binary (well, trinary) system or in collision does not really matter. It is completely irrelevant to the question under consideration. And if they are colliding, they must be close to start capturing eachother's stars.

You seem to be under the impression that you are viewing a photograph and the optics of real time viewing apply. We may be, but unless you think the colors we see (uniform bluish) are reality the image is obviously digital in some respect.

Of course it is in come way digital. Even if it is an actual image it is digital in some way. Hell, our telescopes today use CCDs and send back digital images and because many are not taken in visible light, they are colorized. That does not mean the images are not to scale.

As for a really good telescope, I am pretty sure in a universe where slave boys build self aware AI robots out of throw away spare parts in the equivalent of bumfuck Sudan even he has a better telescope that the most advanced equipment of our professional astronomers today. And he probably got it out of the bottom of a Space CrackerJack box. Your experience with our technology are meaningless here.

You missed the point. If that second galaxy is so far away that has to be under MUCH more magnification than the primary galaxy in order to get the detail we observe, there is no point in including it in the image. There was no point in Obi Wan having it on screen. There was no point in him using it as a navigational landmark, any more than there would be a point in using Jupiter as one in order to find a city on earth.

So either it is nearby and smallish, or there is no point in its inclusion.

You keep saying companion and satellite. Even if these are dwarf galaxies you have no evidence that these are in any way linked to the SW galaxy rather than say speeding by at a close approach or about to barrel through it. The best we can say is they are probably not exiting a collision give the lack of deformations but even that, depending on the distances you don't know and its relative velocity which you also don't know, is possible.

Why is this even relevant? On the time scales of the star wars universe's civilizational history whether the Rishi Maze is a companion, part of a binary system, speeding by on close approach, or about to collide are not relevant. The most they can possibly have ever traveled relative to eachother in 25000 years is a measly (by intergalactic standards) 50 thousand light years. What you call them does not matter. Companion galaxy or sattelite galaxy is as good a term as any.

Of course, as I mentioned before, it IS canon that it is a companion galaxy so...

So why are these to be assumed to not be extremely close or monstrously large?

Because geometry exists.

Fair enough. did the LA art department know that? If we can excuse away break neck rotation speed that way we can do that to pretty much anything.

Well, we do know that some globular clusters have been pulled into the intergalactic space. So there is that. But a galaxy that rotates too fast is a far cry from not showing the proper effects of two galaxies that are for all intents and purposes ripping eachother apart. One is a small error. The other is a very large one. At that point, we have to draw some conclusions about what the writers and other production staff intend.

In TESB, it is pretty obvious they intended to show a galaxy and screwed up a minor visual detail. Happens all the time.

So either we left with a choice.
Assume the second galaxy is really far away and huge, and accept that in-character statements are completely non-sensical and accept the collapse of the narrative itself in some respects.

Assume the second galaxy is a dwarf companion that has managed to capture some globular clusters and have everything make sense.

Assume that the second galaxy is a full size spiral galaxy on a cosmic close approach that has managed to capture some globular clusters, weith the graphics department forgetting to include massive distortion to the spiral rings of both galaxies, and have the narrative not make sense anymore because even on that close approach it makes no sense to navigate using a galaxy that is several galactic radii away.

Occams Razor Shaves.

Ummm, yeah. All of us have seen a galaxy from out side it. There are pictures posted all over this board of them. How do we not know what they were looking at was an absurdly small and close dwarf galaxy not pictured in the screen grab because its behind the center galaxy?

We dont, but we have Occams Razor. We dont technically know that the whole narrative is not one of Luke Skywalkers Nightmares either.

There are certain assumptions one has to make in an analysis for ANY analysis to work. We have to assume G is the same, we have to assume that the strong and weak nuclear forces are the same. And while we can speculate that there might be other galaxies outside our field of view, we have to work with the information we have and draw the most reasonable conclusions we have from that information.

The point is that all your quibbling about how a REAL image in a REAL picture would look is based on your assumption you are looking at a real picture in the first place. Its damn well obvious that its altered in some respects, so your insistence that observations you are making based on your assumptions regarding optical astronomy equipment are relevant remain dubious at best.

There is no evidence that this is a raw optical image. There is some evidence it is not.

