ASTROMETRICS

Imagined layout of local Space	An early, and now incorrect older design of the galactic layout

Warning: Local space map is 645K -and that's small really, as I was going to have it in Bitmap format for quality, but it came to nearly 4MB, which was not at all appropriate. But the resulting compressed Jpg, is nonetheless adequate.

The two pictures above portray an imagined layout of the Alpha Quadrant, with the relevant empires and races highlighted in an envisioned 2D representation. Certain locations of worlds are conjectural, as a detailed mapping structure of local space has not ever been shown in Star Trek, or been published as canon, but smaller graphics pertaining to our quadrant, detailing areas of Federation space have occasionally been portrayed. It is on those maps that this is based. It is entirely imagined, and I've tried to put a logical structuring and positioning of races and stars, and nebulae etc. It is known that Federation space bleeds into the Beta Quadrant, the area of the galaxy which also plays host to the Romulan and Klingon Empires. Cardassian space is on the other side, and obviously Bajor and its wormhole are going to be right in between.

The other picture (above and on the right) was an early design I had from my old site. In it I imagined the Federation to be wide, rather than deep. But that can't be so, for I projected the Klingon and Romulan Empires would have to travel thousands of light years, a journey of several years to reach the front line of the Dominion war effort. So, I altered the design so that the Federation reached its maximum length from top to bottom, rather than side to side. We know the Federation is vast, Picard tells Lily in 'First Contact' that it stretches for some 8000 light years. This is a large chunk of space. To accommodate this I've measured and formatted it to reflect and satisfy this statement. It will not be entirely accurate in star locations, as I may have unknowingly put a star position at one end of the Federation and another at the other end when the Enterprise had visited both within a few episodes in the second season, for instance. But to plot the Enterprise's movements, other fleet deployments, all dialogue and references since Trek began would be near to impossible, and infinitely laborious, and at the end of the day would not be consistent, as the creators have not always adhered to a completely strict geographic structure -this is why such a map doesn't exist, it would be too hard to create one that is true to all occurrences that have been described or mentioned. But I've had a crack at it, and this is the result, but it may be altered, amended and improved in detail over time, so this is not the final, definitive version. Also, there may well be other sites out there with similar maps which, if they adhere to the same canon knowledge, will be quite similar, but all the same this is my version, and although enhanced is based on my old design from two years ago.

Another thing that's incorrect, which is relatively canon is that the Neutral Zones are about 1 light year think, but I've configured the general imagined shape a lot wider, because a single light year is too thin, and wouldn't show up at this scale. One largely unknown factor involves the general positions of the certainly prominent systems of Ferenginar and Breen, and to some extent the location of the Tzenkethi system. We have no idea where these are located, so this map just provides a generalized representation. The 'Tzenkethi' were only mentioned in DS9's 'The Adversary', but seemed as though it is a significant power. The Defiant was on a course for Tzenketh in the episode, so one would imagine that it's fairly close to Deep Space Nine, but it isn't that close in this map. If new information crops up regarding the Tzenkethi, Ferengi and Breen, I shall amend the map accordingly...