Galactic quadrant

In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Milky Way Galaxy is divided into four quadrants, which are further subdivided into sectors.



Alpha Quadrant
The Alpha Quadrant would be located between 6 and 9 o'clock positions if the plane of the galaxy were seen as a clock face with the 6 o'clock position bisecting Earth's solar system.

The Alpha Quadrant serves as the usual setting for the television shows Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise as well as most of the Star Trek movies.

The Alpha Quadrant is home to the United Federation of Planets, the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance, the Bajorans and the Breen Confederacy.

The Bajoran wormhole bridges the 70,000 lightyear distance between the Alpha Quadrant's Bajor system and the Gamma Quadrant's Idran system.

Beta Quadrant
The Beta Quadrant would be located between the 3 and 6 o'clock positions if the plane of the galaxy were seen as a clock face with the 6 o'clock position bisecting Earth's solar system.

The reason why the United Federation of Planets and Earth are right on the border between the Alpha and Beta Quadrants is to retroactively offer consistency to references to "quadrant"s in the original series, its movies, and early episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which use "quadrant" and "sector" interchangeably.

The Beta Quadrant is home to the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, Gorn Republic, Son'a and Metron Consortium. A portion of the Beta Quadrant is part of Federation space, and includes the Vulcan homeworld, Vulcan. Because parts of the Romulan and Klingon empires spill into the Alpha Quadrant, they are referred to as Alpha Quadrant powers.

Gamma Quadrant
The Gamma Quadrant would be located between the 9 and 12 o'clock positions if the plane of the galaxy were seen as a clock face with the 6 o'clock position bisecting Earth's solar system.

The Gamma Quadrant is home to the races of The Dominion.

The Bajoran wormhole bridges the 70,000 lightyear distance between the Gamma Quadrant's Idran system and the Alpha Quadrant's Bajor system.

Delta Quadrant
The Delta Quadrant would be located between the 12 and 3 o'clock positions if the plane of the galaxy were seen as a clock face with the 6 o'clock position bisecting Earth's solar system.

Most of the information about the Delta Quadrant and its inhabitants comes from the show Star Trek: Voyager.

The Delta Quadrant is home to The Borg, the Kazon, the Vidiians, the Talaxians, the Ocampa, and the Hirogen. Species 8472 is first encountered in this quadrant, although they are not native to this region or physical dimension.

Trivia

 * Curiously, this arrangement results in:

The order of the quadrants is therefore neither clockwise nor counterclockwise.


 * An unaddressed problem is that the galaxy is not stationary and spins on its "axis," so how the boundaries of the quadrants are maintained is unclear.


 * Before the establishment of the current quadrants in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Price, the Morgana Quadrant was named as an existing quadrant. Although this most likely refers to a quadrant in a certain sector in the galaxy, not one of the four galactical quadrants. There is no point or any logic in Picard stating that the Enterprise-D was in the Morgana Quadrant, unless this was the case. It seems pointless for starship captains to point out that they are in the Alpha Quadrant when exploring the Federation, as it is generally taken as red.