OK, I'll start with acknowledging that I know I am searching for meaning where none is meant to be found, but still:

Where is the Expanse, in relation to the Sol system, Bajor, Vulcan, Romulus, Qo'nos, or whatever? I mean, the galaxy is more or less two-dimensional (i.e. quite flat), so there aren't that many possibilities. I haven't got a clue, but maybe some of you, my fellow nit-pickers, have picked up something by now?

We know the Vulcans have already tried to explore it, so it's probably closer to Vulcan than to Earth. And since we know Vulcan is reasonably close to Romulus, it's probably near there, too. And the Klingons seemed to be aware of it. I seem to recall someone saying the Expanse bordered on Klingon space somewhere.

It's hard to guess, though, since Quantum doesn't yet know about the Bajorans, or even the Romulans too much. So we can't get those kinds of guidelines.

The Star Charts were published before this season, so they don't mention it. And there's always the possibility (as has been hinted at) that it's artificial, and somehow Archer shuts it down, so it doesn't exist in the rest of Trek.

That said, I get the feeling it's quite close to Earth, relatively. Archer takes a few months to get there, but he's going at Warp 4.something. There are a few mentions of how it's a few dozen light years from Earth- a large distance for Archer, but not for Kirk and Picard.

Then again, Archer did make it to Kronos in a few days.

Well, now that we'll be visiting Andor this week (whoops, make that Andoria), we'll have reason to open this topic.

Did someone say their star is Procyon? What's the distance from Vulcan?

The "ring" (for lack of a better word) surrounding the Expanse was held together by the gravity emitted by the Spheres. Once they blew up, the gravity dissipated, along with the ring. So, there's really no more "Expanse", as it existed before Season 2. Most of it has probably been absorbed into the UFP by now (post-"ST: Nemesis").

Actually Vulcan was a real planet years ago before it exploded. It was located between the Sun and Mercury.

Vulcan is also a town in Alberta and they have the ears to prove it.

I've never heard that before. Are you sure? And by "years", I assume you mean "billions of years".

See here.

Thanks, nelamm, that's an extraordinary read. I've never heard most of that before.

There's a big difference between the planet once existing and someone once thinking this planet existed, though.

What the writers need to do it make the ships slower and all of the various Empires smaller. If at the end of the TNG era the Federation was only 75 or so LY's across that would still let there be several hundred planets (at least in the ST universe). Make the ships able to go 500 or so FTL and you could cross that entire distance in about 2 months. Not a bad voyage time.
Plus this would explain how the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, and the rest are able to be around if the Federation is so huge. Plus while I know space is 3D but how is that all of the TNG/DS9 era powers share borders with each other? Especially if you take the overly optimistic numbers that the ST website shows of the Fed being 10,000 LY's across.

This website has a map of the various Alpha Quadrant powers (scroll down, on the left) as a zip file. I have no idea how accurate it is, but it's still pretty cool. The big blue area in the middle is the Federation, the brownish blob on the left is Cardassian space, and the green area in the upper right is the Romulan Empire. I don't remember what the other areas are.

The Klingons are on the lower right (how they get to DS9 is a three-dimensional issue). I think the most official you can get is the recent book of maps by Pocket- the master map was included in a shot in Voyager, so it's canon.