Canopus

Location of Canopus III on "The Explored Galaxy"

Canopus was a star.

In 2267, USS Enterprise helmsman Hikaru Sulu used Canopus as a reference point to plot the location of the Enterprise after it was flung five hundred parsecs by the Metrons. (TOS: "Arena")

In 2293, a planet orbiting this star, Canopus III, had its location in the Milky Way Galaxy labeled in the star chart "The Explored Galaxy", which was on display in Captain James T. Kirk's quarters aboard the USS Enterprise-A. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, okudagram)

Background

In the canonical Star Trek universe, Canopus and Alpha Carinae were depicted as two distinct stars, with their own solar systems. This was contrary to the real word universe, where Canopus and Alpha Carinae were the names for the same star.

According to Star Trek: Star Charts (pg. 65). Canopus (or Alpha Carinae) was a star located in the Canopus system. This system was located in or near Federation space, in the Beta Quadrant, in the late 24th century. The primary, Canopus, was a F-class star with a magnitude of -1, which was a hundred times brighter than Sol.

For Star Trek: First Contact, Alex Jaeger created a ship size comparison chart for Industrial Light & Magic. On this chart, one of the names considered for the Norway-class starship was the USS Canopus. [1]

The Star Trek Encyclopedia (2nd ed., p. 83) stated that this red supergiant star was used as a navigational reference by Voyager series probes and other NASA spacecraft.

External links

• Canopus at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• Canopus at Wikipedia
• Canopus at the Internet Stellar Database