Cartography

A page covering stellar cartography in the Daybreak Continuum.

Overview
In general, Daybreak's UNSC stellar cartography is based on the real-world galactic coordinate system, supplemented by various custom systems. Up until the post-war era, UEG astronomy was heavily Sol-centric, though this would eventually change in the Phoenix Initiative era.


 * Galactic longitude marks stars and other objects' position "horizontally" on the galactic plane, also known as the galactic equator in the context of the coordinate system. There is no "east" or "west"; longitude is instead measured in degrees, with 0° being the direction of the galactic center relative to Earth, 90° being roughly spinward, 180° directly toward the galactic rim, and 270° being pointed roughly at the trailing or antispinward direction.


 * Galactic latitude marks objects' relative position north or south of the galactic equator, as viewed from Earth; it is measured in degrees, though the most useful concepts in most cases are the galactic north and galactic south. The galactic north pole is located 90° "above" the galactic plane, while the south pole is located 90° "below" it. The corresponding Covenant concepts are "zenith" and "nadir", respectively.

The terms Coreward/Rimward (or Coreside/Anticenter) and Spinward/Antispinward (or Trailing/Trailward) are also frequently used to indicate directions relative to the galactic disk; these are used universally by humanity and the Covenant.

Note that all maps shown here are subject to the inaccuracies caused by mapping 3D space onto a 2D plane. The maps compensate for this somewhat by abstracting spatial relationships and distances, though overall they should not be taken as fully "accurate" in an astronomical sense as a 3D environment would be required to properly depict the spatial relationships between stars.

Covenant astronomy has various idiosyncrasies, most notably different names for astronomical features also known to humanity.

The Milky Way
The home galaxy of humanity, the Covenant species and the various peripheral civilizations they came into contact with, as well as the long-vanished Forerunners.

The Orion Arm
Also known as the Orion Spur or Local Arm, and called the Raan-Uchaal Bridge by the Covenant; the minor spiral arm housing both humanity and most of the Covenant's fixed territories. The Orion Arm was also the home arm of the Forerunners, whose core worlds were evidently located within and around a vast star-forming region and molecular cloud aggregation now known as the Orion Complex, located just over 1,000 light-years from Earth.

The Covenant Sphere
The Covenant encompasses a large region of the Orion Arm, mainly located galactic antispinward of humanity's territories; their oldest worlds are located around 3,000 light-years from Earth. The Covenant Sphere is sometimes broadly delineated into four "quartals": Rimward (1), Coreside (2) Spinward (3), and Trailing (4). However, it is more common to reference to locations through astronomical or astropolitical features, such as major expansion regions and the Covenant's regional domains.

The Human Sphere
As of 2565, humanity's sphere of influence is still largely concentrated on a 200-light year radius within an interstellar void known as the Local Bubble.

On the large scale, human space is divided into four quadrants, or FLEETCOM sectors in UNSC military usage. These are quadrant volumes of space defined along the galactic plane, with the Sol system as their center point. In theory, these four sectors encompass the entire galaxy and beyond, though human space only covers a small part of them. They are similar to the modern-day concept of galactic quadrants, though their numbering is different based on Halo canon. The quadrants can be further split into "northern" and "southern" octants, or the "upper" and "lower" sides of the galactic plane, respectively, though this division is usually ignored in Daybreak's cartography for the sake of simplicity.

The Sol system and its Oort Cloud are not part of any sector and the space within a five-light year radius of Sol is simply known as SolCore.

The quadrants are subdivided into named sectors, which radiate around SolCore in circles. Though the Sectors are depicted as perfect slices of a circle, this is an abstraction for presentation reasons. Most of the sectors encompass areas of space that are in reality far more amorphous. In 3D space, the sectors' exact shape and size varies, and they can be represented in various ways. Interstellar navigators use holographic 3D models which provide a more accurate picture. However, the sectors should roughly correspond to the direction of stars and their respective proximity; this is increasingly inaccurate with stars that are high above the plane (e.g. stars in Coma Berenices are directly north of or "above" Sol). The innermost ring of sectors surrounding SolCore is 20 light-years in width and is split into eight sectors (two per quadrant) while the surrounding rings are 25 light-years wide and each have 24 sectors (six per quadrant). Sectors have historically been named as the need has arisen; in the current system, sectors are named consistently up until 200 light-years, as this marks the furthest extent of human space in most regions.

Notably, the conventional mapping system is imperfect and increasingly inaccurate the further one goes from Sol, as it does not account for the three-dimensional nature of space. Likewise, systems' distances are shown only relative to Earth, not to one another. Many systems that appear to be neighbors on the map can in fact be on virtually on opposing sides of space. One competing system is the Neutral Astrographic Scheme, derisively known as the Innie Grid due to its popularity in the colonies. The NAS uses a 3D grid of cube-shaped volumes to avoid highlighting any particular system over others. Spacers commonly use the relative distances between colonies, measured by the length of slipspace jumps, as a basis for their charts; this is rather similar to the fundamental ideas behind the Covenant's mainstream cartography. There are also other systems which base their charts on expansion waves and/or political and cultural blocs within the human sphere, but these are generally more obscure.

Human astronomy also uses the traditional constellations to mark galactic directions, especially relative to Earth and the Inner Colony sphere. The further out one goes, the less useful the constellations become as navigational pointers, though they are still used across human space out of tradition. Some colonists seeking to build up their own cultural identities have developed their own systems of constellations based on asterisms seen from their worlds, although these are only relevant to the populations of those colony worlds. Some of the more common ones used to mark galactic longitude are:
 * 0°: Sagittarius (Roughly coreward from Earth; the radio source Sagittarius A* marks the position of the galactic core.)
 * 30°: Aquila
 * 60°: Cygnus (Roughly marks the spinward direction along the Orion Arm)
 * 90°: Cepheus
 * 120°: Cassiopeia
 * 150°: Auriga
 * 180°: Orion
 * 210°: Canis Major
 * 240°: Puppis
 * 270°: Vela (Situated virtually antispinward of Earth)
 * 300°: Centaurus
 * 330°: Norma

In addition, human expansion regions are often demarcated through the major constellations they are pointed toward, relative to Earth; for example, Eridanus-side or Sagittarius-side colonies.

The Siakar Expanse
The Siakar Expanse is a former Covenant administrative territory, or primary domain. It is located some 1,000 light-years from Earth close to the Orion Complex, and is thus one of the closest Covenant territories to humanity. It is also notable as the termination point of the Pleiades Corridor, the most stable and trafficked slipspace route between the human and Covenant spheres in the post-war era.