Ok, I'm gonna sound like an astro-obsessed geek, but...

... one of my fav sci fi shows is Battlestar Galactica. I just got the most recent series on DVD. Watching one of the first couple of episodes and there was a scene where there was a window in the background and I could quite clearly make out the constellation Orion in the stars out the window. If I could figure out how to take a screenshot of it I'd show you I'm not crazy.

Anyway, that tells me they must be close to finding Earth, at least within a galaxy or 2

Would Orion appear exactly the way we know it to be from a Galaxy or two away?
I suppose images like that are hard to come by from the prop department.

I think it's nice that the makers of such a show would go to the effort of putting a realistic star-field outside. Though if it looked that much like Orion then they would be relatively close to our Solar System of course!

This reminds me of the most ridiculous celesital event in any Sci-Fi series or Film - Star Trek - First Contact. They were near earth, testing a warp drive. Engaged it, loads of light-dots flashed past the screen, (obviously meant to be stars...you wouldn't see the stars travelling at speeds greater than the speed of light, but that's another matter), then when they disengaged the warp drive they were near Jupiter. Only Jupiter! So what the hell were all the stars that flashed past the window!

It REALLY irritated me!

Such a funny thread! I notice dumb stuff like that too. Orion is a pretty popular constellation to drop into the background of TV/Movie shots since it's pretty recognizable.

Adrena1in - good pickup.

Adrena1in wrote in post #7123970
This reminds me of the most ridiculous celesital event in any Sci-Fi series or Film - Star Trek - First Contact. They were near earth, testing a warp drive. Engaged it, loads of light-dots flashed past the screen, (obviously meant to be stars...you wouldn't see the stars travelling at speeds greater than the speed of light, but that's another matter), then when they disengaged the warp drive they were near Jupiter. Only Jupiter! So what the hell were all the stars that flashed past the window!

It REALLY irritated me!

Stuff like that always cracks me up. In the movie "Transformers" the pretty girl is with the kid in his junky looking Camaro; she pops the hood and looks at the engine with a fuel injection set up on it and makes a comment about what a nice carburetor set up he has...

Hey! Leave Megan alone!

And in Star Wars, A New Hope, Han Solo makes a comment about making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs. A parsec is a measurement of distance. No wonder Chewie was always moaning at him.

Nighthound wrote in post #7120592
Would Orion appear exactly the way we know it to be from a Galaxy or two away?
I suppose images like that are hard to come by from the prop department.

From another galaxy, Orion would just be part of a faint fuzzy we locals call the Milky Way! Check out the open source (free) program Celestia. It's really cool - you can be on Earth, with all the constellation lines connected, then you can see how they 3D distort as you fly out to other stars. You can even fly out of our galaxy.