well, I've been dropping hints for a month now & it's time to pass on my latest hypothesis re Raxxla. I think it's my last! It does answer many of the points made recently. Up to you whether you believe it or not.

Do you really want to know?
Are you sure??
Raxxla-in-Sol hypothesis

Raxxla (&/or the Omphalos Rift gateway to it) is in/near Sol’s main asteroid belt but stealthed.


Supporting Evidence

First mention of Raxxla

First record of the myth was in 2296 in the personal log of a shipboard mechanic in Tau Ceti, the first colony settled in 2151 by humanity. By 2296 the further systems settled were (between 2190 and 2230) Delta Pavonis, Altair, Beta Hydri, then Eotienses (2288) and Achenar (in 2292). It seems likely that Raxxla would have been encountered before 2288 (8 years seems a bit too short a time for a myth to have arisen without the full details also being known), suggesting Raxxla was found in Sol, Tau Ceti, Delta Pavonis, Altair or Beta Hydri, or their neighbouring systems. However a myth would probably require more like 100+ years for a true myth (strengthening the argument for just Sol or Tau Ceti for Raxxla location).

Codex Raxxla logo/icon
Raxxla logo in the Codex is likely to be a clue. The circle with central dot at the centre of the icon is the same as astronomical symbol for Sol, so logically the three arcs then represent the asteroid belt.

According to Koben (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8293919) whenever you enter an Asteroid Station, you'll find those 3 arches from the Raxxla icon glowing a greenish/bluish hue. However on looking at several videos (https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Asteroid_Base?file=Asteroid_Base_Hannu_Arena.png) of ED asteroid stations I saw there are indeed 3 such arcs, but each arc is constructed from 5 red lights and the central light of each arc seems to be dimmed.

This could be a hint that these 3 arcs do represent an asteroid and the 3 arcs in the Raxxla logo are indeed hinting at an asteroid belt. BUT there are then 33 dots around the periphery, what do these represent? What does the hexagon mean? & the three crossed “corridors” at 60 degrees? N.B. Does this imply six (or three) directional lines? Perhaps 6 directions to approach it, or 6 criteria that must be satisfied to attain it? The Dark WHeel toast may imply six pointers...

Looking for the asteroid belt astronomical symbol I found this site (https://www.symbols.com/group/75/Asteroids), which clearly shows three (or 6, depending on your point of view) crossed lines in the symbols for several (Hygiea, Egeria, Eunomia, Psyche, Melpomene, Fortuna, Proserpina, Amphitrite, Juno) of the asteroids. This suggests the icon is a hint that Raxxla is in Sol’s asteroid belt.

FD seem fond of mythology. In case this affected the placement of Raxxla the meanings & semi-major axes are:
Juno (1673 ls) was the (highest) Roman goddess of love and marriage.
Hygiea (1568 ls) was the Greek goddess of health.
Psyche (1458 ls) was the Greek goddess of the soul.
Proserpina (1325 ls) Roman equivalent of Persephone Queen of the Underworld.
Eunomia (1319 ls) a Greek personification of order and law.
Egeria (1285 ls) was a nymph, divine consort & counsellor of second king of Rome.
Amphitrite (1275 ls) was a Greek sea goddess.
Fortuna (1218 ls) was the Roman goddess of luck.
Melpomene (1146 ls) was the muse of tragedy.


There are 33 dashes in the icon. Interestingly the symbol for the 33rd asteroid does not involve 3/6 crossed lines! Asteroid 33 (they are numbered in historical order of discovery, not size or semi-major axis distance) is named “33 Polyhymnia” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Polyhymnia) with orbital period of 1,773.541 days (semi-major axis =2.86745 AU= 1431 ls). Sol’s main asteroid belt is shown in the sysmap (the only example to date to be so depicted in-game, which itself seems significant) as an annulus (IRL it’s actually a torus) divided into 32 sectors. Any body orbiting at this radius should take around 55.4 days to traverse one sector. According to (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhymnia) in Ancient Greece Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred poetry, and depicted as very serious, pensive and meditative, often holding a finger to her mouth & dressed in a long cloak (both of which suggests stealth!). In Greek mythology on Mount Parnassus, there was a spring that was sacred to Polyhymnia and the other Muses. It was said to flow between two big rocks above Delphi, then down into a large square basin. The water was used by the Pythia, (priests and priestesses), for oracular purposes including divination. This is related in mythology to the Omphalos Stone at Delphi where the divination occurred when the Pythia inhaled volcanic fumes via the hollow Omphalos Stone. Hence in ancient Greece the Omphalos Stone allowed direct communication with the gods. In the Codex the Omphalos Rift is mentioned in terms of an alien artefact as a possible gateway to Raxxla.

Mars Artefact
Tourist beacon 0175:
“In 2280, the first non-human relic was found in space. The object was found buried on Mars; it was no bigger than a child's hand and is still surrounded in secrecy, even in 3300. No information has ever been circulated as to the properties of this item or its origin, other than it is non-human”.

This message is interesting, because the fact as presented leads absolutely nowhere, nothing else in-game is related to it, it provides no logical lead to anything else. However it does make sense if it is provided as a signpost (clue! who said FD aren't giving any clues? ;) ) saying there is something significant to be discovered within this system. It screams that aliens visited Sol a long time ago! Why and who?

It is possible that the discovery of this Artefact may itself have led to the location of Raxxla by the Feds, or at least knowledge of its existence. If only existence then that could have quickly given birth to the myth, especially if only sparse details leaked through the Fed security blanket.

The only aliens we have currently experienced in-game are the Thargoids and Guardians. We know from Ram Tah’s decoding that Guardian physiology was not too dissimilar from human, so the child’s hand size of the Mars alien artefact makes some sense in that context, whereas Thargoid technology is altogether different, organic in nature, octagonal, and to date quite large. We also know that some Guardians left (I.e. were expelled) from their homeworld, but also before that forced exodus three ark ships were launched to colonise alien worlds. Old lore mentioned that Thargoid ships could be up to the size of planets; it seems logical that this could also apply to Guardian ships, certainly up to asteroid size. Perhaps one of these arrived in Sol? Millions of years ago Mars would have have been an inhabitable Earth like planet with plenty of water and an attractive destination.

Galnet
Galnet 14 June 3301 https://news.galnet.fr/simguru-offers-to-share-tomorrow-today/ “Sol is the birthplace of our race, the shining jewel of our galaxy.”

Looks like a big hint to me! So it may well be that in The Dark Wheel toast from the Codex the star Sol is “the jewel that shines on the brow of the mother of galaxies” (the Milky Way was the first to be known, and has several satellite galaxies).

