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")
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, which is a white supergiant about 300 lightyears away..
According to Star Trek: Star Charts (p. 65) and the Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library ("Federation Historical Highlights, 2161-2385"). the Canopus (Alpha Carinae) system was located in the Beta Quadrant. The primary was a F-class star.
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 (3rd ed., p. 83) stated that this red supergiant star was used as a navigational reference by Voyager series probes and other NASA spacecraft.
See also
External links
- Canopus at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
- Canopus at Wikipedia
- Canopus at the Internet Stellar Database