Ringier-Fitzroy Station
Names: Ringier-Fitzroy StationRingier-Fitzroy observation stationobservation systemSolar System advance warning systemObservation Unit #1Advance warning system
First appears in Book 2: The Dark Forest, chapter 7 (Year 205, Crisis Era)
Appearances
What you know
Book 3: Death's End
- Ch 32Located at the outer rim of the asteroid belt, it discovered 415 new trails in the dust cloud near Trisolaris on the thirty-eighth day after deterrence ended.
- Ch 58The advance warning system under construction can give only about twenty-four hours' warning, too little for ships to reach Jupiter from Earth.
- Ch 59The system is designed to give about twenty-four hours' warning of a photoid, and plans thirty-five observation units monitoring the sky in every direction.
- Ch 59Warning would be nearly nonexistent if a photoid were launched from a nearby spaceship, as happened to Trisolaris.
- Ch 60It is the updated Ringier-Fitzroy Station on the asteroid belt's outer edge, with a ten-kilometer column of six giant lenses and a two-person crew.
- Ch 60Its crew pairs a scientist with a military officer who monitors photoid emissions; the first lens is now two thousand meters across.
- Ch 60It found six more trails within a month, sized 15 to 200 AU; most are unrelated to the Trisolaran fleet, so trails are common in the universe.
Connections
- related toRingier-Fitzroy Telescopecontrol center for
- part ofEarthprotects the Solar System
- has memberWidnall
- has memberVasilenko
Key moments
- Book 2 · Ch 7The probe goes dark
The Trisolaran probe's engines go out, making it untraceable; Kuhn and Robinson, hampered by fleet disputes, decide to try a stellar bomb near Neptune to create a dust cloud to detect it.
- Book 2 · Ch 7Blue Shadow finds the Trisolaran probe
The dust-cloud wake lets Ringier-Fitzroy Station compute the probe's trajectory; Blue Shadow rendezvous and sights it, realizing it is decelerating to stay in the Solar System.
- Book 3 · Ch 32Second Trisolaran Fleet discovered
After deterrence ends, the observation station finds 415 trails showing a second Trisolaran fleet. Further trails reveal it travelled at lightspeed and is now decelerating, arriving in about a year rather than centuries.
- Book 3 · Ch 59Explanation of photoid advance warning
The excerpt explains that although photoids travel near lightspeed, their radiation outpaces them, giving roughly 24 hours' warning when the photoid is about 180 AU away, so thirty-five observation units are planned.
- Book 3 · Ch 60Discovery of curvature propulsion trails
Observing the ruined Trisolaran system, Widnall and Vasilenko find transparent bubbles, realize they are lightspeed trails, and send an alarm-level report to Fleet Command and the PDC, which leaks and sparks panic.
- Book 3 · Ch 68Alien projectile detected
The advance warning system saw an alien ship pass near lightspeed and launch a gravitational-wave-emitting projectile that decelerated near 150 AU; Revelation and Alaska were sent to intercept.