Board Thread:Fiction Universe Discussion/@comment-47205-20140928162206

Cyr and I have had a discussion about what we can do with the map of the Gigaquadrant, as well as the possibility of an overhaul of the locations page. Three main ideas have been proposed:


 * The main idea is to make a new galactic cluster, besides Xonexi and Cyrandia, out of existing galaxies, for some variety. These galaxies might include Borealis, Mirus, and Tigris (if the latter is to be changed from the Triangulum Galaxy).
 * Making an astronomically-accurate Gigaquadrant, which may require giving in-universe galaxies new real-world equivalents. I don't think that should be a probem; in most cases, the real-world identification makes little to no difference to the fiction.
 * The potentially-unpopular (and low-priority) idea of allowing new galaxies into the Gigaquadrant, mentioned here for completeness.

I think the first two ideas can be linked together. After all, the Xonexi Group is centered around the Milky Way and Andromeda, and in the past Triangulum (as Tigris), the three main galaxies of the Local Group. So here are the nearest major galaxies as options for where other fiction galaxies could be assigned to, if their associated users don't mind that: The "new" cluster could be one of these:
 * NGC 300 and NGC 55 are a pair of galaxies about 7 million light years away (Mly), and they could be part of the Xonexi Cluster as well.
 * The IC 342/Maffei Group is not much further, but being obscured by the rest of the Milky Way means that good pictures of most of them are hard to come by (if that matters to anyone).
 * The M81 Group, between 8 and 12 Mly, contains five good spirals: Messier 81, Messier 82, NGC 2403, NGC 2976 and NGC 4236.
 * The Sculptor Group is at a similar distance: the Sculptor Galaxy is currently listed as Borealis on the locations page; there is also NGC 247 and NGC 7793.
 * The Centaurus A/M83 Group, from 11 to 16 Mly, has Centaurus A and Messier 83 (unsurprisingly), as well as NGC 4945.
 * Finally, the M94 Group has three large spirals: Messier 94, NGC 4244 and NGC 4395.

For the record, the main point of this thread is to generally discuss the new cluster, not specifically the real-world identification of it; it's just that making a list of galaxy suggestions has taken up most of the space here. 