We'll have to plug in M = absolute magnitude of the Sun and d = distance to a star of our choosing in parsecs. Here's one iteration of this gem of mathematical magic: For that you'll use the formula for determining a star's absolute magnitude but solve for apparent magnitude instead. Observers there would see it as the brightest star in the W of Cassiopeia, which at this distance, appears only slightly distorted from its appearance back on Earth.Ĭelestia (with additions by Bob King) Magnitude masteryįirst, we'll need to calculate the Sun's apparent magnitude from a specific distance. This got me wondering how bright the Sun would be and in what constellation it would appear when viewed from a planet - imaginary or real - orbiting one or more of the familiar bright stars?įrom the Alpha Centauri system's distance of 4.4 light-years, the Sun shines at magnitude +0.5, nearly as bright as Alpha Centauri (magnitude 0.0) appears in Earth's sky. Maybe that's what inspired my desire to figuratively leave the solar system and see it from other points of view.
![look towards the stars look towards the stars](https://www.ontarioparks.com/parksblog/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/killarney-o2.jpg)
But from far-flung Deneb at about 2,600 light-years you'd need dark skies and an 8-inch telescope to spot the 14.3-magnitude speck. From the neighboring star system Alpha Centauri, 4.4 light-years distant, it shines at magnitude +0.5, nearly as bright as Procyon in Canis Minor. From each one of these stars we might imagine looking back towards the Sun, which shines in each of their skies as surely as they do in ours.ĭepending on that star's distance from us the Sun may appear bright or faint. Each appears in a particular constellation and shines with a specific magnitude, unless it's a variable star like Algol, in which case its brightness varies. Something like 9,100 stars are visible with the naked eye across the entire planet. We'll visit eight of these locations for a fresh perspective on our familiar digs. Rising From The Ashes: Queer Games as a Model for Reinventing Academia and IndustryEvery star we see in our night sky also has a view of the Sun in its sky. Arguing for unsettling the primacy of fun in play, we turn to Aaron Trammell’s “Torture, Play, and the Black Experience.” Finally, we challenge the role of the university as a site for critique (Stefano and Harney Grande) and look towards queer scholarship to resist a model of utility within the academy. While we are indebted to academics who write on the revolutionary potential of queer games studies (Ruberg, Shaw), we also build from the work of queer game-making scholar-artists Kara Stone and Robert Yang. Ultimately, we argue for queer games as a model for what could rise from the ashes if we deconstruct these broken institutions. This conversation is timely: we write this paper alongside recent reports condemning the exploitative practices of games corporations like Activision Blizzard, and while reckoning with the place of the academy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These games disrupt both academia and the commercial games industry by eschewing capitalist models of marketability, challenging the exploitative production cycle, and unsettling the primacy of fun in play we also see queer games as a pathway to a more inclusive, expansive kind of thinking-through beyond traditional scholarship. Queer games (a term here used to indicate not simply games with LGBT+ topics, but games which queer the notion of what a game can be) are a crucial site of radical possibility.
![look towards the stars look towards the stars](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1f/eb/3e/1feb3e7051fc2868ae63da5ccf2145fb.jpg)
In this paper, we explore the intersection between queer games as objects of academic inquiry and queer games as objects within the games industry.