Hey now....great map!

BEB

Love your maps! This one is even better than the last, especially the side view orbit thing.

It's especially nice to see since another mapper listed Three Hills as a central planet. I always thought it was a rim moon, and that's what it is in my fanfic, so seeing it as a central planet... well, it kind of hurts my pride, ya know?

There's no canon info on the location of Three Hills, but I'm with you in thinking it sounds more like a border/rim planet than a central one...

Woah someone did some reasearch. Way to obsess!

Shiny! What about the moon names?

whoa... good map

dog1300: The planet name is in bold, and includes habitable planets, gas giants, etc. The moon names are the smaller text below the planet name. I have just included the names of known habitable moons, but there may be many other moons (habitable and non-habitable). I didn't name the two innermost planets on the map (in the uninhabitable zone, too close to the sun) and there may be other planets beyound Miranda...

Cool map.

If it's not too geeky, I wanted to ask how you arrived at these orbital positions and the placement of specific worlds (ie. why Harvest and Whittier have oblique orbits). Really, teriffic job, though.

I'm also working on a map which assumes a single star:
http://www.fireflyfans.net/bluesun.aspx?bid=9094

DONTKISSEMONTHEMOUTH (great name!):

It's not too geeky at all. And I like your map, which I somehow missed. You have a real eye for graphic design. It looks very much like something from the Firefly universe...

What I did was make a table with all known planets and moons, using both canon information, as well as semi-official sources like the roleplaying game and the "Worlds of the Alliance" chart. I noted which ones were confirmed moons and which were confirmed planets.

Then I broke them down by region: central, border and rim. Note that I don't entirely agree with the RPG that the border and rim are separate areas, as those terms seem to be used interchangably in the TV show, but I stuck with it for purposes of the map.

Then, I just filled in the gaps with the planet names for which we had no information (like Harvest and Whittier). I threw in several gas giants and dead planets, simply because from the way they talked on the show most people on the rim lived on moons, not planets.

I used the teacher's map from the movie as the basis of my map, like you seemed to do. Note that to the left of the teacher's map are the names of six planets (Sihnon to Persephone, I believe) so I have placed those six planets in that order on my map.

There was some Alliance currency made for the movie that gives a little more info as well. The back of the bills shows six planets orbiting the star, one of the orbits at a very steep angle to the others. This means that there is probably at least one planet on an eccentric orbit, which doesn't show up on the teachers map. I am assuming that those six planets are the central planets, Liann Jiun through Harvest. The backs of the bills contain what seems to be the names of three planets, Sihnon and Londinium (which we heard about before as central planets) and Liann Jiun, which as a result I am assuming is also a central planet.

I have 23 orbital pathes on my map: the 20 from the teacher's map, the two eccentric orbits (not shown on the teacher's map, I am assuming) and Miranda.

I placed one more eccentric orbit on the map in addition to Harvest: Whittier. I decided it was Mr. Universe's world, since being off the plane of the system for much of it's orbit would mean that it had "line-of-sight" with most of the other planets and thus clear communications.

I noticed you made the planet furthest out into Burnham (with Miranda presumably in orbit), which is an interesting solution. For me, Burnham was just a geographical region, but there's no reason it couldn't also be a planet.

No I like that. I mean it makes sense in that Inara does specify a quadrant and not, say, a system.

Your process sounds very similar to the one I used (if a bit more methodical). I too broke things down according to Core:Border:and Frontier worlds. Just with the number of planets listed in the Visual Companion there's got to be a lot of moons going on.

I've been playing very fast and loose with "planets" and "moons". I'm assuming they're at least somewhat interchangeable where a planet would tend to be larger or better developed and calling someplace a moon might be a put-down or refer to it's actual status orbiting another planetary body.

It's all terribly confusing (as though there wasn't some grand design, and this was all left a little vague so as to allow the writers to focus on story or some crazy notion like that). Anyway keep up the good work and I'm delighted to see another talented mapper going with the single star idea. Let me know if you're looking for any feedback.

I agree that the terms "moons" and "planets" could be used very loosely in the show. I'd be a little more inclined to leave named moons as moons, but the word "planet" is vague enough that it could refer to just about anything.

I'm not sure, but I think that chart in the Visual Companion shows both moons and planets, not just planets, but I don't have it at hand to check.

Interestingly, the chart has "border moons", a term used in the TV pilot, as a specific location, but I think that term was just referring to all the moons and or/planets out on the border, not a particular place.

Mal mentioned (in a deleted scene from Our Mrs Reynolds) that there "are more than 70 earths", while the movie of course talks about "dozens of planets and hundreds of moons". For me, the first line refers to habitable, terraformed, earth-like planets/moons, while the second line includes uninhabitable worlds (gas giants, planets too close/too far from the sun, dead moons, etc.).