New Scientist
(New Scientist is a popular science magazine in the UK and David Braben (personally interested in astronomy) would likely have been a reader)

12 April 2013 Astrophile: A handy guide to planetary parking spots (https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ide-to-planetary-parking-spots/#ixzz6Ap003Tgd ) "In the solar system, we know that in between Mars and Jupiter you could put another planet in a stable orbit.....And if a system has a truly unoccupied slot, could a sufficiently advanced civilisation build its own artificial planet and park it in orbit? “Gravitationally it would certainly work out, I’m just not sure about the logistics... Perhaps it’s time to bring legendary planet designer Slartibartfast out of retirement.” Referring to Douglas Adams’ Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy which was also popular in UK at the time ED was being developed. The bit about an artificial planet may have stimulated DB’s thoughts on implementation of Raxxla in ED.

20 October 2007 p62 The word: Space-time sirens “If a neutron star spins furiously in the vacuum of space, does it make a sound?” (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626262-300-the-word-space-time-sirens/). So neutron star is likely to be the “siren of the deepest void” in TDW toast.
“So, all Pulsars are Neutron stars, but not all Neutron stars are Pulsars. All depends on which way its energy beams are pointing.” (https://futurism.com/whats-the-difference-between-pulsars-quasars-and-magnetars). N.B. Jocelyn Bell Burrell discovered the first radio pulsars (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell).

Codex: The DW toast etc
The toast potentially has six clauses presented over four lines:

To the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies
To the whisperer in witchspace, the siren of the deepest void
The parent's grief, the lover's woe, and the yearning of our vagabond hearts
To Raxxla!

The fourth line is the goal, so is not a logical clause.

In the third line the word "To" does not appear so this part may not describe a location. This may represent the response of a parent and a lover to the seeker going on a long dangerous journey and be poetic padding. However this is poetry so the word “to” might also be implicit in all six clauses!

Six clauses seems to tie in with the haxagonal symmetry of the icon.

Now:
Whisperer can mean: someone who tells secrets or is a rumourmonger; someone who speaks very quietly in a whisper so can only be heard for a short distance; or someone who is an expert or guru in a particular field or subject.

Therefore going by the hypothesis so far the toast can be interpreted as:

Jewel: Sol
Whisperer: Li Qin(g) Jao station; he invented the first hyperdrive in the 22nd century so definitely a whisperer in Witchspace!
Siren: Burnell station; named after Jocelyn Bell Burnell discoverer of radio pulsars
Parent’s grief: Daedalus station; in Greek myth his son Icarus flew too near the Sun, his waxed wings melted and & he fell from the sky to his death
Lover’s woe: Abraham Lincoln station; he was heartbroken at the death of Amy Rutledge; he also quoted bible “Woe unto the world because of offenses!”
Vagabond yearning: Columbus station; he was a confirmed wanderer/vagabond!

It's possible that you need to visit/trade/run missions between these in turn before Raxxla will reveal itself? However I think it is more likely that the toast is just provided as supporting evidence that Sol is the correct system!

The Codex text about a stealthy station occupied by TDW is very ambiguously worded. This may be a consequence of TDW being a secretive organisation and/or Lyta Crane being duped, lying, or having dubious sources; however it may also be that the main purpose of this entry is to provide a clue that the gameplay allows things (e.g. Raxxla/Omphalos?) to be made invisible. This also brings to mind the galnet report (1 July 3302) of the meta-material Antares Memorial sculpture that bent light, which could conceivably be used to make something invisible.

FD interviews
Community Manager Will said (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8293919) in one of the mining live streams re Raxxla "you're doing it right, looking inside an asteroid".

DB reputed (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8194682, https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8199366) to have said:
DB: "- It would be more likely to reveal itself to a group of players."
Interviewer: "- How so?"
DB: "- If you are at the right place and you scan it enough..."
Interviewer: "- Advanced scanner or the basic one?"
DB: "- Basic scanning is enough."
Interviewer: "- But you have to be Elite..."
DB: "- You have to be Elite."

This was before Horizons & when Basic Scanners were still available.

If valid this quotation clearly implies discovery of Raxxla is likely to be based on RNG behaviour., however the video with this conversation can no longer be found.

FD RNG fixation
FD seem to be obsessed with RNG to hide features or make them difficult to attain. Raxxla has been in-game since the gamma (according to DB) so it is likely to be hidden behind a difficult RNG function. When FD introduced Engineers’ upgrades the RNG was ridiculously difficult and they toned it down after player kickback; this has happened with several aspects of the game; and it is possible that Raxxla RNG is also set to be hard (with no known discoveries to provide player kickback!)

FD “coding errors”

1) in Sol’s main asteroid belt between Mars & Jupiter no clusters are directly selectable and are not shown as in every other asteroid belt in-game. The belt is shown as an annulus split into 32 equal sectors, but this is the only system in-game to date with this depiction of an asteroid belt.

2) set a bookmark on Sol's asteroid belt in the sysmap and then select that bookmark in the galmap bookmarks tab, then in-game the belt is shown as being in the centre of the Sun. This may have been FD’s way of forcing us to do a tedious search; this, together with its unique visual depiction, certainly seems to be highlighting that is there something special about Sol’s asteroid belt.

3) While orbiting Sol (no object targeted) when you get to a point where a cluster shows in the hud display your position as shown in the sysmap orrery view has jumped by about 15 sectors, but you jump back to the correct position after leaving that “cluster position” . This happened to me numerous times whilst searching for the “asteroid clusters”, shown in my videos of this search. It has also happened at least once while isearching n the ring without being near a "cluster".

The placement of the asteroid belt at the centre of the sun was bug reported by others and me (I reported it when I first got the SOl permit circa late 2015. How likely are these to be unintentional bugs and still not corrected after several years given the importance of Sol as the birthplace of humanity? The coding for this system should have been thoroughly checked and corrected, so are they actually lues?

Strange happenings in Sol
Koben reported (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8286434) a couple of unususal things about the Asteroid Belts in Sol:

1. You cannot drop on a wing's beacon... you must drop manually within about 10km to get to the same instance; Curiously the wake signal drop from SC 3 Mm away feature doesn't work there (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8203238)
2. Search&Rescue Conda/ASP quite often drops there after you;
3. No local comms

I play in Solo so cannot check the Wing and comms assertions. But it is fairly common for a SAR ship to appear when you drop out of supercruise in Sol. It happens in the asteroid belt and elsewhere, especially if you drop out of supercruise when “new signal source detected” is shown in the info panel.

Transient Green Glow
While circling around in supercruise within the Sol asteroid belt over one month searching I have on twelve separate occasions (I’ve been testing this hypothesis since 20th December!) seen a green glow shining through and reflecting off the inside of the cockpit. The colour and intensity of the light in the two weak examples seems to be similar to that at the heart of Guardian artefacts etc, while the vivid example is a much stronger green & with less blue. This glow seems to occur around the same position in the asteroid belt in sector 16 (counting clockwise from the top in the sysmap orrery view), but does not happen every time (actually for a lone searcher it’s frustratingly infrequent!) and does not last more than a couple of seconds (max seen was six seconds at 30km/sec, minimum SC speed); I have so far been unable to turn the ship around in time to look in that direction before it fades out; the glow fades out rapidly & disappears if I crash drop into normal space. There is no in-system visible light source of this colour that would explain this effect, so it’s unlikely to be a shader/graphics artefact, and if it were such an artefact then why doesn’t it happen every time? I managed to capture only a few of these instances on video. I suspect this is the Omphalos Rift/Raxxla beginning to instance. I have continued to search in the area after it disappeared but not managed to get it to reappear.

