ST Should there be nebulas, black holes, planets with different gravity/atmospheres, etc.?

Granted. But there's just something about that vacuous field of stars that serves so perfectly well as the backdrop for Star Wars. Leave the visible nebulae in Star Trek. And in Star Wars video games, that's okay too.

Shoot I admit it, I wouldn't even really mind seeing a nebula in a Star Wars movie either, as long as we get hyperspace starstreaks.

 

Ever notice how when some group or organization doesn't want to be found, they always hide out on some planet, in some star system?

The Hoth system, the Endor system, Dantooine, Yavin IV, Mustafar etc.

Just for once, I'd love to see a smart org forego planets and star systems - those little islands in the endless cosmic ocean where others may come to look for you - and simply hide in deep interstellar space itself. In the depths of the fathomless voids that lie between the stars, in the eternal night far from any sun, where you can't even see a ship in front of your face, except by its occultation of background stars... in such places one could avoid those seeking them for a long time indeed. With vast space habitats forming a base of operations, rather than planets... O'Neil cylinder type space stations miles long, with large populations, lit and heated by their own internal fusion reactors, a faction could operate perfectly well from deep space, and never be found.

 

The ESB storybook had a nebula rather than a galaxy as the backdrop for the last scene.

 

100,000,000,000,000 stars. Pick one. That is why a small rag-tag group of rebels picks one system. In layman's terms 1/1,000,000,000,000. Those are damned good odds you will not be found.

 

I didn't think it was a galaxy in the background, too close and small for something supposedly immensely large. I took it as a forming solar system, where the planets are still forming from the planetary disk around the star.

 

Later sources clarified that it was the SW galaxy- with the Rebels having assembled above the galactic plane. I think commentary for The Empire Strikes Back, might have done so as well.

 

Um, but if you were in space wouldn't you be able to see it? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reason we can't see them from Earth is due to atmospheric interference and their great distance from us?

 

Great distance is part of it- another is light conditions (our colour cells are poor at night). That's why bright visible to the eye- like the Orion Nebula- look greenish rather than reddish- even seen through binoculars or a medium-sized telescope.

On the ESB scene- I've checked, and it's the commentary for the 2004 DVD release that calls the object a galaxy, according to Wookieepedia.

 

Yet they always seem to go to planets/moons with the same gravity and atmosphere as Earth...

They were deep into space, far away from the center of the galaxy. That was definitely their galaxy. Compare to these other galaxy pictures:

 

Yup- the main problem was things moved- and that can be put down to artistic licence.

 

There is a big problem with it being the galaxy. If you watch it you can actually see the thing spinning!

For reference: At the distance of our solar system from the galactic core - about 25,000 LY, half way out from galactic center to the outer rim (of the Milky Way), we orbit the galactic core once every 220 million years. The last time we were at the point in the sun's galactic orbit that we are now - one galactic year ago - Pangaea was just beginning to break up, and the first of the dinosaurs were roaming.

It couldn't even be an accretion disc around a birthing star system, because it still would take weeks to months to see any rotational motion in the disc, to the naked eye, from that distance.

It's more likely something tightly wound and very fast moving. Oddly enough, a feeding black hole is a distinct possiblity.

 

To the OP: Haran elek!

I definitely would like to see nebulae showing up in the ST. There are in fact plenty of nebulae depicted in various SW works, and it would be a shame if they didn't show at least one during the course of the new trilogy. I'm all for astronomical and celestial eyecandy wherever it can be found!

It would also be neat to see some exotic creatures that can survive the vacuum of space flying around, like these neebray mantas in the Kaliida Nebula:



Also, yes to black holes and planets with varying gravities and atmospheres, which can add a greater sense of realism, so long as they are shown to be integral to the story in some way. I like the idea of battles taking place in a low-gravity environment, for example. And space battles near the event horizon of a black hole would truly be awesome to behold!

 

Artistic licence- like stars moving by the Enterprise- when it would have to be going hundreds of thousands of times the speed of light to get that effect.

