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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Can Leia still sadly gander at Alderaan through her telescope?

Discussion in 'Classic Trilogy' started by LottDodd, Mar 29, 2011.

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  1. LottDodd

    LottDodd Jedi Master star 4

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    Oct 4, 2002
    Assuming that while hyperdrives alow the denziens of a GFFA to travel faster than light, the distances between worlds still has to be immense. If our nearest stellar neighbor in our own galaxy is about eight light years away, we can assume the same distances apply in Star Wars. So it is likely that Courascant and Alderaan may be thirty or more light years away from each other.
    So if she gazes out her window at night, depending where she is in the galaxy, she could look up and see Alderaan's star, and if she had some powerful Telescope (A Macroscope, or something else Star Warsy) she may be able to see Alderaan itself, still orbiting, it's inhabbitents blissfully unaware that they all died more than thirty years ago.
    On that point, What with astrogation nessescary to jump through the starlanes, distances must be unerringly precise. So someone must be able to chart that it is exactly 23 light years, 8 light months, 6 light days, 14 light hours, and 32 light seconds from Duros (Or wherever) to Alderaan. So if she really wanted to, she could travel to Duros at said time, and watch the destruction of her world all over again.
     
  2. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
    That sort of thing was touched on in the NJO. In one of the books (I think it was Star By Star), Han is sitting 3 light years away from a star, introspectively realizing that the light from that star was created over 3 years ago. He wanted to ride that ray of light back to its source, back to a time when Chewbacca was still alive.
     
  3. Darth_Nub

    Darth_Nub Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Apr 26, 2009
    Or someone could force her to.

    Using the basic laws of physics as an instrument of torture? That's not actually a bad idea for an EU baddie to use on Alderaanian refugees...
     
  4. LottDodd

    LottDodd Jedi Master star 4

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    Oct 4, 2002
    By the same token, you could celebrate the destruction of the two Death Stars over Yavin and Endor... If you were amongst the faction that would celebrate the fall of the Empire.
     
  5. Dark Lady Mara

    Dark Lady Mara Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 1999
    From some planets, she can use her super-macro-scope to sadly gaze at the facial expressions of people on her idyllic homeworld who don't yet know their fate.

    From others, she can use her macro-scope to gaze at tiny pieces of dust from it. ;)
     
  6. DarthIktomi

    DarthIktomi Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 11, 2009
    Not just Alderaanian refugees. You can use it to remind Kyp of Carida, and how evil he can be.

    Which...actually, if I lived in the GFFA, I would probably point to that star every time I saw Kyp.
     
  7. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    You would need telescopes the size of worlds when it comes to being lightyears away. For thousands or tens of thousands of lightyears you'd need telescopes arrays euqal to the orbits of planets(with millions of moon-sized telescopess arrayed in an orbit equal to Pluto you could take th epicture of a face from about 70,000 ly). Given the ability to make large things like Death Stars it should not be too hard. One could watch the entie SAGA from far enough out with a large enough telescope.

    Now that I type all that I just remebered this past year that our own Sun has a focal point at a distance of 550 AU. A good sized telescope at that distance would have images magnified by many orders of magnitude so you might not need orbit sized telescopes.
     
  8. LottDodd

    LottDodd Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 4, 2002
    Theese people have the technology to jump "Small Moons" Hundreds of light years away in a matter of days, if not hours.... I'm pretty sure they have telescopic technology of equally impressive, if implausible, capabillities.
     
  9. DarthIktomi

    DarthIktomi Jedi Padawan star 4

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    May 11, 2009
    Eh? Hubble's not the size of a world, and it can see distant galaxies.
     
  10. Daft-Vader

    Daft-Vader Chosen One star 8

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    Aug 6, 2008
    True...

    But have you ever seen a single planet in that Galaxy with Hubble?
     
  11. LottDodd

    LottDodd Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 4, 2002
    Nor has Hubble ever projected real-time holographic conversations across hundreds of lightyears with only a few crackles of static.....

    The Technology Argument is Moot.... Star Wars has technologies that have no real world equivlant, and many of them, according to basic physics as we know them, are impossible regaurdless. And Unlike Star Trek, and some of the more Crunchy Sci-Fi, Star Wars does not try to explain it's tech with logic.

    For example: How does Cloud City work? This small (and so rinky-dink an operation the mining guilds don't even pay attention to it) mining colony is a huge city.... larger than the Executor many, many times over, and unlike a naturally evolving city, most, if not all, of the structure would have to be complete prior to the founding (at an astronomical budget most competing companies would raise there eyebrows at). Would it have been built in orbit and then moved into place by giant tugs? (They'd have to be far bigger than star destroyers) Does the city have sublight drives it used to park itself? Or were it's massive repulserlift fields in place as it was constructed in the thin band of oxegen atmosphere in Bespin's endless clouds?
    If the engineers of that galaxy can make Cloud City unremarkable and boring, if you can take a one seat vehicle not much bigger than a station wagon and rocket it to the other side of the galaxy in a few hours... then you are just going to have to accept that they have Telescopes that work somewhat better than the pollished mirrors of Hubble.... Heck we have better telescopes than Hubble, ones that can detect earth-sized planets in distant solar systems... We have yet to get visable-light photos of these planats, but we earthlings will figure out a way to take a snapshot of a distant planet whithin the next fifty years. The GFFA has had 30,000 + years of interstellar travel to figure these little trifling scientifc quandries out... Earth has only had written language for 4,00 or so years... forgive us if we have a little catching up to do....
     
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