I will note, I have just recently gone into the evidence that it is in fact an optical image. Likely not a raw one, but it is not fully constructed as a schematic either.

Answer me this; When you are looking to locate a location to travel to do you pull up a optically accurate photo representation of the relevant geographic area? No. You are likely pulling up a 2D image of a non flat surface optimized to convey information to the viewer (ie not exactly spatial reality) to do so. So while aspects might be irrelevantly distorted for practical purposes and short distances for us think about the implications of doing that on a three dimensional space representation of a space as large as a galaxy.

The reason those distortions exist is because we are trying to display a non-flat coordinate system on a flat surface, often for the purpose of charting nautical and aeronautical courses. There is no reason to do so here. There is also no need to include a galaxy that is so far away as to be navigationally irrelevant.

Why you think the Milky Way or Andromeda matter in discussing these fictional galaxies is baffling. A real world example, we get it. You seem to be oblivious to the limited utility that provides.

It is relevant to demonstrate to the unschooled how scaling works on astronomical distances.

And you think the writers and artists of AOTC clones knew about companion galaxies? They just put shit on screen to make it look interesting with no thought of whether they were in the background or not. Or not. We will never know, and YOU don't know either.

Actually we do know. Because they told us what they intended. Repeatedly. And in the absence of a say so from disney directly, the commentary by the production staff on what they intended to display is rather relevant when it comes to determining what it is that was displayed.

We didn't see that other galaxy in the AOTC screen in the TESB shot either. By that logic if they were staring at the dwarf galaxy we should have seen the main galaxy or the other dwarf. If they were staring at the main galaxy we should have seen the other dwarf but ESPECIALLY the main galaxy.

Not necessarily. It would depend a great deal on the angle they are viewing. Take the TESB scene for example. There are two putative secondary galaxies in AoTC. One on the lower right of the screen, one on the upper left. If they are between the Lower Right and Primary galaxy, the Rishi Maze (upper left) would be occluded and depending on the viewing angle, we might not see it during the panning shots.

The fact is that despite the panning we only saw a small percentage of the sky, and we have no idea what was obscured by the object we are viewing either. There could be anything behind there. Or Nothing. There is nothing that can be discerned from this line of reasoning.

Except that the most reasonable conclusion is that we are viewing a galaxy. If it is the main galaxy, we can conclude that they can travel at least 2 galactic radii from it, and back, with relative ease.

If it is one of the secondary galaxies, we can conclude that they are all relatively nearby, and thus relatively small, compared to the star wars galaxy. because geometry and physics exist. The bigger and farther out those secondary galaxies are, the faster and faster star wars ftl becomes.

Negative. Things you interpret as such were onscreen but as has been pointed they have problems. You not knowing what is in the foreground or the background of the AOTC picture being one or them, the rotation speed of TESB object being another. The fact that you are being hyper sensitive to the reality of optic capture in the first but hand waving the second tells me you are cherry picking your arguments.

1. If the secondary galaxy is in the foreground, then it is tiny, and the primary star wars galaxy is huge, because Geometry I Need Not Have to Explain.
2. I would not trust watch-man's math. As far as I can tell, the camera is just panning. And even if it is not, there are all sorts of graphical errors that are obviously graphical errors that we have to handwave away in science fiction all the time. It is one thing to have a graphical error. It is another to have a plot point driven by a graphical error, which would be required for the map image in AoTC to be fucked up in some way.

Please point to the cannon evidence that any dwarf galaxies that may or may not exist are indeed satellites.

Star Wars in 100 Scenes, which is canon as per Disney's publication policy. Also the AoTC commentary. Oh, and statements made by the head of the group that determines canonicity. They be satellites.

We can start with how big the SW galaxy MUST be. And how far away galaxies MUST be from each other. And then go to how they MUST be satellites (you already addressed this), how the AOTC image MUST be photo realistic and so on and so on.

You will note, when I did my calculations, I gave ranges. We have to make certain assumptions when doing the math, because there are three variables. In order to solve for one variable, we have to know the other two.

When doing a criminal investigation, police generally assume unless proven otherwise that the perp has a motive that makes sense. It is the same thing here. We have to start with certain assumptions. Either that the Star Wars Galaxy is of average size, or that prior statements made by production staff are still held true.

