So after unnumbered hours of searching...
I always feel weird posting things that apply only to (a) my headcanon or (b) one fic I am writing that only some people read. But dammit, I put too much time and effort into this and I am far too tired and proud to keep this to myself.
T Pyxidis. Megamind's homeworld. Yes, I took some liberties with the choice because I don't know if it's gone nova or anything like that, how can I know? I won't know until years after it's died.
But I had to pick a star with possible planets. Well, we're getting better about figuring that out, at least! T Pyxidis is in the constellation Pyxis, which is home to 3 stars with confirmed planetary systems. CHECK.
That star also had to be close enough to Earth to make sending baby Megamind here not only plausible but probable. I say 'probable' because Earth was evidently SUCH a good choice that Metro Man's parents independently chose to send him here too. (Theirs was not a collaborative decision, I can tell you that right now but I'd rather not go into the politics behind why, since it involves not only political stress but several million years of biases and fear.) T Pyxidis also satisfies this requirement; it's close enough to Earth that scientists worry about what might happen to us if it ever did go nova. CHECK.
On top of that, I had to pick a star that could, possibly, go nova in the near future, "near" here being in an astronomical sense. Below is a .gif showing two photos of the star: one before and one after an occurrence that took place on April 14, 2011. Which, handily enough, is when some Stuff may or may not go down in the Cold Fusion universe. That, believe it or not, was merely a happy coincidence.
Now. Now comes the good part. From what I understand, occurrences like this are fairly typical for stars reaching the ends of their life spans but star death is still difficult to predict. So even if the white dwarf collapses under its own weight, Megamind's parents might not have had a lot of time to prepare. Metro Man's, on the other hand, would have been more prepared because his was a more star-oriented race (again, not going into that here, but if you have questions about the plausibility of this please ask; finding reasons for things is how I build my headcanon and you'll probably think of things I haven't).
Okay okay okay. HERE. Here is where it gets really fun.
Because Pyxidis is so far south, Megamind won't be able to see his home star from Michigan. He can see it from the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, though. With Roxanne. And do you have ANY IDEA how long I spent trying to find a star map that would let me figure out how to find it? I needed some kind of orientation! He tells her how to find it in the fic; this needs to be accurate! ("But, Dal," you say, "I have a question. Why wouldn't you just make up a star instead of going to all this trouble?" Well, because I'm a dumbass, don't you see.)
I finally found one that had what I needed. Unfortunately it was the most non user-friendly interactive star map I've ever found; it was also the most detailed and clearly not geared towards those of the accounting persuasion, but I persevered and after maybe 30 minutes of trial and error and much swearing on my part I finally zoomed in to the correct coordinates, eliminated all unnecessary information (like luminosity and constellation names and star names and coordinates and all that shit), and finally, FINALLY found where Pyxis is in relation to Orion in Bonneville, Utah in December 2010. (You see why I'm telling you about all this.)
One last thing remained. Which star is T Pyxidis? Before you laugh, this was actually pretty difficult to figure out. By "in the constellation Pyxis" I assumed T Pyxidis would be one of the stars that make up the constellation itself. Not so! But eventually I found this blog, which believe it or not answered nearly all the questions the answers to which I had spent hours looking up over the course of several months. There was more swearing. If only I had found this blog sooner! Anyway, it told me where to find T Pyxidis. All that remained was my final test before I could put this in the fic: to see if I could accomplish it myself.
I live in Pennsylvania. And it was October. So if I were to truly test the plausibility of this detail, I would have to postpone it for two months and travel to Utah somehow. I am a fanatic, but I'm not THAT much of a fanatic! I decided to Google it. ONCE AGAIN.
(The upshot of all of this is that I'm the only one of the six of us full-timing this master's program who can find all of the assigned readings. Almost exclusively by Googling. There was one (you'll never believe this, but scout's honor, it's the truth) we had to read where one guy spent, according to him, "like half an hour" looking through the database engines before he found it. The other four looked blank. "I didn't have any trouble," I said. "Really," he said, "where did you look?" "I...I googled it," I told him. Our professor looked at me and did his best impression of a hedgehog, by which I mean he rumpled up his face and looked like he didn't know whether to be laughing or skeptical. "HOW," he said. "I just put quotes around the title, then 'and' in all capital letters, and then half a sentence from the abstract in quotes, and then I just clicked the first link that said 'pdf' next to it."
I do not claim to be better at Googling shit than our Dani Kin, who has a master's degree in googling shit. But I'm pretty proficient. I also do not explain, ever, that the reason I've gotten so good at this is astronomy for the sake of fanfiction)
But I digress.
I found what I was looking for. It's not Bonneville exactly, but it's close enough. It's Provo, which is about 45 minutes farther south than Megamind and Roxanne go but oh well.
source
I GIVE YOU. T PYXIDIS. MEGAMIND'S POSSIBLE HOMEWORLD.