 

I would not mind seeing something like a planet that orbits and active black hole but is mostly there for background.

 

And don't forget asteroid fields! (which in real life, have their asteroids very far apart from each other)

Agreed with most here: some of this stuff would be cool to get more diversity in settings, but they shouldn't ever be part of the plot.

 

Actually the hubble telescope colorizes everything it sees, which allows us to visualize the shape and composition of such phenomena from long range. Whether or not they can be perceived up close, we would have to get up close to one to find out. They almost certainly would not look like cast splotches of magnificent color.

In fact, you technically aren't even able to see distant stars while in deep space; starlight is only visible with the naked eye when it hits our atmosphere, making our night sky essentially a telescope lense.

Far freakin' out, huh?

 

Denser ones that ours do exist- but they tend to be part of very young star systems.

Not true- the Apollo astronauts used stars in their navigation- without telescopes.

 

I agree. If these phenomena are incorporated into the plot as a "cheap trick" or gimmick then yeah, t's like Trek. I believe they went into a Nebula in one of the movies as well as had a gravity outage. If it's incorporated as background, atmosphere etc... then I'm fine with it. SW has never been about explaining the science behind things (aside from Midichlorians) it's just presumed that everyone knows all about it. The galaxy (GL's universe) has achieved light speed and therefore scientific knowledge is a given.

 

^This. As much as I love Trek, subspace fields, graviton emissions and temporal anomalies have no place in Star Wars. A black hole? Fine. But please don't call it a quantum singularity. A Nebula? Sure, but don't have an aside explaining it. It's just a pretty space cloud that serves as a cool backdrop for action or dramatic events. Even in Trek the technobabble became incredibly overbearing. It's like the writers desperately wanted you to believe that they were smart by throwing as many long theoretical physics words at the audience as possible without any regard for their actual meaning. When a plot is resolved by a writer putting "[tech] the [tech]" into a script, you know you have problems. It was often a crutch for Trek, and it absolutely shouldn't be in Wars. If anything it should veer to the fantastic than the scientific.

 

^which is what I'm suggesting.

 

Not that dense, I don't think. The Star Wars asteroid field is several million times denser than our own. Even the debris fields of Alderaan or Sernpidal wouldn't last very long before coalescing back into larger bodies.

 

I'm just not sure about this. This could be one of things where Star Wars could become "improved" enough into not really BEING Star Wars anymore. The other six films have generally stayed with basic black space (and basic black NEVER goes out of fashion), and if there's any astronomical phenomena beyond that, it usually becomes a plot point, as in "our heroes must cross the treacherous Kaliida Nebula to reach their goal" or "our heroes must get past dangerous solar flares from a dying star to escape the Imperial forces" or "our heroes must avoid destruction within the trail of a comet to reach Republic space." I certainly have no problem with nebulae, black holes, gas giants, red giant stars, quasars and the like, but they have to be used as plot points or they're not special. To go beyond that, to have these things just for the sake of having them, is to risk doing what Star Wars typically NEVER does, and that's to just linger on something for too long because it's pretty to look at. A proper Star Wars film never lingers; it KEEPS MOVING.

 

Different colored suns would be cool, though. A solar system with a dying red sun hasn't been used, yet...I think. A solar system with a blue sounds really cool, too.

 

That and how quickly the Falcon moves across it as it flies away, it's clearly not galactic in size.

I still say it's a newly born star with it's planetary disk in the process of planet forming.





So, the fact that you actually see it spin (a galaxy is so large, the spin would not be noticeable from deep space outside of the galaxy), and the fact that the Falcon flies right past it pretty quickly (not flying to it, PAST it)... no way can it be a Galaxy.

 

You can see stars when in orbit, so you should be able to see stars in deep space as well.

The thing with Nebulae though, the only reason the Hubble can see it for the most part is due to LONG exposure times. By having the shutter open longer, more of the miniscule amounts of light are able to get in, thus you are enhancing the reality via over-exposure.