On the Enterprise-D's exterior hull, a little underneath the main shuttle bay, there are a pair of rectangles made up of smaller rectangles with gaps in the middle. In many shots, they are glowing bluish.
What are they supposed to be?
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21It's the number of lives remaining. They've got to be careful now; if they lose this one before they earn another bonus life, it's game over.– DavidWCommented Mar 21, 2022 at 14:47
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To me they look like they could be the impulse engines of the saucer section glowing with some exotic type of energy. If those a windows and the blue light is the normal light in the arboretum shining, people in the aboretum may be likely to get sunburns and skin cancer, or even radiaiton poisoning.– M. A. GoldingCommented Mar 21, 2022 at 16:22
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@M.A.Golding: The saucer section impulse engines glow red, and are more lateral. See this image (where they're more yellowish).– einpoklumCommented Mar 21, 2022 at 21:50
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@M.A.GoldingThe large cutouts in the saucer rim at the top and bottom of the image contain the saucer's impulse engines.– T.J.L.Commented Mar 22, 2022 at 12:39
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1This needs more hand-drawn red circles– ValorumCommented Mar 26, 2022 at 13:58
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1 Answer
The Star Trek: The Next Generation USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints set says they're the windows of the arboretum.
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3"Some blueprints have identified the two large blue windows below the main shuttlebay on the Enterprise-D model as the arboretum windows, although the set had no such windows. It is possible there was more than one arboretum on the Galaxy-class. Also the arboretum is stated to be on Deck 17, however that was the ship's stardrive section, where most of the ship's essential functions were located. Blueprints produced by Rick Sternbach show the twin windows for the arboretum however interior blue prints do not show them." - memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Arboretum– ValorumCommented Mar 21, 2022 at 16:14
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1I've updated this to a Memory Alpha link so that people can judge the relative canonicity of the blueprints.– ValorumCommented Mar 21, 2022 at 16:20
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1@NKCampbell - I think there were some minor changes, but this page was untouched from the original. Note that the version on Cygnus is mostly thumbnails to prevent accusations of copyright fraud– ValorumCommented Mar 21, 2022 at 19:20
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1@einpoklum My best guess is grow lights... really, really big grow lights. While they always show plenty of light inside the ship, in the vast majority of cases, it's really, really dark outside - starships spend a great deal of time between star systems, away from any source of exterior illumination. You arrange them like that so the light comes from roughly the same direction, whether it's purely artificial or natural-augmented (you'd never turn the artificial light completely off, but you could balance it against exterior light).– T.J.L.Commented Mar 22, 2022 at 12:38
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1@DarrelHoffman so those taking a romantic walk through the arboretum can look out at the "night" sky?– FreeManCommented Mar 22, 2022 at 14:39