40 Eridani A

40 Eridani A is the primary of the 40 Eridani system. This system is located in the Sector 001, or Sol, sector, which is a region of space in the Alpha Quadrant.

The system orbiting this star is home to the Federation's 40 Eridani A Starfleet Construction Yards, building place of the starships Brattain and Phoenix. (TNG: "The Wounded", "Night Terrors" dedication plaques)

Appendices

Appearances

• USS Phoenix's dedication plaque made for TNG: "The Wounded"
• USS Brattain's dedication plaque made for TNG: "Night Terrors"

Background information

It has never been canonically established that 40 Eridani A is the location of Vulcan, but it has been a popular piece of information throughout licensed works and fandom. The reference has worked its way into a number of background graphics and artwork, for example, the dedication plaques listing the fleet construction shipyards there. References to this star system as Vulcan's date back to James Blish's adaptation of "Tomorrow is Yesterday" in the book Star Trek 2, as well as a mention in the Star Fleet Technical Manual which Franz Josef Schnaubelt researched and compiled. On-screen statements of Vulcan being 16 light years away from Earth in "Home" and "Daedalus" also support 40 Eridani A as the location of Vulcan.

In 1991, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, along with three scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, endorsed 40 Eridani A as Vulcan's primary (rather than Epsilon Eridani, which is occasionally misidentified as Vulcan's primary) stating, in part: "We prefer the identification of 40 Eridani as Vulcan's sun because of what we have learned about both stars at Mount Wilson ... based on the history of life on Earth, life on any planet around Epsilon Eridani would not have had time to evolve beyond the level of bacteria. On the other hand, an intelligent civilization could have evolved over the aeons on a planet circling 40 Eridani. So the latter is the more likely Vulcan sun." [1]

The Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual also references the Vulcan species as "Homo eridani."

Star Trek: Star Charts

According to the Star Trek: Star Charts, the 40 Eridani (Omicron 2 Ceti) system is located in the Vulcan Sector (Sector 005), Beta Quadrant. This is a trinary star system, and the orbital period for this system is 248 years.

• 40 Eridani A: This star is classified as a K1V star with an absolute magnitude of 6.0. This system has three planets and an asteroid belt. One of these three planets (planet II, called Vulcan) is inhabitable, and has no moon."The Man Trap" But the other two, visible only in daytime, both vaguely resemble moons from the surface of planet II and have sometimes been mistaken for moons.
• 40 Eridani B: The secondary star is classified as a AVII star with an absolute magnitude of 11.2. The distance between Eridani A and B is 400 astronomical units.
• 40 Eridani C: The tertiary star is classified as a M4V star with an absolute magnitude of 12.3. Neither Eridani B nor C has any planets. The distance between Eridani B and C is 44 astronomical units.

Two thousand years ago, 40 Eridani A was a destination on the Debrune trade routes. On his final voyage, in 2120, Zefram Cochrane visited this system. In the mid-22nd century, 40 Eridani A was a destination on the Earth trade routes. (Pages 19, 36, 45, 58, & 60)

External links

• 40 Eridani at Wikipedia
• NASA: The Search for Spock's Home
• Omicron² Eridani at the Internet Stellar Database
• Template:NCwiki