The Hint Thread!

[Greason Wolfe]

Well, technically speaking, I think our sun is considered to be a dwarf star as opposed to a giant. So it wouldn't necessarily have to be a brown or white dwarf only to fulfill the dwarf suggestion

[July Finn]

Reading the clues I also guess Solar System. Good clues, very fun!

[XCali]

I guess map a galaxy.

[jshoer]

Both brown dwarfs and red giants could host planets. The Sun will eventually expand into a red giant at the end of its life, which will take its surface radius out to somewhere around the orbit of the Earth -- but the outer planets, Mars, and maybe Earth would still survive. Under very different conditions, of course.

Many extrasolar planets have already been discovered around brown dwarfs, red dwarfs, a couple stars much bigger than the Sun, and even neutron stars. There is a full archive of known and confirmed exoplanets here: https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/

For mappers looking for a shortcut to parsing that database, there's also http://www.hzgallery.org/index.html

A final fun fact: JRR Tolkien didn't like the spelling 'elfs' or 'dwarfs' in his epic, so he introduced 'elves' and 'dwarves' for his fantasy peoples. So when talking about stars, the spelling would be 'dwarfs.'

[Diamond]

FEBRUARY 2023 CHALLENGE #4

We used to have nine, now we only have eight.

[Redrobes]

Map a planet then. We lost Pluto.

[XCali]

Yup, I'm think you got it. I'm on the map a planet bandwagon too.

[Diamond]

That will be the last clue for the February challenge. Ponder carefully, guess early and often. The winner will be announced when I post the challenge on Feb 1st.

[Azélor]

It is in the habitable zone but doesn't have to be habitable

[jshoer]

I think it's "map a habitable star system." I don't think all those ingredients have been put together yet...