If we dont do that, there is no point in talking about it, because we can conclude nothing. If that is what you want, get the fuck out of the thread, because by definition you contribute nothing.

For the same reason Google Maps often greats me with a representation of the entire damn world including places like Greenland and Antarctica. upon opening it Exactly none. Why does it insist on displaying large expanses of oceanic water when I request a map to the convenience store a block away (I live on the coast)? Because it makes it easier to interpret the information. Specific to this case it probably makes it a lot easier to orient yourself in the 3D space of a galaxy map projection if recognizable background objects are discernible. Especially if they are giant galaxies. And unlike constellations on earth these are not going to appreciably move.

I have said this before, but it bears repeating.

Google Maps is a universal world map. It gives you those things because you have opened google maps, and it is designed specifically to permit you to navigate from any 1 point on earth, to any 1 other point. Or alternatively, to simply find another point on the map even if you dont know its exact coordinates but know it relative to other landmarks like the oceans, rivers, mountain ranges etc. The map of greenland is required for that purpose.

A galaxy or galaxies so fucking far away as to be irrelevant (such as a galaxy hundreds of thousands of light years away that no one ever goes to) is about as relevant to the galactic map of star wars and useless as a navigational landmark--which was the purpose of that galaxy in the narrative--as Jupiter is to you trying to find the city of Tunis.

[WATCH-MAN]

 
 
The main arguments of Alyrium Denryle are that

• in AotC Obi Wan pointed to a galaxy and
• in TESB we have seen a galaxy.

Scrutinizing what we are seeing, we find out that

• neither did Obi Wan pointed to a galaxy
• nor have we seen a galaxy in TESB.

Let's look again at what we have:

• • • • 

The camera from which we are seeing the tip of the finger from Obi Wan is clearly above and at the right side of Obi Wans head.

Accounting for the camera to have to move a bit down (the finger will appear to move higher on the screen) and a bit to the left (the finger will appear to move from the left side to the middle of the screen), the finger tip of Obi Wan is neither above what appears to be a galaxy nor is it "south" of said galaxy.

But that's not only me: Wookipedia confirms that in the film Obi-Wan pointed toward the Unknown Regions, where no known systems are located.

And concerning what we saw in TESB, I refer to Curtis Saxton:

• • • • 
        Rendezvous-point spectacle
        
        After escaping Lord Vader's trap at Bespin, Luke Skywalker and his companions rejoined their portion of the rebel fleet. From the rebel medical frigate a large white disk dominated the sky to the port side. The disk was thicker and brighter towards its centre and it seemed to contain a myriad of tiny points.
        
        There is much conjecture about the nature of this phenomenon. The Topps Widevision cards refer to it simply as the "vastness of space." Unfortunately it is not possible for other references to be so circumspect; a definite identification seems necessary.
        
        Some people believe that it is the entire Galactic Empire, or else a nearby companion galaxy. This theory seems to have been adopted by Tales of the Bounty Hunters, which describes the rebel fleet resting somewhere above the galactic plane. However the object seen outside the medical clinic window is more distant than several times its own diameter; the viewers are not merely just a little way above the plane of that disk. Perhaps the bulk of Palpatine's galaxy is out of sight in the other half of the sky and the glorious vista is just a neighbouring galaxy?
        
        There is a crucial difficulty with the "galaxy" interpretation, at least with the sequence seen in the original version of The Empire Strikes Back. Viewers of The Empire Strikes Back report that the phenomenon seems to rotate visibly within only a few seconds. This spin is much too rapid for a galaxy. Motions within a spiral galaxy are of the order of up to a hundred kilometres per second, but Palpatine's galaxy is of the order of a hundred thousand light years across. As pointed out in The Cosmic Mind Boggling Book, the observed rotation would equate to rotational speeds on the rim reaching at least "the impossible velocity of 33 billion times the speed of light".
        
        The object seems too bright to be a galaxy. When viewed from a distance great enough to account for the observed size, a spiral galaxy would look like a dim milky disk to the naked eye. It would have the same kind of luminance as the shine of the open sky on a moonlit night. From a vantage point inside a brightly-lit medical theatre, a spiral galaxy would be harder to see than the blazing entity at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. If it is galaxy-sized, the object must be a quasar or some other exotic active extragalactic entity which just happens to be in the neighbourhood of Palpatine's galaxy.
        
