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Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :

Astronomy
Centuries ago, the Arab astronomers named a bright star in Orion Riji Jauzah al Yusra', "The Left Leg of the Central One", or, in our language, Rigel. This star is a bright blue-white giant approximately 770 plus/minus 150 light years from Earth. Orbiting this giant of a star, there are two smaller, less bright stars.

Star Trek
In Star Trek, the Beta Orionis system has been called the Rigel System. This system is home to three species and lies near to the heart of the Federation. A list of known worlds-
1. Rigel 2. "Shore Leave"
2. Rigel 3. "All Good Things..."
3. Rigel 4. "Wolf in the Fold", "Half a Life", "The Wire", "Prodigal Daughter".
4. Rigel 5. "Journey to Babel".
5. Rigel 7. "The Cage", "The Passenger"
6. Rigel 12. "Mudd's Woman"

The new world-
7. Rigel 10. "Broken Bow". Source: TrekToday.

Posted by Michael_T (Member # 144) on :

Didn't a Trek episode mention that there are 12 planets in the Rigel system?

Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :

Didn't they ask Rick Sternbach to calculate how many planets a ship could reach with Warp 4? They should have noticed that Rigel is far beyond this range. Of course, Rigel has been undeliberately included in many episodes, but the error doesn't get better by perpetuating it. And why did they have to invent still another planet in the Rigel system? Aren't six Class-M worlds already five too many?

Posted by mrneutron (Member # 524) on :

Rigel itself is a lousy candidate for having habitable planets, being it's a "blue supergiant," a fairly hot star with a surface temperature (11,000 Kelvin) about double that of our Sun. If it's invisible ultraviolet radiation is considered, the luminosity climbs to 66,000 solar, the radiation pouring from a star 70 times that of our sun (ouch!). Blue stars have very short lifespans (cosmicly speaking)...probably not enough to develop habitable planets with developed ecosystems (see "Habitable Planets for Man", by Stephen H. Dole), and the radiation and other factors make this even more unlikely.

Rigel is accompanied by a pair of class B main sequence stars, at a distance at least 50 times farther than Pluto is from the Sun. Again, B class stars are too short-lived for habitable planets.

My guess would be that the planets they refer to are around other stars (F G or K classes) that are in the general vicinity of the Rigel "neighborhood". The "suburbs" if you will.

Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :

Or, alternately, they are all artificial. In which case it would make sense for all of them to be habitable as well. Perhaps each is tailored to a different species, including one that could enjoy the harsh conditions we saw on Rigel XII? Or perhaps the artificial worlds aren't all that stable, which is why XII has those nasty storms?

It could also be that interstellar travel will give us enough of a triangulation base to reveal that there are actually several stars directly between us and Beta Orionis. Those could be subsequently named "Rigel" as well. That sort of ignorance would require 20th-21st century and earlier astronomy on Trek Earth to be LESS advanced than in the real world, though, even though generally the space technology of Trek is MORE advanced than in the real world.

In any case, I'm all for having each and every one of the Rigel planets be class M. One is pseudo-plausible, two would be stretching it, but we already have confirmation for at least four humanoid-habitable planets. So there must be a *mechanism* behind this, not just random occurrences.

If one doesn't want to believe in artificial planets, then one could say that the star has captured hundreds of planetary bodies in its later days, and a dozen of them inhabit the *very wide* life belt around the star. For some reason, there are no planets inside of the belt (save, perhaps, for Rigel I which so far hasn't been identified as class M), but there could be plenty of dead worlds outside it.

Timo Saloniemi

Posted by Mr. Christopher (Member # 71) on :

I think it's one of the staples of fandom that the Rigel system was created by some ancient, powerful alien race which then populated the system with different species. I forget which RPG it is, though. First of Two probably knows.

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :

"It could also be that interstellar travel will give us enough of a triangulation base to reveal that there are actually several stars directly between us and Beta Orionis."

And, somehow, their proper motions are just exactly right to have kept them perfectly aligned ovee the hundreds of years that humans have been studying astronomy? I doubt it.

I've just had a thought... What if some of these planets, rather than being around Beta Orionis, are actually around Alpha Centauri (also known as "Rigil Kentaurus")? This would especially make a hell of a lot more sense for the ENT reference...