Astrography: Key Regions, Systems, and Worlds

galaxy

Human civilization occupies a rough sphere approximately 50 light-years in radius centered on Sol. Within that volume sit roughly two thousand star systems. Fewer than a hundred have been surveyed in detail. Fewer still have permanent settlements. The rest are points of light on a navigation chart: catalogued, claimed on paper, and ignored.

Travel time governs everything. A standard freighter crosses hyperspace at roughly 0.6 light-years per day. Fast couriers and military vessels push 1.0–1.5. The tight-beam relay network carries data at five to ten times ship speed, which means news arrives days or weeks before the ships that made it. But still not fast enough to run an empire in real time. The further from Earth, the longer the lag, the thinner the oversight, the wider the margins for everyone operating in them.

See also: Interstellar Travel — jump drives, routes, and transit times.

Distance Tiers

Tier Distance from Sol Freighter Transit Character
Core ≤12 ly ≤20 days Earth and the oldest colonies. Dense corporate infrastructure. Heavy regulation. Surveillance everywhere.
Inner Colonies 12–25 ly 20–40 days Established economies, real cities. Corporate dominance is firm but not total. This is where most people live.
Outer Colonies 25–40 ly 40–65 days Thinner corporate presence. More local autonomy. More things going wrong.
Frontier 40–55 ly 65–90 days Edge of reliable shipping. Survey outposts, mining claims, research stations. Mail comes when it comes.

Beyond the frontier, individual survey ships and exploration missions have reached systems 80–100+ light-years out. These expeditions take months and return data that may be years old by the time anyone acts on it.

Settlement Types

Two centuries of expansion is not enough to terraform a planet. Human settlements take three forms, and most inhabited systems contain more than one:

Domed cities. Sealed, pressurized surface settlements on rocky worlds. The dome or arcology is the city. Outside is vacuum, toxic atmosphere, or air too thin to breathe. The corporation that built the dome owns the air inside it. Most colony populations live this way. Size ranges from research outposts housing a few hundred to major cities of several million under linked dome networks.

Orbital habitats. Stations, hab rings, and cylinder colonies in orbit around planets, moons, or stars. These can be placed in any system. Rocky planets are not required. A gas giant with minable atmosphere or a bare star with an asteroid belt can anchor an orbital economy. This means systems with no habitable worlds still host populations, as long as someone had a reason to build there. Orbitals range from single-module fuel depots to massive constructs housing hundreds of thousands.

Partial terraforming. A handful of the oldest Core colonies have been running atmosphere processors for over a century. On these worlds, select zones have breathable air and open sky. Walking outside without a mask is possible but geographically limited. Step outside the processed zone and you are back in a hostile environment. Full planetary terraforming remains theoretical at current technology levels. The open-air zones are corporate prestige projects and real estate for the wealthy. Everyone else still lives under a dome.

The practical consequence: the corporation that owns the settlement infrastructure owns the life-support system. Residents are tenants in the most literal sense. Labor disputes take on a different character when management controls the air pressure.

Core Systems (≤12 ly)

The oldest human settlements outside Sol. Shipping lanes are well-established, relay infrastructure is dense, and corporate presence is absolute. These systems are where the megacorporations have their deepest roots.

Sol

Distance: 0. Type: G2V. The origin. One star, eight planets, a species, and its sins.

Earth is a hive: fourteen billion people stacked in arcologies and sprawl, breathing filtered air, eating printed protein. The megacorporations are headquartered here. The UTCA keeps its offices here. Every power structure that matters has its roots in Sol, and every colony world sends its wealth back to feed them.

Mars hosts the oldest off-Earth domed cities. Some over two centuries old, with atmosphere processing that has made a few equatorial zones marginally breathable in good weather. The Belt is orbitals and mining platforms. The Jovian stations skim fuel from gas giant atmospheres and supply the freighter routes. The outer system is mostly automated.

Alpha Centauri

Distance: 4.4 ly (~7 days). Triple system: G2V (A), K1V (B), M5.5V (Proxima). The first system humanity reached. Three stars, at least three known planets.

