The quadrants - is there a kind of Star Trek map?

Star Trek has always been about exploring the Milky Way galaxy, the one that we live in. The sun is just one of four hundred and some odd billion stars in the Milky Way. We�re out in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, about two thirds of the way from the core.

In the Next Generation, we decided we needed to try to map our Star Trek universe a little more carefully, at least come up with some nomenclature for how the crew would go about describing a destination, co-ordinates, headings and so forth. And so we decided that we would basically divide the galaxy up into four quadrants and imagine this pinwheel of stars and then slicing it both directions.

Earth is located in the alpha quadrant. There�s also the beta quadrant, the gamma quadrant and the delta quadrant. In Voyager, our ship was hurled 70,000 light years to the other side of the galaxy over into the delta quadrant. In the Next Generation we were mostly exploring stars in the alpha quadrant, as was the original series. In Deep Space Nine we discovered a worm hole that led over to the gamma quadrant, another sort of far corner of the galaxy. And then we talked about sectors within those quadrants.

So we had a kind of a grid system that would allow us to identify specific locations a little more carefully. When we start exploring the galaxy we�re going to have to come up with new co-ordinate systems and new ways of navigation and identifying the different places that we�re trying to travel to.