Video 2021-01-17 16-00-09: a graphics bug? I saw Barnard's Loop was no longer visible out the cockpit, so in galmap selected Onoros (currently with a damaged station) near Witchhead Nebula which should be in foreground of BLoop - still not visible (bug!) but got a brief very weak green glow, which was apparently from aft, left & below the ship! I did briefly suspect that the green glow is a graphics bug blending the light from BLoop, however this does not tie in with the examples when I was heading towards Pluto & had BLoop directly aft but the glow was apparently coming from a different direction.

Weak glow 31Dec20 16:34Weak glow 10Jan21 16:22Vivid glow 31Dec20 11:31
SolTo left 1328 lsTo left 1517 lsTo right 1504 ls
Sectormiddle of sector 16ship near 1/8 in from outer edge of belt & 1/4 into sector 16 anticlockwise
ship dot near 1/8 in from outer edge of belt in sector 16 near 16/17 boundary heading towards Pluto. Height mid-belt
Pluto21, 397 ls21,190 ls21,255 ls
(225088) 2007 OR1022,211 ls
Persephone484,825 ls
(307261) 2002 MS420,490 ls
HeadingTo PlutoTo PlutoTo Pluto
Jupiter orbit line nappearanceSlight curve down, almost flatflatslight curve down (~3mm below bottom of screen handles each side, 36" diag monitor)
Speed0.21C
Duration of glow6 seconds
Glow source directionAbove, slightly rightto right & 45* aftAbeam/aft right

In each instance the glow only lasted for a few seconds (videos in Dropbox at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/10dxzloujah6oo1/AADkhtbyjNogCCJWsSUNdYrha?dl=0)

Conclusion

Assessing position in-system is difficult since coordinates are not available, must note distances to distant orbital bodies, though they will slowly move. Moreover not convinced that the sysmap depiction of the asteroid belt is all that accurate since the distances to the planets seemed to vary somewhat between the examples of the glow; they are moving, but that should be fairly slow.

Glow source position: in asteroid belt sector 16, radius is around 1500 ls from Sol. Around 21,255 ls from Pluto, 20,490 ls from (307261) 2002 MS4, 22,211 ls from (225088) 2007 OR10, around 484,824 ls from Persephone. Seem to need to honk very close at or just before it’s position for it to instance.

If it is an orbiting body at this radius then it will move in its orbit, but only slowly (about 55 days per sector) however if it is a (massless) Rift then it may be stationary.

I suspect I’ve found it, but I’m getting old and my reflexes are slowing, and after a month chasing this I’m just too RNGd out, so I'm passing on the torch for the final phase!!

Additional thoughts


The Codex entry mentions an alien artefact “Omphalos Rift”. This may be Raxxla itself, or I think more likely what is causing the green glow is the Omphalos Rift gateway through which Raxxla is accessed. One of the old (now deleted?) Elite Shinrarta Dehzra missions mentioned data crystals that contained a map “...information on a certain celestial body, you know the one I mean. Place that isn't a place, door that is also the key. The myth” These two ideas seem to make sense together: the Rift would be a place that is not a place since it’s a Rift and a gateway to somewhere else and hence the key to getting there.

I did briefly consider the possibility that the Omphalos/key hints are indicators that analien device such as the Thargoid Sensor/Uknown Artefact (in lore goids are/were looking for Raxxla) or Guardian Ancient Key are required to allow Raxxla/Omphalos to instance (from Wiki: Ancient Key is “a crystal found by scanning the data core of a Guardian Beacon, appears to contain a similar ethereal type of energy as the Ancient Relics found at the ruin sites of the Guardian civilisation. Like the relic this item is used in Guardian technologies, unlocking new data and functions”) or Ancient Relic (the wiki says “Relic is part power source, part computer, part key”). However I don’t believe that DB would insert Raxxla (his own personal Easter Egg and tribute to Holdstock) and then make it inaccessible until the Thargoids & Guardians had been inserted into the game several years later.

Astrophile 03Aug 2012: Tale of woe, star-cross’d lovers: The Most Cruel Death of Cupid and Belinda. https://www.newscientist.com/articl...uel-death-of-cupid-and-belinda/#ixzz69cmKCuuI. Cupid and Belinda, doomed moons of Uranus. Checked this out, it fits the line from the toast, but there are no belts or moons there in-game!

Speculation
The name construction “Raxxla” is unusual with the double X, it sounds alien, as Steven Eisler (aka Robert Holdstock) probably intended it to (in The Dark Wheel novella supplied ith the original 1984 Elite game http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/dkwheel.htm and in his earlier 1980 book The Alien World https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Raxxla). The haxagonal theme is beloved by both Guardians and the Pilot’s Federation (see the nav panel when it loads, shown in at least one of my green glow videos - it shows hexagonal patterns which are strikingly similar to those at Guardian sites), which to me suggests that Guardians visited Sol in the distant past, humanity is descended from those Guardian exiles, and the Pilot’s Federation is based on Guardian AI who control the fsd permit locks.

If Raxxla/Omphalos is to be found in Sol’s asteroid belt then it follows that the Dark Wheel’s stealth station ( if it exists & not just fluff) should be hidden at one of Sol’s gas giant moons. This would be a logical place to have an abandoned station that TDW took over, though it may also be near Achenar as an abandoned Fed staging post left over from the Federation-Achenar war.

Contrary Evidence

None known, but I'm confident someone will come up with something. :)


Discussion

The estimate of distance within which Raxxla should be found as the start of the myth is hypothetical & based on some common sense estimates which may be incorrect.

This hypothesis is largely conjecture based on IMHO how FD think and implement game features, however the asteroid belt being located within the sun "bug", the mysterious ship positional jumps within belt, the unique depiction of this belt, & it’s lack of actual asteroids whereas every other asteroid belt in-game has them, the presence of the Mars Artefact, and the examples of green glow are concrete evidence of something. It may all be a collection of programming bugs, but I don’t think so, it seems too consistent.

All these factors are, individually, circumstantial, but together they seem to strongly support a hypothesis: that Raxxla or the Omphalos Rift (a gateway to somewhere else that is Raxxla), is hidden in the Sol main asteroid belt.

If the DB quote is correct then Omphalos/Raxxla should be locatable by repeated scanning in the correct position (Jorki is triple Elite, it will be interesting to see if this glow can be detected by anyone regardless of rank) without any alien artefacts onboard. The appearance of the green glow I encountered seems to support this.

