Like Frosty said earlier, how are we going to keep this accurate in real time? How stable is our galaxy down to each individual star? I'm pretty sure its very active. Out of the total number of stars in our galaxy alone, how often does one change? Aren't new stars being created all the time. How often do stars collapse and new ones born? How often do collisions happen? Isn't our galaxy about to merge with another soon? Its these variables that amount on the incomprehensible level of thinking that seem to make this quite difficult. This isn't like mapping the earth where things are very dormant. This is like trying to map the white noise on your TV screen, no a billion TV screens! Things change too much too often. Try creating a 3d map that locates all the grains of sand on the earth and accounts for their position and existence at any given time.

Also what about the effects of time? The further things are away from us, the older the data about them is. Something that is 100 light years away, might have blown up last year, we wont know for another 99 years.

We could map a 'snap shot' of the galaxy right now at this point in time. Do we have all the data for all the stars in our galaxy?

Am I wrong in thinking that the galaxy isn't stationary? Maybe I am, please correct me if so.

What we need is a more reliable validation tool other than light that can provide us with the current status and location of any star in an instant. Like a startracker.

[edit on 19-2-2006 by Toasty]

Bumping an old thread of mine, which I had forgotten all about...

How stationary is a galaxy? We all know the universe is expanding, so the galaxies move away from each other, but how about internally in each galaxy? Guess I'm asking for an astrophysician here...