And then I went and drank heavily.
but not alcohol or anything, i don't endorse self-medication with alcohol
T Pyxidis. Megamind's homeworld. Yes, I took some liberties with the choice because I don't know if it's gone nova or anything like that, how can I know? I won't know until years after it's died.
But I had to pick a star with possible planets. Well, we're getting better about figuring that out, at least! T Pyxidis is in the constellation Pyxis, which is home to 3 stars with confirmed planetary systems. CHECK.
That star also had to be close enough to Earth to make sending baby Megamind here not only plausible but probable. I say 'probable' because Earth was evidently SUCH a good choice that Metro Man's parents independently chose to send him here too. (Theirs was not a collaborative decision, I can tell you that right now but I'd rather not go into the politics behind why, since it involves not only political stress but several million years of biases and fear.) T Pyxidis also satisfies this requirement; it's close enough to Earth that scientists worry about what might happen to us if it ever did go nova. CHECK.
On top of that, I had to pick a star that could, possibly, go nova in the near future, "near" here being in an astronomical sense. Below is a .gif showing two photos of the star: one before and one after an occurrence that took place on April 14, 2011. Which, handily enough, is when some Stuff may or may not go down in the Cold Fusion universe. That, believe it or not, was merely a happy coincidence.
Now. Now comes the good part. From what I understand, occurrences like this are fairly typical for stars reaching the ends of their life spans but star death is still difficult to predict. So even if the white dwarf collapses under its own weight, Megamind's parents might not have had a lot of time to prepare. Metro Man's, on the other hand, would have been more prepared because his was a more star-oriented race (again, not going into that here, but if you have questions about the plausibility of this please ask; finding reasons for things is how I build my headcanon and you'll probably think of things I haven't).
Okay okay okay. HERE. Here is where it gets really fun.
Because Pyxidis is so far south, Megamind won't be able to see his home star from Michigan. He can see it from the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, though. With Roxanne. And do you have ANY IDEA how long I spent trying to find a star map that would let me figure out how to find it? I needed some kind of orientation! He tells her how to find it in the fic; this needs to be accurate! ("But, Dal," you say, "I have a question. Why wouldn't you just make up a star instead of going to all this trouble?" Well, because I'm a dumbass, don't you see.)
I finally found one that had what I needed. Unfortunately it was the most non user-friendly interactive star map I've ever found; it was also the most detailed and clearly not geared towards those of the accounting persuasion, but I persevered and after maybe 30 minutes of trial and error and much swearing on my part I finally zoomed in to the correct coordinates, eliminated all unnecessary information (like luminosity and constellation names and star names and coordinates and all that shit), and finally, FINALLY found where Pyxis is in relation to Orion in Bonneville, Utah in December 2010. (You see why I'm telling you about all this.)
One last thing remained. Which star is T Pyxidis? Before you laugh, this was actually pretty difficult to figure out. By "in the constellation Pyxis" I assumed T Pyxidis would be one of the stars that make up the constellation itself. Not so! But eventually I found this blog, which believe it or not answered nearly all the questions the answers to which I had spent hours looking up over the course of several months. There was more swearing. If only I had found this blog sooner! Anyway, it told me where to find T Pyxidis. All that remained was my final test before I could put this in the fic: to see if I could accomplish it myself.
I live in Pennsylvania. And it was October. So if I were to truly test the plausibility of this detail, I would have to postpone it for two months and travel to Utah somehow. I am a fanatic, but I'm not THAT much of a fanatic! I decided to Google it. ONCE AGAIN.
(The upshot of all of this is that I'm the only one of the six of us full-timing this master's program who can find all of the assigned readings. Almost exclusively by Googling. There was one (you'll never believe this, but scout's honor, it's the truth) we had to read where one guy spent, according to him, "like half an hour" looking through the database engines before he found it. The other four looked blank. "I didn't have any trouble," I said. "Really," he said, "where did you look?" "I...I googled it," I told him. Our professor looked at me and did his best impression of a hedgehog, by which I mean he rumpled up his face and looked like he didn't know whether to be laughing or skeptical. "HOW," he said. "I just put quotes around the title, then 'and' in all capital letters, and then half a sentence from the abstract in quotes, and then I just clicked the first link that said 'pdf' next to it."
I do not claim to be better at Googling shit than our Dani Kin, who has a master's degree in googling shit. But I'm pretty proficient. I also do not explain, ever, that the reason I've gotten so good at this is astronomy for the sake of fanfiction)
But I digress.
I found what I was looking for. It's not Bonneville exactly, but it's close enough. It's Provo, which is about 45 minutes farther south than Megamind and Roxanne go but oh well.
source
I GIVE YOU. T PYXIDIS. MEGAMIND'S POSSIBLE HOMEWORLD.
And then I went and drank heavily.
but not alcohol or anything, i don't endorse self-medication with alcohol