I’ve been working on a new section of the book, with the overall title of “Working with Astronomical Data.” Here’s a list of topic headers for the material I’ve produced over the past week or two, about 7000 words in all:

• Star Names and Star Catalogs
  • The International Astronomical Union (IAU)
  • The VizieR Catalog Reference Service
  • Traditional Astronomy
    • The Ptolemaic Constellations
    • Proper Names for the Stars
  • Bayer Designation
  • Flamsteed Designation
  • The Durchmusterung Catalogs
  • The Henry Draper Catalog
  • The Gliese Catalogs
  • The Hipparcos Catalogs
  • The Gaia Data Releases
  • Other Data Sources
    • SIMBAD
    • NASA Exoplanet Archive
    • Wikipedia
• Developing Inputs for Interstellar Maps and the Design Sequence
  • Star Positions
    • Equatorial Coordinates
    • Deriving Cartesian Coordinates from Equatorial Coordinates
    • Galactic Coordinates
    • Deriving Cartesian Coordinates from Galactic Coordinates

Lots more to work on in this section. I’m not at all sure whether I’ll have the whole section finished by the end of this month, but if there’s enough there (say, 15000 words or more) then I’ll make the interim draft a charged release for my patrons, after which they’ll get free updates while I keep working on and adding to the material.

Once this section is finished, there will be only two more chunks of the book that need to be written: the “how to generate random maps of interstellar space” and “special cases that don’t fit neatly into the main design sequence.” I’m beginning to think I’ll have a complete pre-layout draft for Architect of Worlds by the end of summer 2021 . . . which means the first edition of the book may be ready for release late this year or early in 2022.