        A normal galaxy also exhibits overall colour variations due to regional differences in stellar populations. The galactic core should be a somewhat redder hue, and the disk bluer. It is not certain whether the object is colourful enough to be a normal spiral galaxy.
        
        This object's morphology also seems a bit unusual for a sprial galaxy. The arms are too tightly wound, and the nucleus is proportionately too large. On the other hand, it might be a galaxy which has suffered a gravitational encounter with another galaxy, which could distort its shape. There may be other galaxian possibilities capable of explaining the shape of this object; maybe it is some kind of nearby dwarf galaxy.
        
        Other commentators assert that it must be a protostellar disk, a cloud of gas and dust collapsing under gravity to form a new planetary system with a sun at its centre. Or it might be some kind of accretion disk surrounding a black hole or other compact strong gravitating body. Or it might be something yet more exotic, perhaps even something which exudes matter as it rotates, rather than accreting stuff. However it is not clear whether the structure and colouration suits a protostellar disk or accretion disk either. A protostar should be surrounded by dusty molecular cloud material, not open space as seen in the film. The observed rotation is less ludicrous for these smaller kinds of objects than for an entire galaxy, but it is still very problematic.
        
        The notion that the object is something of less than galactic scale is supported by a caption in a report in CINEFEX #2 p.8. The object is pictured and explicitly described as a "nebula". A nebula is one or another kind of cloud of gas and dust in interstellar space. It could refer to a protostellar nebula, or something similar in scale but presently unknown to science. The exact quote is:
        

        • • Effects unit art director Joe Johnston prepares a model nebula for photography. The swirling star formation was filmed with a slight rotation and incorporated into the final sequence.

        The novel The Mandalorian Armour supports a nebula interpretation, since it describes a similar "spiral nebula" near the Kuat system and remarks that there are several of these objects in the galaxy.
        
        This topic remains unconcluded; it is possibly the most severe technical difficulty in the whole trilogy.
        

It's interesting - if I'm saying that what we have seen in The Empire Strikes Back can't be a galaxy, I'm only stupid. That let me wonder what Curtis Saxton is supposed to be according to Alyrium Denryle.

Does Alyrium Denryle deals with these arguments?

No, he is simply ignoring what he does not like, what does not confirms his EU shaped world view.

• Neither did he show that Obi Wan pointed to a galaxy in AotC
• nor did he proved that we saw in TESB is a galaxy.

[jwl]

Look, I think it is clear that they are dwarf galaxies too, but let's get our arguments right: these galaxies do not have to be huge if they are far away, it depends where you put the camera. Let's say they are other galaxies in the background. Put the camera 100 million light years away, and they can be other completely independent galaxies and still be smaller than the closer one. Have another look at that hubble deep field I showed a few posts ago.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Look, I think it is clear that they are dwarf galaxies too, but let's get our arguments right: these galaxies do not have to be huge if they are far away, it depends where you put the camera. Let's say they are other galaxies in the background. Put the camera 100 million light years away, and they can be other completely independent galaxies and still be smaller than the closer one. Have another look at that hubble deep field I showed a few posts ago.

No. That is not true at all. Do the math. On a 2d image, for objects to be smaller, they have to either BE smaller, or be farther away than a smaller object. The trigonometry behind this is pretty basic.

The Hubble Deep Field for example has stars that are in the immediate foreground that appear as large as galaxies. We are making this argument based on their apparent size, not their apparent motion patterns.

It is also entirely possible that I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say, so if you can, please lay out your argument a little better in that respect. What aspects of the Deep Field are relevant to a discussion about apparent size?

[Vance]

Well the largest weapons are >10,000 times large than the multi-kiloton trench guns which vaporized asteroids in Empire, so it makes sense that they'd be well into the megaton range. Further, if we contrast the Tantive's turbolasers [which were roughly tens of times larger than the trench guns] which caused no visible damage to the hull of a star destroyer, with the big Venator / Invisible Hand turbolasers in the new trilogy, which blasted 50 meter wide holes into armour (so thousands of cubic meters of destroyed ship) also shows that the biggest guns are at least many thousands of times more powerful than those which vaporized asteroids in Empire. So my guess would be at least hundreds to perhaps thousands of megatons per shot based on that.