The discovery scanner takes 6 seconds to charge before the honk and thereafter 10 seconds to recover; a lot of distance can pass in 16 seconds at supercruise! At minimum speed it's 480 Km. It struck me during my search (see green glow videos) that the honk that triggers its appearance must occur within a very short distance of the correct position, since it disappears after around 5 ls of ship travel. It seems to me that the only practicable method to locate the source of this green glow is to search in a Wing of four with coordinated honks of the discovery scanners every 4 seconds near the outer edge of the asteroid belt in sector 16. Speed needs to be near minimum. One ship will trigger its appearance but travel past it & cannot not turn fast enough before the green glow fades, so if one wing member triggered the instance the other pilots would need to quickly locate it and keep it instanced (coordinated honking?) to allow it to be accessed.

Of course it is also possible the green glow is a space phantasm that might itself be the source of the Raxxla myth and there may be no concrete solution, but I don't really believe that!!

Good hunting!!!

An extremely intriguing read, I'm definitely on board with experimenting in the Sol system. About a year ago I spent some time there exploring the idea of The Hero's Journey into the Underworld and also experienced anomalies. If I'm remembering correctly, I was getting heat warning messages far beyond the sun (near Neptune and Pluto) and observed visual oddities as well. At the time I assumed these were bugs, but perhaps not? I'll be heading to Sol tomorrow, we'll see if anything comes up.
 
In SOL yesterday/today between SOL & Pluto, 1504Ls from SOL, no green glow detected.

Edit: yet

I spent around 30 days searching & only got about a dozen green glow instances in total, and only managed to capture video for 4. Talk about hen’s teeth!!

Edit: But I think you need to be at the right place on that 1504 ls radius circle from Sol to stand a chance of it instancing, and even then it seems RNG-controlled so it’s really frustrating. Make sure you’re in sector 16, about 21,255 ls from Pluto, within the thickness of the belt - you need to check in the orrery view where your ship’s dot is shown; the line of Jupiter’s orbit should be curved downwards a little with Pluto below that.
 
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I proceeded with my investigation of the "missing star" in the "Two Ladies"-system. I asked myself, why is that system called Two Ladies? It's right in the middle of procedurally generated names and it's close to the starting region.

Well, a quick look in Google gives two possibilities: It's either the name for two Egyptian goddesses, or it's a very very weird musical piece from 1972. Which one is more probable?

Here's the Wikipedia-page for Two Ladies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Ladies

To make it short: The Two Ladies are the goddesses Wadjet and Nekhbet. Wadjet btw means "the green one", which is kind of interesting since we are talking about green glow... And they are represented by a cobra and by a vulture...
So, what about Wadjet and Nekhbet? Well there are two systems with those names, they are very close to each other (1.19 Ly).

So this begs the question: If the Two Ladies both have already their own system, why is there a system with the name "Two Ladies"?
Is it possible that it actually references the musical piece? Here's the Youtube-link:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgskuTUY--o


And here's a part of the lyrics, which I find very interesting:

M.C.:
I go out daily to earn our daily bread.
But we've one thing in common
GIRL 1:
He,
M.C.:
She
GIRL 2:
And me,
GIRL 1:
The key,
GIRL 2:
The key,
M.C.:
The key.

And then further down:

M.C.:
We switch partners daily
To play as he please,
GIRL 1:
Twosie beats onsie,
M.C.:
But nothing beats threes.
I sleep in the middle,
GIRL 2:
I'm left,
GIRL 1:
And I'm right.
M.C.:
But there's room on the bottom
If you drop in some night!

That sounds like a hint, but it could also be just a crazy coincidence. But why name a system "Two Ladies" and at the same time name two systems after the two goddesses?
 
I proceeded with my investigation of the "missing star" in the "Two Ladies"-system. I asked myself, why is that system called Two Ladies? It's right in the middle of procedurally generated names and it's close to the starting region.

Well, a quick look in Google gives two possibilities: It's either the name for two Egyptian goddesses, or it's a very very weird musical piece from 1972. Which one is more probable?

Here's the Wikipedia-page for Two Ladies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Ladies

To make it short: The Two Ladies are the goddesses Wadjet and Nekhbet. Wadjet btw means "the green one", which is kind of interesting since we are talking about green glow... And they are represented by a cobra and by a vulture...
So, what about Wadjet and Nekhbet? Well there are two systems with those names, they are very close to each other (1.19 Ly).

So this begs the question: If the Two Ladies both have already their own system, why is there a system with the name "Two Ladies"?
Is it possible that it actually references the musical piece? Here's the Youtube-link:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgskuTUY--o


And here's a part of the lyrics, which I find very interesting:



And then further down:



That sounds like a hint, but it could also be just a crazy coincidence. But why name a system "Two Ladies" and at the same time name two systems after the two goddesses?
Draw a line between them. See where that points
 
Draw a line between them. See where that points

There's nothing on the line. Nothing.

But there is something weird about all the systems which relate to Egyptian mythology/gods. Let's take the Isis-system.

The planets are named Isis 1, Isis 2, Isis I, Isis II, Isis III, Isis IV, Isis V, Isis VI, Isis VII, Isis VIII, Isis IX, Isis X. That's right, arabic and roman numerals are mixed and what should be "Isis 3" is actually "Isis I".

But wait, there's more!
  • Isis VI and Isis VIII have identical mass and radius
  • Isis VII, Isis IX and Isis X have identical mass and radius
There is definitely something weird going on.
 
Since were talking about graphical anomolies .... Enjoy

WeirdThing.jpg
 
Nope, here is a video though. I have another one that i'll upload that shows what it is. Tomorrow though , I'm going to keep you all in suspence until then. Seriously its nothing crazy , totally a bug in the game.

And just so im not posting fluff in here :D

I was thinking about how to get to an unlisted system, that wouldn't show up on galmap, and not be visible in the nav panel. It would have to be by wake scanning or transactions from a mission. There is also a new CG that encourages scanning for data.

 
You can create the same thing by dropping out of supercruise but tbh it's damn near impossible to see your own. Have a cmdr drop out of SC on your wake and watch behind them. So I would assume this anomaly is some form of wake drop residual


Edit: the way I recreated this anomaly might have been in multicrew also as it has that 3rd person exterior view in the gunner role
 
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I proceeded with my investigation of the "missing star" in the "Two Ladies"-system. I asked myself, why is that system called Two Ladies? It's right in the middle of procedurally generated names and it's close to the starting region.

Well, a quick look in Google gives two possibilities: It's either the name for two Egyptian goddesses, or it's a very very weird musical piece from 1972. Which one is more probable?

Here's the Wikipedia-page for Two Ladies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Ladies

To make it short: The Two Ladies are the goddesses Wadjet and Nekhbet. Wadjet btw means "the green one", which is kind of interesting since we are talking about green glow... And they are represented by a cobra and by a vulture...
So, what about Wadjet and Nekhbet? Well there are two systems with those names, they are very close to each other (1.19 Ly).

