play a jingle, it's a mingle!

[geonomy]

Who: Vanquish crew and visitors
Broadcast: why
Action: Anywhere on board the Vanquish!
When: 11/25 and on!

[The ship is looking classier and cooler now, and what's this? Nice little gifts? Say it ain't so! Surely this must take some investigating!

Or, rather, some mingling! Haha!]

Comments

[geonomy]

Two-thirty?

[jfc, he should be in bed by now! And Clay would be doing that, but Koushiro wants to know what he's doing, and... well, he'd like to talk to other people about these things, too.]

Captain paperwork. [He gestures at the papers that don't make much sense there. They're kind of useless.] Starcharts... I keep trying to figure out where exactly we are. Being on the Marsiva didn't help, though our captors were kind enough to tell me that we're on a cycle of some sort.

[He pulls out some others papers, ones with long equations on them.] It's hard to figure out how far away stars are without the proper equipment, but with the radar functioning at full capacity, it's been helping a lot.

[techknowlogical]

[Oooh, interesting stuff. He shifts his attention to the papers, turning his head slightly so he can read them a bit better, scanning over the starcharts and equations in particular. He doesn't know much about the equations necessary other than very basic astronomy-related formulas--it isn't a particular area of focus for him--but the math itself he's sure he can do.]

Can I help?

[Both to be useful and to do something new he can learn.]

[geonomy]

Oh - Yeah, sure!

[He knows that Koushiro's smart, but he doesn't know just how much so. Time to get a good read on it! Clay pushes a few papers aside while pulling one over, showing about four different triangles with angles on two of the longest sides.]

Have you ever heard of triangulation?

[techknowlogical]

[He smiles again, a bit more this time, at the answer, then shifts his attention toward the paper Clay is showing him.]

I have. It's vitally important to us in monitoring unusual changes in the Digital World.

[Though he typically does it through the computer so he can display whatever he's pinpointing onto a map, figuring angles and distances aren't a problem for him to do by hand.]

[geonomy]

[Digital World. Okay. He'll have to ask about that one when they're done and when his brain doesn't feel like mush.]

It's important to astronomers too, to help figure out how far away a star might be. I don't have all of the tools, and a lot of the information I need is missing, but with this, I can at least make an estimate and confirm it with some following up, thanks to the radar there.

With astronomers, they stand at a specific spot where they can see the star they're tracking and mark it, wait six months, then return to that spot and find out where it moved. By taking the angle of where the star originally was and comparing it to where it moved, they can use triangulation to get a rough estimate of how far away the star is from the Earth. My problem is that we're never in one place for six months, hence the guesswork and follow up work I need to do after that.

[He points at each of the triangles, which all have names on the bottom of them.] These are four that I studied with the amount of time we had on that western moon place. The dotted lines are where I assumed the stars would end up, based on how much the stars traveled in all the times I observed them and from what information I gathered from the townsfolk.

[Which is... not much, considering what kind of people they were, but whatever. It was enough.]

All we need to do now is use triangulation to figure out how far away they are.

[techknowlogical]

[Koushirou is silent as he listens, focusing intently on Clay's explanation and on glancing over the paper as he speaks, putting together the information with the data itself. It all makes sense, and it seems like Clay's done almost all the work already anyway.]

I can perform the calculations then, if that's most useful.

[He's also curious--]

Is there a particular reason you chose these four stars?

[geonomy]

[Clay lets out a relieved sigh as he scrubs at his forehead, already handing a pencil over for Koushiro.]

Yeah, good, thanks. I'm way too tired to trust myself with calculations like that.

[He kind of feels like falling asleep in his chair again, except he kind of keeps doing that and he wakes up regretting it horribly later.]

Those four stars were the brightest ones that I saw. If I had the proper equipment and a lot more time, I could probably do more. But the brightest ones are typically the ones that are closest to the planet you're doing the calculations from, so that's... you know, what I'm going for. [Ugh. Tired.]

[techknowlogical]

[Koushirou takes the pencil and chooses a blank sheet of paper to write the calculations on; while he could do it all in his head, writing it out will just make sure he doesn't mess anything up.

It only takes a few seconds per problem, and then he passes the paper and pencil back toward Clay.]

That makes sense, unless they are particularly massive and luminous stars.

[Which will still be incredibly bright despite distance, although those types of stars are somewhat more rare.]

[geonomy]

Yeah, you're right about that. This helps figure out which ones are closest and which ones are just massive - plus they're easier to track when I only have myself and the radar as equipment.

[Clay takes a moment to look at everything Koushiro worked out, impressed by the speed, even though the numbers are just making him go cross-eyed. That tends to happen when he's tired. But still, he gives a half grin as he moves a hand to ruffle Koushiro's hair.]

You did that faster than me when I was your age. [And considering he was on the road to semi-genius already at that age, that's very impressive to him.] Thanks again, you're a life saver.