Alpha Centauri is where humanity proved interstellar colonization was possible. And where the megacorporations proved they would control it. Two centuries of continuous development have made it the second-most-populated system in human space and the industrial spine of the Core.

Meridian Yards. The system’s defining feature. A complex of orbital shipyards in stable orbit around the A/B barycenter, Meridian is where roughly forty percent of humanity’s interstellar fleet was built. The Yards are a constellation of dry docks, fabrication platforms, materials processing stations, and worker habs strung across a hundred kilometers of orbital space. Three competing IPCs operate sections of the Yards under UTCA charter, and the rivalry between them is the engine that drives the local economy. Sabotage, espionage, and workforce poaching are constant. Contract disputes between yard operators have historically been settled by lawyers, but the less publicized disputes get settled by people who don’t file briefs.

Landfall. The primary surface settlement; a linked dome network on Proxima b. Population roughly 1.8 million. Landfall was the first extrasolar colony and carries the weight of that history in its architecture. The original hab modules are preserved as a heritage district at the city center, surrounded by two centuries of expansion rings. The outermost domes are modern corporate construction: efficient, sterile, interchangeable with any other colony city. The inner rings have character. Proxima’s flare activity requires heavy radiation shielding on all surface structures, and the domes are built to survive coronal mass ejections that would strip an unprotected settlement. The locals treat flare warnings the way coastal cities treat storms: routine until one isn’t.

Port Gagarin. A major orbital station at the Proxima-A/B transit point, serving as the system’s primary passenger and cargo hub. Named with the kind of aspirational branding that corporations love, Port Gagarin is in practice a transit chokepoint. Everything entering or leaving the system passes through its customs and docking infrastructure. The black market operates in the maintenance levels and cargo processing bays, where inspection coverage is thin and dock workers know which containers not to scan.

Runner work: Alpha Centauri is where the serious corporate espionage happens. The Meridian Yards make it the highest-value industrial target in human space: prototype ship systems, drive technology, military contracts, and classified construction projects for clients who don’t want their names on a manifest. Yard security is tight but the scale of operations means gaps exist. Fixers in Landfall’s inner rings broker jobs ranging from data extraction to physical sabotage of competitor yard sections. Port Gagarin’s transit volume makes it useful for smuggling anything that can be hidden in a shipping container. The UTCA maintains a permanent enforcement office in-system, which means runners who get burned here face real consequences. But the pay reflects the risk.

Barnard’s Star

Distance: 6.0 ly (~10 days). Type: M3.8V. Four confirmed rocky planets orbiting a dim red dwarf.

Wolf 359

Distance: 7.9 ly (~13 days). Type: M6.5V. Two confirmed planets.

Lalande 21185

Distance: 8.3 ly (~14 days). Type: M2V. Two planets including a super-Earth.

Sirius

Distance: 8.6 ly (~14 days). Type: A1V primary, DA2 white dwarf companion. No confirmed planets.

The brightest star in Earth’s sky. The white dwarf companion (Sirius B) makes the system astrophysically hostile to stable planetary orbits, but no rocky planets are needed when you build your own. Sirius Station is one of the largest orbital constructs in the Core: an industrial platform and waypoint on routes deeper into human space. No domes, no surface. Everything here floats.

Epsilon Eridani

Distance: 10.5 ly (~18 days). Type: K2V. One to two confirmed planets. Young system (~500 million years) with a prominent debris disk.

A K-type star: cooler, smaller, and longer-lived than Sol. The youth of the system means active geology and a planetary surface that is still settling. The debris disk complicates navigation in the outer system but contains the densest concentration of extractable rare-earth minerals in the Core. That disk is why people come here. Everything else about Epsilon Eridani is a consequence of the disk.

Anchorage. The main orbital habitat; population roughly 340,000. Anchored at the inner edge of the debris disk, Anchorage is a sprawling modular station that has been expanded continuously for over a century. A core of original colonial-era habs surrounded by bolted-on extensions, docking gantries, processing facilities, and ore refineries. The architecture is purely functional. Nothing here was built to look good. The station’s atmosphere smells of ozone and metal dust despite the scrubbers, and the background vibration of ore processing never fully stops.