So this begs the question: If the Two Ladies both have already their own system, why is there a system with the name "Two Ladies"?
Is it possible that it actually references the musical piece? Here's the Youtube-link:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgskuTUY--o


And here's a part of the lyrics, which I find very interesting:



And then further down:



That sounds like a hint, but it could also be just a crazy coincidence. But why name a system "Two Ladies" and at the same time name two systems after the two goddesses?
Two ladies song

The song coments on the storys and rather fabulous musucal 'Cabaret' two leads Cliff and Sally's unusual (at that time) living conditions.

;)
 
There's nothing on the line. Nothing.

But there is something weird about all the systems which relate to Egyptian mythology/gods. Let's take the Isis-system.

The planets are named Isis 1, Isis 2, Isis I, Isis II, Isis III, Isis IV, Isis V, Isis VI, Isis VII, Isis VIII, Isis IX, Isis X. That's right, arabic and roman numerals are mixed and what should be "Isis 3" is actually "Isis I".

But wait, there's more!
  • Isis VI and Isis VIII have identical mass and radius
  • Isis VII, Isis IX and Isis X have identical mass and radius
There is definitely something weird going on.

Are they arranged as co-ordinated sets - i.e. at 120 degree intervals? If so then that's a possible stable arrangement. Still spooky though :)

[Edit]: Isis IX appears (somewhat briefly) in the official novel "Docking is Difficult", which might go some way to explain it's Hand Authored oddness..
 
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Are they arranged as co-ordinated sets - i.e. at 120 degree intervals? If so then that's a possible stable arrangement. Still spooky though :)

I have to take a look at the numbers, I also didn't take a look at the Orrery of the Isis-system; after I discovered the identical masses and radii, I called it quit for the day. I''m also going to take a look at the Osiris-system, considering Osiris is the husband of Isis. I also will take a closer look at Ra since there is something profoundly weird about it. There's a planetary base, Bohr-survey AFAIR, which is on a cliff to a crater, while there's a pyramid-like shape in the center of the crater. Though apparently those "pyramids" in the crater centers are common, so it doesn't mean anything. Also they only exist since Horizons and Raxxla existed presumably when ED was launched.

Now, taking a look at the lyrics of "Two Ladies": "Twosies are better than onesies." and "Threes are better than twos", this totally fits the 5 weird Isis-planets. We have a pair of "identical planets" and we have a triplett of "identical planets".
Then we have in the lyrics "we change partners every day" which would be a hint that Raxxla (or whatever is behind the "Two Ladies"-mystery) might change its location daily. Also Wadjet and Nekhbet are symbolized by a Cobra and by a Vulture. Both ship types exist in the game, so do we need to enter one of the systems with a Vulture and the other one with a Cobra? The Cobra being a key was already mentioned somewhere else in this thread.
Another coincidence: Wadjet had an Oracle which predated the one in Greece/Delphi. As we all know, Omphalos was the stone in the Oracle, so perhaps Delphi was been the wrong trail?

Another interesting thing about Wadjet and Nekhbet: They are associated with "Sekhmet", but there's no system called "Sekhmet". It's called "Sekhmetures". But there is an asteroid called "5381 Sekhmet" in our real solar system. Is it possible there is an invisible asteroid in the Sol system?
Is it what the others are actually hunting for?

And last: I'll look for "Amun". "Amun" means "the hidden one".
 
I have to take a look at the numbers, I also didn't take a look at the Orrery of the Isis-system; after I discovered the identical masses and radii, I called it quit for the day. I''m also going to take a look at the Osiris-system, considering Osiris is the husband of Isis. I also will take a closer look at Ra since there is something profoundly weird about it. There's a planetary base, Bohr-survey AFAIR, which is on a cliff to a crater, while there's a pyramid-like shape in the center of the crater. Though apparently those "pyramids" in the crater centers are common, so it doesn't mean anything. Also they only exist since Horizons and Raxxla existed presumably when ED was launched.

Now, taking a look at the lyrics of "Two Ladies": "Twosies are better than onesies." and "Threes are better than twos", this totally fits the 5 weird Isis-planets. We have a pair of "identical planets" and we have a triplett of "identical planets".
Then we have in the lyrics "we change partners every day" which would be a hint that Raxxla (or whatever is behind the "Two Ladies"-mystery) might change its location daily. Also Wadjet and Nekhbet are symbolized by a Cobra and by a Vulture. Both ship types exist in the game, so do we need to enter one of the systems with a Vulture and the other one with a Cobra? The Cobra being a key was already mentioned somewhere else in this thread.
Another coincidence: Wadjet had an Oracle which predated the one in Greece/Delphi. As we all know, Omphalos was the stone in the Oracle, so perhaps Delphi was been the wrong trail?

Another interesting thing about Wadjet and Nekhbet: They are associated with "Sekhmet", but there's no system called "Sekhmet". It's called "Sekhmetures". But there is an asteroid called "5381 Sekhmet" in our real solar system. Is it possible there is an invisible asteroid in the Sol system?
Is it what the others are actually hunting for?

And last: I'll look for "Amun". "Amun" means "the hidden one".

Cor-orbital planets can 'swap' orbits - if they catch up with each other then the orbits will exchange. See Horseshoe orbits:

 
I have to take a look at the numbers, I also didn't take a look at the Orrery of the Isis-system; after I discovered the identical masses and radii, I called it quit for the day. I''m also going to take a look at the Osiris-system, considering Osiris is the husband of Isis. I also will take a closer look at Ra since there is something profoundly weird about it. There's a planetary base, Bohr-survey AFAIR, which is on a cliff to a crater, while there's a pyramid-like shape in the center of the crater. Though apparently those "pyramids" in the crater centers are common, so it doesn't mean anything. Also they only exist since Horizons and Raxxla existed presumably when ED was launched.

Now, taking a look at the lyrics of "Two Ladies": "Twosies are better than onesies." and "Threes are better than twos", this totally fits the 5 weird Isis-planets. We have a pair of "identical planets" and we have a triplett of "identical planets".
Then we have in the lyrics "we change partners every day" which would be a hint that Raxxla (or whatever is behind the "Two Ladies"-mystery) might change its location daily. Also Wadjet and Nekhbet are symbolized by a Cobra and by a Vulture. Both ship types exist in the game, so do we need to enter one of the systems with a Vulture and the other one with a Cobra? The Cobra being a key was already mentioned somewhere else in this thread.
Another coincidence: Wadjet had an Oracle which predated the one in Greece/Delphi. As we all know, Omphalos was the stone in the Oracle, so perhaps Delphi was been the wrong trail?

Another interesting thing about Wadjet and Nekhbet: They are associated with "Sekhmet", but there's no system called "Sekhmet". It's called "Sekhmetures". But there is an asteroid called "5381 Sekhmet" in our real solar system. Is it possible there is an invisible asteroid in the Sol system?
Is it what the others are actually hunting for?

