The Alpha Interstellar Chart

[Astrocartician]

One thing I would suggest is finding some way to make z=0 stand out. Perhaps you should colour the contour lines on that plane red or (or some other colour that makes it more visible the centre).

I planned to do something with the z=0 line. It does need to stand out a bit. I am going to do more work on the chart this weekend. That is, if I get a chance.

[Astrocartician]

I have added more labels on the elevation lines. This might make it easier to differentiate them. I am still undecided about changing the color of the elevation lines. I kind of like them all black. If I changed them, I was thinking of going with shades of gray. My thought was that making the stars the only objects with color allowed them to stand out from the rest of the map. What do you guys think?

[hubbardmapworks]

i can visualize this map made in ArcScene....lifted up in 3-D. would be really clean using some 3-D modeling. cool map though. i agree with some of the above replies - the square planes distract from the star (round) shapes, and some more color coding is needing to establish better hierarchy of the planes. maybe deepen the colors of the stars too, to make them stand out more....?

[Astrocartician]

I changed the black lines to grayscale shades. The top line is 20% black and goes to 70% on the bottom most. I think the stars stand out more and the lines are differentiated a little better. I still need to do the star details.

[Locution]

I can appreciate the work that went into this but it is far beyond my feeble intellect.

[hubbardmapworks]

like it!
i had a vision of another way,
have the stacked light years with color star symbols on top, but each star coming up from it's own small stack. i think square would look fine for this, just thinner stacks eminating up, and angled a little to see the step-up thing you have going.
the background image they eminate up from could be a margin-to-margin image of their relative postion to each other from some perspective...does that make sense?
i.e...do all the stars have to be 'planed' together across the area there?

[someguy]

OK, call me thick, but i just don't get it.

[euio]

Much better! The only change I might make would be making higher, rather than lower, lines darker.

[Astrocartician]

OK, call me thick, but i just don't get it.

It is an elevation map. This link is to a pdf file that shows part of a book called Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte. If you go to page 6 you will see a beautifull elevation map. It is this map that first inspired me to think of using elevation lines for star charts. The lines on that map shows height from the lowest level to the top most. In the case of my chart, the difference is that the start level is at the top of the map. So, you are looking at depth as you would in a sea depth chart.

[Astrocartician]

like it!
i had a vision of another way,
have the stacked light years with color star symbols on top, but each star coming up from it's own small stack. i think square would look fine for this, just thinner stacks eminating up, and angled a little to see the step-up thing you have going.
the background image they eminate up from could be a margin-to-margin image of their relative postion to each other from some perspective...does that make sense?

I believe I understand part of your idea- It would look like an isometric type map except instead of line ascenders it would have small square planes seen at an angle under the star symbols. As for the background image, I can't quite picture what you have in mind. Perhaps you could make a small drawing with 3 or 4 stars to show me.

i.e...do all the stars have to be 'planed' together across the area there?

I put stars on the same plane to show that they were at a similar height as well as to not crowd the chart with too many lines. If you notice, some stars have dotted lines around them. These lines show the exact level of each star by the distance it is from the solid lines. When the chart is finished, each star system will have a dotted line around it.