Anchorage serves as the staging point for the belt miners: independent operators and small corporate crews who work claims in the debris disk. The disk is not a clean asteroid belt. Epsilon Eridani is young, and its debris field is dense, dynamic, and poorly mapped. Collisions are frequent. Navigation data goes stale fast. Miners work in short-rotation shifts, running extraction rigs on fragments that may not exist in the same orbit next year. The pay is good. The casualty rate is worse than any other civilian occupation in the Core.

Sinter. A domed surface settlement on the system’s inner rocky planet. Population approximately 120,000. The surface is geologically active: seismic events are routine, and the settlement’s foundation systems are engineered to flex rather than resist. Sinter exists because someone has to process the refined ore that comes down from Anchorage, and surface-based smelting is cheaper than orbital. The city runs hot. Thermal venting from the processing plants keeps the dome interior at temperatures that make other colonies feel temperate. Workers joke that Sinter doesn’t need heating. Just open a window toward the foundry district.

Three IPCs hold the major extraction charters, but the debris disk is large enough and chaotic enough that independent miners operate in the gaps. Claim disputes are endemic. The UTCA maintains a licensing office on Anchorage, but enforcement in the disk itself is effectively voluntary. By the time a patrol reaches a disputed claim, the ore is already on a shuttle and the claimant has a different story.

Runner work: Epsilon Eridani runs on resource extraction, and resource extraction runs on information: survey data, assay reports, claim filings, and shipping manifests. Stealing a competitor’s survey data can be worth millions. Falsifying a claim filing can redirect an ore stream. The independent miners are a community unto themselves, with their own fixers, their own grudges, and their own willingness to pay for services that the charter holders won’t provide. Sabotage jobs targeting rival extraction operations are common. The debris disk itself provides cover. A ship that goes dark in the disk is invisible until it chooses not to be. Anchorage’s fringe levels host a permanent population of fixers, brokers, and people between jobs who know the disk and can be hired to navigate it. The work is physical, the margins are thin, and the corporate security teams are more interested in protecting their own assets than policing the gaps.

Ross 128

Distance: 11.0 ly (~18 days). Type: M4V. One confirmed planet in the habitable zone (~1.35 Earth masses).

A quiet red dwarf: unusually low flare activity for its class. Ross 128 b is one of the most promising habitable-zone rocky worlds in the Core. The star’s calm temperament means less radiation shielding is needed, making this one of the more livable red dwarf colonies.

Tau Ceti

Distance: 12.0 ly (~20 days). Type: G8V. Candidate planets (unconfirmed).

The closest solitary Sun-like star. Tau Ceti has been searched intensively for planets. Candidates have been detected but none confirmed to the standards of the exoplanet archive. For colonization purposes, the star itself was the prize: a stable G-type primary with a habitable zone wide enough for long-term atmosphere processing. What grew here is the financial capital of human space.

Covenant. The primary colony world. Population approximately 4.2 million, making it the largest single planetary settlement outside Sol. After 150 years of continuous atmospheric processing, the Anassa Basin (a lowland region roughly the size of Switzerland) has open-air zones where you can breathe without a mask. The sky is the wrong color. The air tastes of ozone and metal. The processed zone ends at perimeter markers beyond which the atmosphere transitions to unbreathable nitrogen-CO₂ mix over the span of a few hundred meters. But within the Basin, you can walk under an open sky, and that makes Covenant the most valuable real estate in the colonies.

The open-air district is called the Glass: named for the transparent pressure walls that originally enclosed it before the atmosphere processing made them redundant. The walls are still there, maintained as a backup system that nobody talks about removing. Inside the Glass live the people who run interstellar finance: IPC banking executives, exchange administrators, insurance underwriters, and the small army of lawyers and analysts who service them. Residences in the Glass start at prices that would buy a hab block anywhere else. The architecture is deliberately Terran: stone facades, planted trees, artificial weather systems that produce rain on schedule. It is a simulation of Earth for people who will never go back.

