History Main / ArtisticLicenseAstronomy

* Shot down in ''Film/MenInBlack'', where the cryptic clue, "The galaxy is on Orion's belt", is quickly dismissed as blathering nonsense[[note]]This was a misunderstanding/mistranslation; the Galaxy is the name of a powerful artifact they didn't know about yet, Orion is the name of the clue-giver's cat, and the artifact is attached to said cat's collar. It wasn't meant to be cryptic at all.[[/note]].

* For decades, ever since science fiction began to depict interstellar empires, the convention, seemingly embraced across all media, has been to designate a planet by its star, followed by a Roman numeral indicating its position in its system. So the fourth planet from Altair would be called Altair IV, the third planet from Tau Ceti would be called Tau Ceti III and so on. This despite the fact that the convention among astronomers for naming objects in orbit around stars is to use a lower case letter in order of discovery. So the first object found around Alpha Centauri A is called Alpha Centauri Ab, the second Alpha Centauri Ac, the third Alpha Centauri Ad and so on. Despite this convention being in place for almost 30 years now, fiction has had little incentive to adapt.

[[folder:Completely Inaccurate Terminology]]
!!!'''In General:'''
* Despite the fact that extrasolar planetary systems have been known for decades, and that astronomers already have an established convention for naming extrasolar planets by letter in order of discovery, interstellar-based science fiction still clings to the ancient trope of naming planets by number in order of distance from their star. This can be largely pinned on RuleOfCool, since "Altair 4" and "Rigel 7" sound infinitely cooler than "Altair e" and "Rigel h".
* The word ''astronomy'' is itself often confused with ''astrology''. Many real-life astronomers get asked about [[WesternZodiac star signs]].
!!!'''Works:'''
* In ''Film/HighlanderTheSource'', the '''galaxy''' suffers a major case of WhenThePlanetsAlign. One character offhandedly dismisses the phenomenon, suggesting "that could just be orbital wobble." To be fair, the film immediately says "No it isn't [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_coordinates_%28astronomy%29 'orbital wobble']], this is clearly magic related to the Immortals."
* Like [[Film/{{Meteor}} the movie]] that it was licensed from, Creator/SternElectronics' ''Pinball/{{Meteor}}'' {{Pinball}} is named after a five-mile wide ''asteroid'' that's headed for the Earth.
[[/folder]]

* ''Series/StarTrekPicard'': In attempting to address the [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale scale problem]] of ''Film/StarTrek2009'' above, the pilot episode {{retcon}}s that the supernova that destroyed Romulus was of the Romulan sun itself, rather than a distant star as the film had implied (and confirmed in the tie-in comic ''ComicBook/StarTrekCountdown''). This introduces the new problem that a star big enough to turn into a Type II supernova would be unlikely to ever have any Earthlike planets around it: larger stars have shorter lifespans and produce more radiation, and the star would expand and incinerate any planets formerly orbiting in its habitable zone millions of years before going nova.

These overlap ArtisticLicensePhysics and SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay. Not to be confused with {{Astrolog|er}}y, no matter how open to interpretation the stars may be.

* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'':
** The planet Bespin is stated by canon to be a gas giant, but is milky-white and stripeless, and generally looks like Venus. A UsefulNotes/{{Venus}}-like planet is an even better place to put a Cloud City, but it's not a gas giant, even if canon states it to be such. However, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudarsky_extrasolar_planet_classification not all gas giants look alike]]. A gas giant in the habitable zone would have white water clouds. An orange color could be caused by the presence of methane in the atmosphere (airborne methanogenic bacteria?). The planet could lack stripes if it had a slow rotation.
** This does NOT excuse the dull red color of the gas giant Yavin. It looks like a brown dwarf, not a gas giant. Brown dwarfs are basically gas giants that are so big, they almost began nuclear fusion. Given that many star systems are binary, having one with a main sequence star and a brown dwarf is not inconceivable. Also, brown dwarves actually are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf magenta colored]], while a sufficently hot gas giant (as in, close to it's parent star) might slightly glow red. Whether it could harbor a habitable moon is up to debate, but it could also be just a matter of the planet's chemistry.
*** Or maybe Yavin is a young world that is still glowing hot from the residual heat of its formation. [[https://arxiv.org/abs/1101.0606 Saturn and especially Jupiter]] are stated to have been hot enough just after that event to shine like tiny suns.

* In the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' Player's Handbook for ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndt 3.5'' is stated that Selûne, the Abeir-Toril's moon, orbits at just 20,000 miles of the planet (for comparison purposes, this is less than 1/12th of the mean distance between the Moon and the Earth)[[note]]Retconning likely by error the previous version, where it was stated to be [[http://www.spelljammer.org/worlds/Realmspace/Toril.html 183,000 miles]] away[[/note]]. The effects of having a large satellite (it's stated to be similar in size to the Moon) so close such as ''very'' powerful tides and tidal-caused earthquakes are not addressed at all[[note]]Nor the spectacularity of a full moon night with one so large. Nor the possibility of the moon crossing the Roche limit and being ground into gravel.[[/note]].

** ''TabletopGame/{{Spelljammer}}'' [[SpaceIsMagic decides to just ignore actual astronomy entirely]], basing its own cosmology off of the medieval concepts of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres celestial spheres]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory phlogiston]]. Anyone familiar enough with those concepts to write a setting around them would be knowledgeable enough to know that they're complete nonsense. This is to say nothing of the fact that many star systems in ''Spelljammer'' are [[WorldShape geocentric, Dyson spheres, or even flat worlds.]] Essentially, its core premise is "what would a SpaceOpera setting look like [[AllTheoriesAreTrue in a world where the ancients were right]]?"