And last: I'll look for "Amun". "Amun" means "the hidden one".
I believe those 'pyramids' are basically what's left of the meteor that caused the crater
 
well, I've been dropping hints for a month now & it's time to pass on my latest hypothesis re Raxxla. I think it's my last! It does answer many of the points made recently. Up to you whether you believe it or not.

Do you really want to know?
Are you sure??
Raxxla-in-Sol hypothesis

Raxxla (&/or the Omphalos Rift gateway to it) is in/near Sol’s main asteroid belt but stealthed.


Supporting Evidence

First mention of Raxxla

First record of the myth was in 2296 in the personal log of a shipboard mechanic in Tau Ceti, the first colony settled in 2151 by humanity. By 2296 the further systems settled were (between 2190 and 2230) Delta Pavonis, Altair, Beta Hydri, then Eotienses (2288) and Achenar (in 2292). It seems likely that Raxxla would have been encountered before 2288 (8 years seems a bit too short a time for a myth to have arisen without the full details also being known), suggesting Raxxla was found in Sol, Tau Ceti, Delta Pavonis, Altair or Beta Hydri, or their neighbouring systems. However a myth would probably require more like 100+ years for a true myth (strengthening the argument for just Sol or Tau Ceti for Raxxla location).

Codex Raxxla logo/icon
Raxxla logo in the Codex is likely to be a clue. The circle with central dot at the centre of the icon is the same as astronomical symbol for Sol, so logically the three arcs then represent the asteroid belt.

According to Koben (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8293919) whenever you enter an Asteroid Station, you'll find those 3 arches from the Raxxla icon glowing a greenish/bluish hue. However on looking at several videos (https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Asteroid_Base?file=Asteroid_Base_Hannu_Arena.png) of ED asteroid stations I saw there are indeed 3 such arcs, but each arc is constructed from 5 red lights and the central light of each arc seems to be dimmed.

This could be a hint that these 3 arcs do represent an asteroid and the 3 arcs in the Raxxla logo are indeed hinting at an asteroid belt. BUT there are then 33 dots around the periphery, what do these represent? What does the hexagon mean? & the three crossed “corridors” at 60 degrees? N.B. Does this imply six (or three) directional lines? Perhaps 6 directions to approach it, or 6 criteria that must be satisfied to attain it? The Dark WHeel toast may imply six pointers...

Looking for the asteroid belt astronomical symbol I found this site (https://www.symbols.com/group/75/Asteroids), which clearly shows three (or 6, depending on your point of view) crossed lines in the symbols for several (Hygiea, Egeria, Eunomia, Psyche, Melpomene, Fortuna, Proserpina, Amphitrite, Juno) of the asteroids. This suggests the icon is a hint that Raxxla is in Sol’s asteroid belt.

FD seem fond of mythology. In case this affected the placement of Raxxla the meanings & semi-major axes are:
Juno (1673 ls) was the (highest) Roman goddess of love and marriage.
Hygiea (1568 ls) was the Greek goddess of health.
Psyche (1458 ls) was the Greek goddess of the soul.
Proserpina (1325 ls) Roman equivalent of Persephone Queen of the Underworld.
Eunomia (1319 ls) a Greek personification of order and law.
Egeria (1285 ls) was a nymph, divine consort & counsellor of second king of Rome.
Amphitrite (1275 ls) was a Greek sea goddess.
Fortuna (1218 ls) was the Roman goddess of luck.
Melpomene (1146 ls) was the muse of tragedy.


There are 33 dashes in the icon. Interestingly the symbol for the 33rd asteroid does not involve 3/6 crossed lines! Asteroid 33 (they are numbered in historical order of discovery, not size or semi-major axis distance) is named “33 Polyhymnia” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Polyhymnia) with orbital period of 1,773.541 days (semi-major axis =2.86745 AU= 1431 ls). Sol’s main asteroid belt is shown in the sysmap (the only example to date to be so depicted in-game, which itself seems significant) as an annulus (IRL it’s actually a torus) divided into 32 sectors. Any body orbiting at this radius should take around 55.4 days to traverse one sector. According to (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhymnia) in Ancient Greece Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred poetry, and depicted as very serious, pensive and meditative, often holding a finger to her mouth & dressed in a long cloak (both of which suggests stealth!). In Greek mythology on Mount Parnassus, there was a spring that was sacred to Polyhymnia and the other Muses. It was said to flow between two big rocks above Delphi, then down into a large square basin. The water was used by the Pythia, (priests and priestesses), for oracular purposes including divination. This is related in mythology to the Omphalos Stone at Delphi where the divination occurred when the Pythia inhaled volcanic fumes via the hollow Omphalos Stone. Hence in ancient Greece the Omphalos Stone allowed direct communication with the gods. In the Codex the Omphalos Rift is mentioned in terms of an alien artefact as a possible gateway to Raxxla.

Mars Artefact
Tourist beacon 0175:
“In 2280, the first non-human relic was found in space. The object was found buried on Mars; it was no bigger than a child's hand and is still surrounded in secrecy, even in 3300. No information has ever been circulated as to the properties of this item or its origin, other than it is non-human”.

This message is interesting, because the fact as presented leads absolutely nowhere, nothing else in-game is related to it, it provides no logical lead to anything else. However it does make sense if it is provided as a signpost (clue! who said FD aren't giving any clues? ;) ) saying there is something significant to be discovered within this system. It screams that aliens visited Sol a long time ago! Why and who?

It is possible that the discovery of this Artefact may itself have led to the location of Raxxla by the Feds, or at least knowledge of its existence. If only existence then that could have quickly given birth to the myth, especially if only sparse details leaked through the Fed security blanket.

The only aliens we have currently experienced in-game are the Thargoids and Guardians. We know from Ram Tah’s decoding that Guardian physiology was not too dissimilar from human, so the child’s hand size of the Mars alien artefact makes some sense in that context, whereas Thargoid technology is altogether different, organic in nature, octagonal, and to date quite large. We also know that some Guardians left (I.e. were expelled) from their homeworld, but also before that forced exodus three ark ships were launched to colonise alien worlds. Old lore mentioned that Thargoid ships could be up to the size of planets; it seems logical that this could also apply to Guardian ships, certainly up to asteroid size. Perhaps one of these arrived in Sol? Millions of years ago Mars would have have been an inhabitable Earth like planet with plenty of water and an attractive destination.

Galnet
Galnet 14 June 3301 https://news.galnet.fr/simguru-offers-to-share-tomorrow-today/ “Sol is the birthplace of our race, the shining jewel of our galaxy.”

Looks like a big hint to me! So it may well be that in The Dark Wheel toast from the Codex the star Sol is “the jewel that shines on the brow of the mother of galaxies” (the Milky Way was the first to be known, and has several satellite galaxies).