Outside the Glass, Covenant is domes. The Caldwell Sprawl houses the working population: three million people in linked dome clusters spreading north from the Basin’s edge. Caldwell is where the banks’ data centers live, where the transaction processing infrastructure hums, and where the people who maintain it all eat printed protein and breathe recycled air like every other colony worker. The contrast with the Glass is the point.

Tau Ceti Interstellar Exchange (TCIE). The reason Covenant matters. The TCIE is the primary interstellar clearing house for corporate transactions, debt instruments, and commodity futures across human space. When an IPC buys a mining claim on a frontier world, the transaction clears through Tau Ceti. When colonial bond markets fluctuate, the ripples originate here. The Exchange operates from a hardened data complex in the Caldwell Sprawl, not the Glass. The infrastructure requires industrial-scale cooling and power that the open-air district can’t support. Three major IPCs maintain competing banking operations on Covenant, and the UTCA’s financial regulatory office is headquartered here, giving the system a layer of bureaucratic authority that most colonies lack.

Covenant Station. The orbital counterpart. A commercial hub handling the cargo and passenger traffic that the surface settlement’s limited shuttle capacity can’t absorb. Less glamorous than the Glass, more functional than Caldwell. The station’s docking ring processes freighters on 30-day rotation cycles from Sol, Alpha Centauri, and the Inner Colonies.

Runner work: Tau Ceti is where financial crimes happen at interstellar scale. Data extraction from banking networks, insider trading on commodity futures, identity fabrication for people who need to move money without a name attached. The Glass is hard to penetrate physically: private security, biometric access, and a population small enough that strangers get noticed. But its network infrastructure connects to the same data systems that run through Caldwell, and those systems are maintained by underpaid technicians who can be bribed. Corporate espionage contracts here pay extremely well because the information is worth extremely much. Fixers operate out of Caldwell’s service districts. The UTCA financial regulators are a complication that doesn’t exist in most systems. Getting caught here means a federal case, not just a corporate kill team. Smart runners work clean or don’t work at all.

Teegarden’s Star

Distance: 12.5 ly (~21 days). Type: M7V. Three confirmed planets, two in the habitable zone with Earth-like masses.

An ultracool dwarf so faint it wasn’t discovered until 2003 despite its proximity. The two habitable-zone worlds (both close to Earth mass) make this one of the most significant discoveries for colonization. The dim red light and close-in orbits create a world of permanent twilight tones.

Inner Colony Systems (12–25 ly)

Established worlds with real economies and growing populations. Corporate dominance is firm but the distance from Sol creates space for local culture, local corruption, and local resistance. Shipping is regular but not daily.

Wolf 1061

Distance: 14.1 ly (~23 days). Type: M3.5V. Three planets; Wolf 1061 c and d near or in the habitable zone.

Gliese 876

Distance: 15.2 ly (~25 days). Type: M4V. Four planets including a Jupiter analog.

The first exoplanet discovered around a red dwarf (1998). The system’s gas giant gives it a Jupiter-like radiation belt environment that complicates inner-system operations but provides fuel-skimming opportunities.

GJ 1002

Distance: 15.8 ly (~26 days). Type: M5.5V. Two habitable zone candidates.

70 Ophiuchi

Distance: 16.6 ly (~28 days). Type: K0V / K5V binary. No confirmed planets.

A binary of two K-type stars: both in the temperature range that favors habitable-zone planets with longer main-sequence lifetimes than Sol. No confirmed detections, but two K-type stars means two potential habitable zones. Even without rocky worlds, the binary provides orbital niches for hab stations at multiple distances.

36 Ophiuchi

Distance: 19.4 ly (~32 days). Type: K0V / K1V / K5V triple. No confirmed planets. High metallicity favors planet formation.

Delta Pavonis

Distance: 19.9 ly (~33 days). Type: G8IV. No confirmed planets.

An evolved solar analog: slightly past the main sequence, high metallicity. One of the nearest G-type stars after Tau Ceti and Alpha Centauri A. Strong candidate for terrestrial planets.

82 G. Eridani

Distance: 19.7 ly (~33 days). Type: G8V. Three confirmed planets including a potentially habitable super-Earth.

