What I think the star maps are.

[Dalthanas]

A lot has happened, and I was away for a couple hours. I don't know if this has been discussed, I know there was some discussion in viewtopic.php?f=12&t=737&start=20 but it's now dedicated the video chat. I haven't read everything, though I've tried to catch up as fully as possible, so I apologize if this is a repeat.

I think the star maps are nothing more than showing where previous flood infestations have been discovered. I don't think there's a clue in them. The clues to opening server 2 had nothing to do with server 1. I think the servers tell the story, and the arg plays out in other ways.

In the transcript of the server 2 video it says

it spoke to us
{//} Mockingly, dismissively
It has done this before
{//} Elsewhere

This may kill the theory that the flood is a science experiment gone wrong, but that's not 100%. We don't know who's sending these messages, but if it is from the Forerunners, concerning the first firing of the Halo Array, then it means they existed, and killed, before the Halo's were built.

Anyway, the Infestation image of got me thinking. It looks like a 3 step thermal analysis of a planet and possibly moon/sun throughout a Flood invasion. This means that whoever is sending these messages has studied the flood before, and is sending their information on to us, so that we might be more successful in stopping the flood without wiping out all galactic life.

So what if the star images are actually INCREDIBLY broad in scope, and we're not looking at a galaxy, but a larger chunk of the universe. The glyphs could indicate the area of invasion. The rotation of it is simply set to match a particular moon or planet of origin, and the infection reigns hell throughout the glyphs area. The second glyph, the second invasion. The final glyph... Earth perhaps?

Anyway, thats just me spitballing, wanting to contribute since so much has been done.

[Akumakei]

Guys? You know those blue lines in Photoshop when you open the image? Yeah, they're important.

They sync up the star charts.

The glyphs also overlap. i'm working on editing them together. Some of the stars are not on both charts, but for the most part, the areas that overlap have the same stars.

[Akumakei]

Yeah, so I just got to the other thread. My bad.

[Kiloh Ekim]

There's a meaning behind the pictures, and I agree, it won't help us find the next server. It's to help with the story and it works as follows:

The Infestation image looks like a thermal scan of a planet over time, and it is indeed heating up very rapidly over the course of the shots. But how does a planet heat up, you ask? Well, the flood terraform a planet as they release spoors. This would trap the heat from the sun inside the atmosphere and heat the planet beyond what is humanly possible to survive. Think: Venus' atmosphere on Earth. Now this isn't solely a genocide weapon (their physiology is already well suited for that), it's likely to help the flood's infection rates or at the very least make it physically suitable for a Gravemind to form.

And the starmaps could be simply thermal shots of the sky showing the every sixteen hours thing taking place picture by picture. The other possibility is that it could be a broader picture of solar systems that have already fallen and have their own heat signature.

[Sosobra]

I've gotten the Starmaps to match up. I'll post two pictures. The first one is slightly offset so that you can see where they are going to match up and the second is when they are directly aligned. I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I thought you guys might like to see.


The first one where they are just slightly out of alignment

And the second one, where they are both in line...

Make of it what you will

[Spartan 062]

I'm sure that someone has already pointed this out, but since they botch overlap, and since the two glyphs fit together and make a glyph with two circles, I assume that there will be 3 more star charts (one in each server) and that they will be able to be lined up and make a glyph with 5 outer circles.

[ii otnemem ii]

In reference to my Lunar Calendar theory, these seem to be going counter-clockwise, which is the way of the orbit of the moon, while the servers are opening clockwise according to the glyphs rotation on their sides. Not sure what it exactly means yet though. When you overlay these, which is your top layer? I am thinking that we ought to be blacking out stars. Also, do any new stars appear in Image2 that weren't in Image1?