New Scientist
(New Scientist is a popular science magazine in the UK and David Braben (personally interested in astronomy) would likely have been a reader)

12 April 2013 Astrophile: A handy guide to planetary parking spots (https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ide-to-planetary-parking-spots/#ixzz6Ap003Tgd ) "In the solar system, we know that in between Mars and Jupiter you could put another planet in a stable orbit.....And if a system has a truly unoccupied slot, could a sufficiently advanced civilisation build its own artificial planet and park it in orbit? “Gravitationally it would certainly work out, I’m just not sure about the logistics... Perhaps it’s time to bring legendary planet designer Slartibartfast out of retirement.” Referring to Douglas Adams’ Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy which was also popular in UK at the time ED was being developed. The bit about an artificial planet may have stimulated DB’s thoughts on implementation of Raxxla in ED.

20 October 2007 p62 The word: Space-time sirens “If a neutron star spins furiously in the vacuum of space, does it make a sound?” (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626262-300-the-word-space-time-sirens/). So neutron star is likely to be the “siren of the deepest void” in TDW toast.
“So, all Pulsars are Neutron stars, but not all Neutron stars are Pulsars. All depends on which way its energy beams are pointing.” (https://futurism.com/whats-the-difference-between-pulsars-quasars-and-magnetars). N.B. Jocelyn Bell Burrell discovered the first radio pulsars (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell).

Codex: The DW toast etc
The toast potentially has six clauses presented over four lines:

To the jewel that burns on the brow of the mother of galaxies
To the whisperer in witchspace, the siren of the deepest void
The parent's grief, the lover's woe, and the yearning of our vagabond hearts
To Raxxla!

The fourth line is the goal, so is not a logical clause.

In the third line the word "To" does not appear so this part may not describe a location. This may represent the response of a parent and a lover to the seeker going on a long dangerous journey and be poetic padding. However this is poetry so the word “to” might also be implicit in all six clauses!

Six clauses seems to tie in with the haxagonal symmetry of the icon.

Now:
Whisperer can mean: someone who tells secrets or is a rumourmonger; someone who speaks very quietly in a whisper so can only be heard for a short distance; or someone who is an expert or guru in a particular field or subject.

Therefore going by the hypothesis so far the toast can be interpreted as:

Jewel: Sol
Whisperer: Li Qin(g) Jao station; he invented the first hyperdrive in the 22nd century so definitely a whisperer in Witchspace!
Siren: Burnell station; named after Jocelyn Bell Burnell discoverer of radio pulsars
Parent’s grief: Daedalus station; in Greek myth his son Icarus flew too near the Sun, his waxed wings melted and & he fell from the sky to his death
Lover’s woe: Abraham Lincoln station; he was heartbroken at the death of Amy Rutledge; he also quoted bible “Woe unto the world because of offenses!”
Vagabond yearning: Columbus station; he was a confirmed wanderer/vagabond!

It's possible that you need to visit/trade/run missions between these in turn before Raxxla will reveal itself? However I think it is more likely that the toast is just provided as supporting evidence that Sol is the correct system!

The Codex text about a stealthy station occupied by TDW is very ambiguously worded. This may be a consequence of TDW being a secretive organisation and/or Lyta Crane being duped, lying, or having dubious sources; however it may also be that the main purpose of this entry is to provide a clue that the gameplay allows things (e.g. Raxxla/Omphalos?) to be made invisible. This also brings to mind the galnet report (1 July 3302) of the meta-material Antares Memorial sculpture that bent light, which could conceivably be used to make something invisible.

FD interviews
Community Manager Will said (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8293919) in one of the mining live streams re Raxxla "you're doing it right, looking inside an asteroid".

DB reputed (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8194682, https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8199366) to have said:
DB: "- It would be more likely to reveal itself to a group of players."
Interviewer: "- How so?"
DB: "- If you are at the right place and you scan it enough..."
Interviewer: "- Advanced scanner or the basic one?"
DB: "- Basic scanning is enough."
Interviewer: "- But you have to be Elite..."
DB: "- You have to be Elite."

This was before Horizons & when Basic Scanners were still available.

If valid this quotation clearly implies discovery of Raxxla is likely to be based on RNG behaviour., however the video with this conversation can no longer be found.

FD RNG fixation
FD seem to be obsessed with RNG to hide features or make them difficult to attain. Raxxla has been in-game since the gamma (according to DB) so it is likely to be hidden behind a difficult RNG function. When FD introduced Engineers’ upgrades the RNG was ridiculously difficult and they toned it down after player kickback; this has happened with several aspects of the game; and it is possible that Raxxla RNG is also set to be hard (with no known discoveries to provide player kickback!)

FD “coding errors”

1) in Sol’s main asteroid belt between Mars & Jupiter no clusters are directly selectable and are not shown as in every other asteroid belt in-game. The belt is shown as an annulus split into 32 equal sectors, but this is the only system in-game to date with this depiction of an asteroid belt.

2) set a bookmark on Sol's asteroid belt in the sysmap and then select that bookmark in the galmap bookmarks tab, then in-game the belt is shown as being in the centre of the Sun. This may have been FD’s way of forcing us to do a tedious search; this, together with its unique visual depiction, certainly seems to be highlighting that is there something special about Sol’s asteroid belt.

3) While orbiting Sol (no object targeted) when you get to a point where a cluster shows in the hud display your position as shown in the sysmap orrery view has jumped by about 15 sectors, but you jump back to the correct position after leaving that “cluster position” . This happened to me numerous times whilst searching for the “asteroid clusters”, shown in my videos of this search. It has also happened at least once while isearching n the ring without being near a "cluster".

The placement of the asteroid belt at the centre of the sun was bug reported by others and me (I reported it when I first got the SOl permit circa late 2015. How likely are these to be unintentional bugs and still not corrected after several years given the importance of Sol as the birthplace of humanity? The coding for this system should have been thoroughly checked and corrected, so are they actually lues?

Strange happenings in Sol
Koben reported (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8286434) a couple of unususal things about the Asteroid Belts in Sol:

1. You cannot drop on a wing's beacon... you must drop manually within about 10km to get to the same instance; Curiously the wake signal drop from SC 3 Mm away feature doesn't work there (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-8203238)
2. Search&Rescue Conda/ASP quite often drops there after you;
3. No local comms

I play in Solo so cannot check the Wing and comms assertions. But it is fairly common for a SAR ship to appear when you drop out of supercruise in Sol. It happens in the asteroid belt and elsewhere, especially if you drop out of supercruise when “new signal source detected” is shown in the info panel.