Another G-type star with confirmed worlds. The super-Earth in the habitable zone makes this one of the most strategically valuable Inner Colony systems.

Gliese 581

Distance: 20.6 ly (~34 days). Type: M3V. Three confirmed planets.

One of the most studied exoplanetary systems in history. Early claims of habitable-zone planets generated enormous public interest; later analysis disputed some detections. The controversy itself became culturally significant. Gliese 581 was the system that made exoplanets real to the general public.

HD 219134

Distance: 21.3 ly (~36 days). Type: K3V. Five to six confirmed planets.

The richest confirmed planetary system in the Inner Colonies and the most complex multi-world economy in human space. Six planets orbiting a stable K-type star, each developed for a different purpose. Where Alpha Centauri builds ships and Tau Ceti moves money, HD 219134 builds everything else.

The system is commonly called the Cluster: not because the planets are physically close, but because the economic interdependencies between them are so dense that no single world functions without the others. Goods, labor, and raw materials shuttle between worlds on schedules measured in days. The local economy is more self-sufficient than any other colonial system, which gives the Cluster real leverage in negotiations with the IPCs headquartered in Sol.

Kasimir (HD 219134 b). The innermost world is tidally locked, surface too hot for permanent habitation on the day side. The terminator zone hosts a strip of domed industrial settlements running atmospheric processing and materials science research. Population 80,000, almost entirely technical workers on rotation. The extreme thermal gradients make Kasimir useful for industrial processes that require precise temperature differentials: alloy tempering, crystal growth, specialized manufacturing that can’t be done economically elsewhere.

Harshaw (HD 219134 c). The system’s population center has two major dome networks housing a combined population of 2.6 million. Harshaw is a manufacturing world: consumer goods, industrial components, electronics, cybernetic implants. The two dome cities, Adler and Rekovic, were founded by competing IPCs and have developed distinct cultures despite being three hundred kilometers apart on the same rocky plain. Adler is older, denser, with the kind of layered architecture that accumulates when a city grows faster than anyone planned. Rekovic is newer, grid-planned, corporate-modern. The rivalry between them is economic, cultural, and occasionally physical.

Lorne (HD 219134 d). A cold outer world with extensive subsurface water ice. Two orbital stations and a surface mining settlement extract water and volatiles that supply the inner system. Population 45,000. Lorne is quiet, isolated, and attracts people who prefer it that way.

The outer planets (HD 219134 e, f, g). Gas and ice giants with orbital fuel-skimming stations and automated mining platforms on major moons. Limited permanent population. The outermost planet’s orbital space hosts the system’s primary deep-space communication relay.

Harshaw Junction. The system’s main orbital hub, in a stable orbit between Kasimir and Harshaw. A massive commercial station handling inter-planet and interstellar traffic. Harshaw Junction is where the system’s internal shipping network connects to the broader freighter routes. The station has grown organically around its original docking core into a habitat of 200,000. Large enough to have its own districts, its own economy, and its own problems.

Runner work: The Cluster’s complexity is the opportunity. Six planets, multiple orbital stations, two rival dome cities, and an internal shipping network that moves thousands of containers per day between worlds. The volume of legitimate traffic provides cover for illegitimate traffic. Corporate espionage between the Adler and Rekovic manufacturing operations is a permanent industry: prototype theft, process sabotage, workforce recruitment that shades into kidnapping. Harshaw Junction’s scale makes it a natural hub for fixer networks that operate across the Inner Colonies. The Cluster’s economic self-sufficiency means local power brokers have real independence from Sol-based corporate hierarchies, and they hire accordingly. Jobs here tend to be multi-stage operations: extract data on Kasimir, deliver it to a contact on Harshaw Junction, arrange transit for a person on Lorne. And runners who can operate across multiple worlds without burning credentials are worth the premium they charge.

Gliese 667 C

Distance: 23.6 ly (~39 days). Type: M1.5V. Two or more confirmed planets with habitable zone candidates. Part of a triple star system.

