Homework got the better of me, but here are the Celestia results of “How Close is the Cylon Basestar” (in the Ties that Bind Thread .
After much zooming around within Celestia, Orion doesn’t change much at all in about a 25 light year radius around Earth…with the exception of one star at the “bowgrip” of Orion’s handle, π3 Ori, which is 26ly from Earth.
So where are the Cylons? Dunno, I was too busy fawning over Boomer to notice where Orion’s handle star was in the cutaway scene. But that star seems to be the key to any junior woodchuck astronavigators who wish to narrow it down further
So it looks as though the Cylons are in a very narrow band because we know they have to be coming in head-on to Orion. But they seem to still have a little distance to go to finally find Earth.
It’s interesting to me just how far away some of those stars are, I’m fascinated by the picture at π3 Ori. I never would have expected Orion to look like that from that distance! Another thing I find interesting is that if the Cylons are closer to the position in your picture at 40LY, then the sun should be visible in the constellation (in the show).
Good point about the sun…so based on this I would guess that the image from the show is on a vector to Pi3 Ori, since the position of that star is in its proper relative place, but far enough away that Sol’s apparant magnitude (whose absolute magnitude is far less than any of the Orion stars) makes it unapparent in the haze of the nebula where that basestar is in…
…which means we now need to look for catalogued nebulae that are in the near-direct opposite direction of Orion. No wonder Starbuck is freaking out with her star charts.
Ooh…I’ve also uncovered another key piece of information…
"I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. "
Could Roy Batty have actually witnessed the recent Cylon civil war “off the shoulder of Orion”? This places the time of events in the near near future after the Offworld Colony exodus in Blade Runner…which then would mean…
