Help! Notable locations for "local" space opera setting

[Phantasm]

I'm working on a setting with a fairly heavily settled region roughly 20 lightyears around Sol, and a frontier that runs from 35 to 50 lightyears. (FTL travel is available, hyperspace travel at 1 lightyear per week; FTL communications is limited to one lightyear per nine months, so news travels quicker by courier than radio.)

What I need now are some points of interest in the region. Planets, moons, notable asteroids, Kuiper Belt Objects, Oort Cloud Objects, O'Neill Colonies, Stanford Toruses (Torii?), stuff like that. Only caveat is that Garden and Ocean planets must be in the "comfort zones" around K, G, and F type stars (orange dwarfs to yellow-white sub-giants).

Here are three of the places I've got so far:

Ishtar Station – An O'Neill Colony located in the L5 (trailing Lagrange Point) of Venus, this station is known for its large population of genetically-engineered SPANCs.

New Detroit – An industrial colony in the Epsilon Indi system, originally settled as a company town run by General Motors Corporation, New Detroit is the leading manufacturer of civilian and military spacecraft and after-market modification parts.

Valeria – Originally just an agricultural planet in the Omicron (2) Eridani system, with carbon-based megafauna that has proven edible by both Humans and K'Hissh, Valeria has also begun mining operations of iron, titanium, and aluminum.

[robkelk]

Beta Hydri is the closest Class IV star to Sol (IIRC), and it's only 24.4 light years away. Not a place to settle for the long-term - who knows when it'll go nova - but a scientific station would be apropos.

Unless you're Marooned in Realtime <wink>, you might be interested in Gatewood, the planet orbiting Lalande 21185 (a mere 8.3 light years from Sol). It's a lovely vacation spot, with beautiful red (and infrared, for those with eyes that see in that spectrum) foliage everywhere drawing in every erg of energy it can catch from the red drawf star that the planet orbits. The views are very romantic, but get an experienced tour guide to show you around or you'll miss all the best sights.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Beta Hydri is the closest Class IV star to Sol (IIRC), and it's only 24.4 light years away.

Why should luminosity class of IV be exceptionally significant? Sol is a G2V. Class IV stars are subgiants and are larger than main sequence stars.

Not a place to settle for the long-term - who knows when it'll go nova

It won't, only white dwarfs nova.

[thrash]

Barnard's Star has the fastest motion relative to the local standard of rest of any (known) star in your range. I seem to remember that there was a paper speculating that it might be an interloper from outside the Milky Way. In a space opera setting, it could be the home of the Ancient Beings from Outside the Galaxy -- or their incomprehensible ruins.

[Astromancer]

A Big Dumb Object might be fun. Choose a star about the limit of your setting and place something there. A ringworld, a "Culture Obital," a Dyson Sphere, whatever. It needs to be big enough to explore, and to have survivors and natives who don't know that they live in an artificial object.

Tribes of humans decended from people taken from ancient Earth optional.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

I'm working on a setting with a fairly heavily settled region roughly 20 lightyears around Sol, and a frontier that runs from 35 to 50 lightyears.

That is a volume that is general close enough to use real star catalogues (reasonably complete out to 35 light-years if you aren't interested in M-class junk), and there are some good maps available. Look at Winchell Chung's actual starmaps page. Winchell's HabHYG 50ly hab and HabHYG 20ly will probably be useful to you, and are free. It you are prepared to shell out a few bucks, Winchell has hard-copy poster maps available: the Nearest 100 Stars is close to your 20-lightyear sphere, but I recommend the 30 Light Years Map, which is much more legible as being printed on a white background. I got mine laminated, and store it flat, Blu-Tack®ed to the back of my study door. You might also like the Astrogator's Handbook: the standard edition goes out to 25 light-years, and the electronic version is a free download. (The De Luxe Edition goes out to 75 light-years, and hard-copy in a binder cost me only $30 plus postage.)

What I need now are some points of interest in the region. Planets, moons, notable asteroids, Kuiper Belt Objects, Oort Cloud Objects, O'Neill Colonies, Stanford Toruses (Torii?), stuff like that.

When you say "points of interest", do you mean to include points of scientific interest (such as, say, Sirius), or only what we might call "points of social interest", i.e. habitats and artifacts?

Only caveat is that Garden and Ocean planets must be in the "comfort zones" around K, G, and F type stars (orange dwarfs to yellow-white sub-giants).

1. I don't understand why Ocean planets (in the sense GURPS Space uses it, anyway) should not be found elsewhere, e.g. orbiting class A stars but doomed in a timespan too short to expect a [natural] oxygen catastrophe.
2. Are you not interested in planets that have come tantalisingly close to being settlement candidates? I understand that with an open frontier there is no economic justification for terraformation, but such worlds would be of scientific interest.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Why should luminosity class of IV be exceptionally significant? Sol is a G2V. Class IV stars are subgiants and are larger than main sequence stars.

That's exactly why it's significant: It's the closest non-main-sequence, non-dwarf star to Sol. Astronomers are going to want to study it "up close and personal."

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by robkelk

That's exactly why it's significant: It's the closest non-main-sequence, non-dwarf star to Sol. Astronomers are going to want to study it "up close and personal."

Ah, I understand.

[Astromancer]

Some Red Dwarfs are theorized to have habitalble planets. These would be close and tide-locked. Toss an interesting alien ecosphere into the mix anywhere you've got a nice Red Dwarf. (Guy from Liverpool arguing with an Uplifted Cat, an Android, and a Hologram, optional).

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Some Red Dwarfs are theorized to have habitalble planets. These would be close and tide-locked.

Also windy, dimly-lit, subject to pronounced (40%) variation in insolation owing to the sunspot cycle, and occasionally subject to intense solar wind from large coronal mass ejections. Any habitable planet of a red dwarf would certainly be an interesting place.

Before you settle on a red dwarf as primary for a habitable planet, make sure it is not a flare star or other variable!