Outer Colony Systems (25–40 ly)

Corporate infrastructure thins out. Supply ships come less frequently. Local administrators have more autonomy, which means more opportunity and more danger. This is where the Unseen World encounters happen with increasing frequency. Further from the relay networks, further from the response teams, further from anyone who might help.

61 Virginis

Distance: 27.8 ly (~46 days). Type: G5V. Three confirmed planets. Debris disk.

A G-type solar analog: one of the most Sun-like stars in the Outer Colonies. The debris disk suggests ongoing planetary formation or a recent collision event.

Beta Canum Venaticorum (Chara)

Distance: 27.3 ly (~46 days). Type: G0V. No confirmed planets.

One of the most Sun-like stars known: a true solar twin. Whatever worlds orbit Chara, they orbit a star that is, for all practical purposes, identical to home.

Wolf 1069

Distance: 31.2 ly (~52 days). Type: M5V. One confirmed planet in the habitable zone (1.26 Earth masses). Confirmed 2023.

An Earth-mass world in the habitable zone of a quiet red dwarf. One of the most promising targets for life-bearing conditions in the Outer Colonies.

Gliese 357

Distance: 30.8 ly (~51 days). Type: M2.5V. Three planets with a habitable zone candidate.

TRAPPIST-1

Distance: 39.5 ly (~66 days). Type: M8V. Seven confirmed planets, three in the habitable zone.

The crown jewel of the Outer Colonies. An ultracool dwarf star surrounded by seven rocky worlds packed into tight orbits: the innermost planets orbit in days, not months. Three sit in the habitable zone. The system’s extraordinary density of worlds creates a local environment unlike anything else in human space. Seven separate planets within shuttle range of each other, transit times measured in hours rather than days. The locals call it the Archipelago.

The distance from Sol (66 days by freighter) puts TRAPPIST-1 at the far edge of regular commerce. Supply ships arrive roughly once a month on a good cycle, less in bad weather. And hyperspace has weather: route instabilities that add days to transit times in unpredictable patterns. What arrives here stays here. What breaks here gets fixed locally or doesn’t get fixed. The system has developed a fierce self-reliance that the megacorporations find alternately useful and irritating.

The Seven. Each planet has a domed settlement, ranging from major population centers to automated stations with skeleton crews. The three habitable-zone worlds (Makemba, Aster, and Jura) hold the bulk of the population, roughly 900,000 combined. Makemba is the largest, with linked dome clusters housing 400,000 and the system’s only real city. Aster is agricultural: greenhouses under dome, hydroponics, and protein vats feeding the Archipelago. Jura is industrial, processing raw materials extracted from the four non-habitable inner and outer worlds.

The non-habitable planets are designated by letter (T-1a through T-1d) and host extraction operations: mining, gas collection, and ice harvesting. Most are staffed by rotating crews of a few hundred who shuttle in from the hab-zone worlds. T-1a, the innermost planet, orbits so close to the dim star that its surface is tidally locked and partially molten. A miniature hell useful only for exotic mineral extraction under extreme conditions.

Makemba functions as the Archipelago’s capital, though nobody uses that word. The city has a council, not a governor. Decisions are made by a rotating assembly of settlement representatives, labor union delegates, and (informally) the fixers and brokers who control the system’s information flow. Three IPCs maintain offices on Makemba, but their local managers have more autonomy than any corporate administrator in the Core. The corporations need the Archipelago’s rare mineral output. The Archipelago needs the corporations’ shipping contracts. The relationship is transactional and both sides know exactly what their leverage is.

The system’s tight orbital packing creates a unique social geography. A shuttle from Makemba to Jura takes four hours. From Makemba to the outermost extraction platform, twelve. People move between worlds the way Core residents move between city districts: routinely, for work or trade or to visit someone. The seven worlds share a common communication mesh, a shared currency (pegged to but independent of the standard UTCA credit), and an attitude toward outside authority that ranges from skeptical to hostile.