* In the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' Player's Handbook for ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons 3.5'' is stated that Selûne, the Abeir-Toril's moon, orbits at just 20,000 miles of the planet (for comparison purposes, this is less than 1/12th of the mean distance between the Moon and the Earth)[[note]]Retconning likely by error the previous version, where it was stated to be [[http://www.spelljammer.org/worlds/Realmspace/Toril.html 183,000 miles]] away[[/note]]. The effects of having a large satellite (it's stated to be similar in size to the Moon) so close such as ''very'' powerful tides and tidal-caused earthquakes are not addressed at all[[note]]Nor the spectacularity of a full moon night with one so large. Nor the possibility of the moon crossing the Roche limit and being ground into gravel.[[/note]].
** Also in the D&D splatbook, Elder Evils, the World Born Dead, Atropus, consists of a small rogue moonlet that seeks out planets covered in life and destroys them via bodyslam. The book describes Atropus as having a tiny (planetary-wise) diameter of 700 miles. However, base on the mechanics centered on it, the surface gravity is around 2/3rds of that of Earth's. This means that either magic is making things weird (it is a god's corpse after all) or Atropus is entirely made up of something far denser then lead, giving it a mass more comparable to Mars.

* Shot down in ''Film/MenInBlack'', where the cryptic clue, "The galaxy is on Orion's belt", is quickly dismissed as blathering nonsense[[note]]This was a misunderstanding; the Galaxy is the name of a powerful artifact they didn't know about yet, and Orion is the name of the clue-giver's cat. It wasn't meant to be cryptic at all.[[/note]].

* Others will present constellations as being composed either by stars of similar brightness and/or colors, and/or looking like the thing they're supposed to represent. In RealLife not only they've stars of very different brightness and colors but also except on a couple of cases as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(constellation) Leo]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation) Orion]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_(constellation) Cygnus]], or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius_(constellation) Scorpius]] you're going to need up to ''a lot'' of imagination to spot what they're supposed to represent, and more so using the modern constellation boundaries.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode ''Galaxy's Child'', [[TheEngineer Geordi LaForge]] mentions ''everything'' in the Universe vibrates in a 21 cm radiation band. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_line The change in quantum spin of the electron in single hydrogen atoms]] is the main source of these radio emissions, and ''not'' everything in the Universe does that[[note]]The cosmic microwave background, to begin with[[/note]].

* Larry Niven's ''Literature/{{Ringworld}}'' and ''Literature/KnownSpace'' mention a supernova chain reaction at the core of the galaxy happening thousands of years ago[[note]]To be fair, before the [[ScienceMarchesOn now commonly accepted and supported by observations]] view of black holes and/or star formation galore powering active galactic nuclei such as quasars, that was once proposed as one explanation to power them[[/note]].

* Others will present constellations being composed either by stars of similar brightness and/or looking like the thing they're supposed to represent. In RealLife not only they've stars of very different brightness but also except on a couple of cases as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(constellation) Leo]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation) Orion]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_(constellation) Cygnus]], or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius_(constellation) Scorpius]] you're going to need up to ''a lot'' of imagination to spot what they're supposed to represent, and more so using the modern constellation boundaries.

* Other works will present constellations being composed either by stars of similar brightness and/or looking like the thing they're supposed to represent. In RealLife not only they've stars of very different brightness but also except on a couple of cases as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(constellation) Leo]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation) Orion]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_(constellation) Cygnus]], or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpius_(constellation) Scorpius]] you're going to need up to ''a lot'' of imagination to stop what they're supposed to represent, and more so using the modern constellation boundaries.

* Many older works of fiction, such as ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'' and ''Literature/TheMagiciansNephew'', describe red giant stars as cold, even if their worlds are similarly distant as Earth from the Sun. It is true that red giants are cooler than younger stars, but "cooler" is relative, and they are also '''much, much''' closer to their planets, and any such planets would be roasted rather than chilled.

* A similar chain reaction occurs towards the end of the Andromeda arc of ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' in the center region of that galaxy after a star is destroyed with a largely untested prototype weapon ''there''. This can potentially be handwaved -- [[NegativeSpaceWedgie hyperspace to the rescue]] -- in that the star in question was one of six blue giants making up one of the "main" [[TeleportersAndTransporters matter transmitter]] stations in a network capable of moving entire fleets on an intergalactic scale, and any side effects (including pretty effectively wrecking the network in question for good) thus probably weren't caused purely by its physical detonation.

* In the season 6 finale to ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', "The Bon Voyage Reaction", Raj shows his girlfriend the International Space Station, using a telescope to do so. The problem with this is the ISS orbits the earth every 90 minutes, so it is constantly moving. A non-computer-controlled telescope's field of vision is ''small'' so you would have to keep moving the telescope to see the ISS or it would whiz by very quickly. [[http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/travelinginspace/f_skywatch.html The telescope was probably unnecessary anyway because the ISS is usually visible to the naked eye as it moves across the sky.]]

* There is a political cartoon where a father tells his son that every star has a system of planets. Not every star ''system'', every ''star''. [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale Where to even begin?]] Not every star has planets (very young blue stars don't, for example, since they don't have time to form), but it's a matter of ongoing scientific debate on exactly how common are planets.

* A minor plot point in one Marcia Muller mystery involves two characters knowing that the next high tide will come 24 hours after the current high tide.

** ''The Trial of a Time Lord'' repeatedly refers to Earth's entire constellation being moved by [[spoiler:the Time Lords]], ravaging Earth in the process and turning it into Ravelox. There have been a few attempts to address this in and out of fiction, but it usually comes down to viewers and writers just liking the sound of it. Maybe the Doctor does too.