Canopus, also known as Alpha Carinae, was an inhabited planetary system in the Beta Quadrant. It was the second brightest star in Earth's night sky.
This was a single star system with the yellow-white bright giant Canopus (the proper name for Alpha Carinae) as the primary of this system.
In this system, there were several planets with some of them being Class M worlds. One of these worlds, Alpha Carinae II, was home to a pre-warp civilization. Notable lifeforms found in this system included a species of dinosaur on Canopus III and the drella of Alpha Carinae V. (TOS: "Wolf in the Fold", "The Ultimate Computer"; TAS: "The Eye of the Beholder"; ENT: "Cold Front")
History[]
In 2267, USS Enterprise helmsman Hikaru Sulu used Canopus as a reference point to plot the location of the Enterprise after it was flung five hundred parsecs by the Metrons. (TOS: "Arena", "Wolf in the Fold"; TAS: "Eye of the Beholder"; DIS: "An Obol for Charon")
Stellar cartography[]
The Canopus system was visible from Earth in the constellation Carina. This system was approximately 309 light years from Sol.
In 2257, the location of this system was labeled on the star chart showing the trajectory of Lieutenant Spock's shuttle. (DIS: "An Obol for Charon")
In 2293, Alpha Carinae's location in the Milky Way Galaxy was labeled in the star chart "The Explored Galaxy", which was on display in Captain James T. Kirk's quarters aboard the USS Enterprise-A. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country okudagram)
Later that year, the location of this system was labeled in a star chart found on the navigation console of the USS Enterprise-B. (Star Trek Generations)
In 2365, the location of Alpha Carinae was labeled in a Subspace Comm Net Ops star chart, which was seen in the courtroom on Starbase 173. Subspace lines connected this system to Alfa 177 and an unnamed location. (TNG: "The Measure Of A Man")
In 2366, in an alternate timeline, during the Federation-Klingon War, the location of Alpha Carinae was labeled on a tactical situation monitor on the bridge and in the ready room of the USS Enterprise-D. (TNG: "Yesterday's Enterprise" okudagram)
In 2367, the location of Alpha Carinae was labeled on a tactical situation monitor in Captain Benjamin Maxwell's ready room on the USS Phoenix. (TNG: "The Wounded" okudagram)
Canopus (Alpha Carinae) system |
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Appendices[]
Background information[]
Information on this system was derived from the episodes and films, the reference works Star Trek: Star Charts and Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library, and real-world sources. The reference works were used extensively in the creation of star charts seen in Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek: Prodigy, and Star Trek: Lower Decks. The real-world information added to the article was current as of 2025.
Star charts seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine located Alpha Carinae (Canopus) in the Alpha Quadrant. This was retconned for Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, which have star charts locating Alpha Carinae (Canopus) in the Beta Quadrant.
Alpha Carinae and Canopus both seen on the tactical situation monitor
Canopus and Alpha Carinae were depicted as being two separate stars on a star chart first seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and subsequently reused in a number of Star Trek episodes. In reality, these were two different names for the same star. [1] This contradiction was also noted in the Star Trek Encyclopedia, 4th ed., vol. 1, p. 115. A map seen in the Star Trek: Discovery episode "An Obol for Charon" correctly gave both names for the same celestial object.
The Star Trek Encyclopedia, 4th ed., vol. 1, p. 115 described Canopus, the system's primary, as a red supergiant star and said it was used as a navigational reference by Voyager series probes and other NASA spacecraft.
For Star Trek: First Contact, Alex Jaeger created a ship size comparison chart for Industrial Light & Magic. On this chart, one of the names considered for the Norway-class starship was the USS Canopus. [2]
In August 2024, an annotated computer paste-up of the star chart from "The Measure Of A Man" was put up for auction in the Entertainment Memorabiliia Live Auction: Los Angeles Summer 2024 by Propstore Auction. This chart was made before the canonical association between Alpha Carinae and Canopus was established, so that there two locations for this system shown on the chart. [3]
External links[]
- Canopus at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
- Canopus at Wikipedia
- Bright giant at Wikipedia
- Canopus at the Internet Stellar Database