In the Star Trek movie "nemesis", the Bassen Rift is an area of space between Romulus and the Romulan Neutral Zone. A dense nebula field with many greenish-hued cloud formations, passage through the Rift disrupts subspace communications.  In 2379, the Bassen Rift was the location of a major conflict between the USS Enterprise-E, assisted by forces of the Romulan Star Empire, against the Reman warbird Scimitar, which was commanded by Shinzon.




There is no Bassen rift in real astronomy - this area of space was named by Nemesis screenwriter John Logan for his pet basset hound. However, there does exist The Great Rift - a series of dark, obscuring dust clouds in our Milky Way. These clouds stretch from the constellation Sagittarius to the constellation Cygnus. It is an apparent break in the Milky Way between Cygnus and Sagittarius caused by a series of large, dark overlapping clouds about 100 parsecs (2×1015 miles or 3×1015 kilometers) distant in the equatorial plane of the Galaxy.



I