Runner work: TRAPPIST-1 is where you go when the Core is too hot, and what you find when you get there is a system that runs on personal reputation rather than corporate credential. Fixers on Makemba operate openly: not out of recklessness, but because the local power structure doesn’t distinguish sharply between legitimate and illegitimate commerce. A job is a job. The Archipelago’s distance from Sol means that information from the Core is 66 days stale by the time it arrives, and that cuts both ways. It’s hard for Core-based employers to verify what their contractors are actually doing out here, and it’s hard for runners to know whether the job they’ve been offered is based on current intelligence.

The system’s inter-world shuttle network makes it ideal for operations that require moving people, cargo, or data between multiple locations quickly without interstellar transit. Smuggling is built into the local economy. The monthly supply ship can’t carry everything the Archipelago needs, so a gray market fills the gaps, and the line between gray and black is a matter of local opinion. Mercenary contracts are common, particularly for operations on the non-habitable extraction worlds where corporate security is thin and claim disputes are settled by whoever shows up with more people. The Archipelago is also a waypoint for traffic heading further out: toward the Frontier and beyond. Runners who know the system’s shuttle schedules and docking protocols can move cargo or passengers through without touching an IPC customs checkpoint.

Frontier Systems (40–55 ly)

The edge of reliable shipping. Systems here receive supply runs measured in months. Communication lag makes real-time oversight impossible. Corporate presence is limited to survey teams, mining operations, and research stations staffed by people who either chose isolation or had it chosen for them.

Statistically, this shell contains roughly 400 G-type stars and thousands of K and M dwarfs. Most are unsurveyed. The frontier is not empty. It is unknown.

55 Cancri (Copernicus)

Distance: 41.1 ly (~68 days). Type: G8V / M3.5V binary. Five confirmed planets including 55 Cnc e, a super-Earth with a molten-lava surface.

A five-planet system orbiting a G-type star. The innermost world is a hellscape: tidally locked, surface temperatures hot enough to melt rock. The outer planets are more hospitable. The binary companion is a distant red dwarf.

HD 69830

Distance: 40.7 ly (~68 days). Type: K0V. Three Neptune-mass planets. Asteroid belt analog.

A K-type star with a system architecture that includes a dense asteroid belt: a miner’s paradise if you can get the equipment there.

Upsilon Andromedae

Distance: 44.3 ly (~74 days). Type: F8V. Four confirmed planets.

An F-type star: hotter and brighter than Sol. The first multi-planet system discovered around a Sun-like star. Gas giants dominate the known planets. No rocky worlds, but the gas giants’ moons and the system’s orbital space host a scattering of fuel-skimming platforms and research stations.

47 Ursae Majoris (Chalawan)

Distance: 45.9 ly (~77 days). Type: G1V. Three confirmed planets.

A G-type solar analog with Jupiter-like planets in wide orbits: a system architecture reminiscent of our own solar system. The resemblance to Sol’s arrangement has made Chalawan a high-priority target for deep survey missions.

Beyond the Frontier (55+ ly)

Individual expeditions have reached systems beyond the 55-light-year boundary, but these are not colonies. They are survey missions, deep-space research platforms, and (occasionally) places where something was found that drew corporate attention despite the logistics.

Transit times exceed 90 days by freighter. Communication lag with Sol stretches past a week even by relay. Crews that go this far out operate with near-total autonomy. Some come back. The ones who don’t become footnotes in quarterly loss reports.

Not every star in the catalogs hosts a colony, or even a survey station. Most systems in human space are empty waypoints: places a ship passes through or refuels at, with no permanent population and no name anyone remembers. The network of established routes connects the systems that matter. Off the main routes, navigation data gets thin and travel gets dangerous.

Orbital habitats have partially decoupled settlement from planetary geology. A system needs a star for power, raw materials for construction, and a reason for someone to invest. It does not strictly need a habitable rocky world. Gas giants provide fuel. Asteroid belts provide ore. A bare star with nothing but debris can still anchor an orbital economy if the location is strategically useful. This means the map of human settlement does not match the map of habitable planets. Some of the most populated systems have no surface colonies at all.

That said, stars of different spectral types still shape what colonization looks like:

For interstellar travel mechanics, see Interstellar Travel. For the supernatural implications of deep-space expansion, see Anomalies and The Ancient Dark. For the full setting summary, see Overview.