Transient Green Glow
While circling around in supercruise within the Sol asteroid belt over one month searching I have on twelve separate occasions (I’ve been testing this hypothesis since 20th December!) seen a green glow shining through and reflecting off the inside of the cockpit. The colour and intensity of the light in the two weak examples seems to be similar to that at the heart of Guardian artefacts etc, while the vivid example is a much stronger green & with less blue. This glow seems to occur around the same position in the asteroid belt in sector 16 (counting clockwise from the top in the sysmap orrery view), but does not happen every time (actually for a lone searcher it’s frustratingly infrequent!) and does not last more than a couple of seconds (max seen was six seconds at 30km/sec, minimum SC speed); I have so far been unable to turn the ship around in time to look in that direction before it fades out; the glow fades out rapidly & disappears if I crash drop into normal space. There is no in-system visible light source of this colour that would explain this effect, so it’s unlikely to be a shader/graphics artefact, and if it were such an artefact then why doesn’t it happen every time? I managed to capture only a few of these instances on video. I suspect this is the Omphalos Rift/Raxxla beginning to instance. I have continued to search in the area after it disappeared but not managed to get it to reappear.

Video 2021-01-17 16-00-09: a graphics bug? I saw Barnard's Loop was no longer visible out the cockpit, so in galmap selected Onoros (currently with a damaged station) near Witchhead Nebula which should be in foreground of BLoop - still not visible (bug!) but got a brief very weak green glow, which was apparently from aft, left & below the ship! I did briefly suspect that the green glow is a graphics bug blending the light from BLoop, however this does not tie in with the examples when I was heading towards Pluto & had BLoop directly aft but the glow was apparently coming from a different direction.

Weak glow 31Dec20 16:34Weak glow 10Jan21 16:22Vivid glow 31Dec20 11:31
SolTo left 1328 lsTo left 1517 lsTo right 1504 ls
Sectormiddle of sector 16ship near 1/8 in from outer edge of belt & 1/4 into sector 16 anticlockwise
ship dot near 1/8 in from outer edge of belt in sector 16 near 16/17 boundary heading towards Pluto. Height mid-belt
Pluto21, 397 ls21,190 ls21,255 ls
(225088) 2007 OR1022,211 ls
Persephone484,825 ls
(307261) 2002 MS420,490 ls
HeadingTo PlutoTo PlutoTo Pluto
Jupiter orbit line nappearanceSlight curve down, almost flatflatslight curve down (~3mm below bottom of screen handles each side, 36" diag monitor)
Speed0.21C
Duration of glow6 seconds
Glow source directionAbove, slightly rightto right & 45* aftAbeam/aft right

In each instance the glow only lasted for a few seconds (videos in Dropbox at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/10dxzloujah6oo1/AADkhtbyjNogCCJWsSUNdYrha?dl=0)

Conclusion

Assessing position in-system is difficult since coordinates are not available, must note distances to distant orbital bodies, though they will slowly move. Moreover not convinced that the sysmap depiction of the asteroid belt is all that accurate since the distances to the planets seemed to vary somewhat between the examples of the glow; they are moving, but that should be fairly slow.

Glow source position: in asteroid belt sector 16, radius is around 1500 ls from Sol. Around 21,255 ls from Pluto, 20,490 ls from (307261) 2002 MS4, 22,211 ls from (225088) 2007 OR10, around 484,824 ls from Persephone. Seem to need to honk very close at or just before it’s position for it to instance.

If it is an orbiting body at this radius then it will move in its orbit, but only slowly (about 55 days per sector) however if it is a (massless) Rift then it may be stationary.

I suspect I’ve found it, but I’m getting old and my reflexes are slowing, and after a month chasing this I’m just too RNGd out, so I'm passing on the torch for the final phase!!

Additional thoughts


The Codex entry mentions an alien artefact “Omphalos Rift”. This may be Raxxla itself, or I think more likely what is causing the green glow is the Omphalos Rift gateway through which Raxxla is accessed. One of the old (now deleted?) Elite Shinrarta Dehzra missions mentioned data crystals that contained a map “...information on a certain celestial body, you know the one I mean. Place that isn't a place, door that is also the key. The myth” These two ideas seem to make sense together: the Rift would be a place that is not a place since it’s a Rift and a gateway to somewhere else and hence the key to getting there.

I did briefly consider the possibility that the Omphalos/key hints are indicators that analien device such as the Thargoid Sensor/Uknown Artefact (in lore goids are/were looking for Raxxla) or Guardian Ancient Key are required to allow Raxxla/Omphalos to instance (from Wiki: Ancient Key is “a crystal found by scanning the data core of a Guardian Beacon, appears to contain a similar ethereal type of energy as the Ancient Relics found at the ruin sites of the Guardian civilisation. Like the relic this item is used in Guardian technologies, unlocking new data and functions”) or Ancient Relic (the wiki says “Relic is part power source, part computer, part key”). However I don’t believe that DB would insert Raxxla (his own personal Easter Egg and tribute to Holdstock) and then make it inaccessible until the Thargoids & Guardians had been inserted into the game several years later.

Astrophile 03Aug 2012: Tale of woe, star-cross’d lovers: The Most Cruel Death of Cupid and Belinda. https://www.newscientist.com/articl...uel-death-of-cupid-and-belinda/#ixzz69cmKCuuI. Cupid and Belinda, doomed moons of Uranus. Checked this out, it fits the line from the toast, but there are no belts or moons there in-game!

Speculation
The name construction “Raxxla” is unusual with the double X, it sounds alien, as Steven Eisler (aka Robert Holdstock) probably intended it to (in The Dark Wheel novella supplied ith the original 1984 Elite game http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/dkwheel.htm and in his earlier 1980 book The Alien World https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Raxxla). The haxagonal theme is beloved by both Guardians and the Pilot’s Federation (see the nav panel when it loads, shown in at least one of my green glow videos - it shows hexagonal patterns which are strikingly similar to those at Guardian sites), which to me suggests that Guardians visited Sol in the distant past, humanity is descended from those Guardian exiles, and the Pilot’s Federation is based on Guardian AI who control the fsd permit locks.

If Raxxla/Omphalos is to be found in Sol’s asteroid belt then it follows that the Dark Wheel’s stealth station ( if it exists & not just fluff) should be hidden at one of Sol’s gas giant moons. This would be a logical place to have an abandoned station that TDW took over, though it may also be near Achenar as an abandoned Fed staging post left over from the Federation-Achenar war.

Contrary Evidence

None known, but I'm confident someone will come up with something. :)


Discussion

The estimate of distance within which Raxxla should be found as the start of the myth is hypothetical & based on some common sense estimates which may be incorrect.

This hypothesis is largely conjecture based on IMHO how FD think and implement game features, however the asteroid belt being located within the sun "bug", the mysterious ship positional jumps within belt, the unique depiction of this belt, & it’s lack of actual asteroids whereas every other asteroid belt in-game has them, the presence of the Mars Artefact, and the examples of green glow are concrete evidence of something. It may all be a collection of programming bugs, but I don’t think so, it seems too consistent.

All these factors are, individually, circumstantial, but together they seem to strongly support a hypothesis: that Raxxla or the Omphalos Rift (a gateway to somewhere else that is Raxxla), is hidden in the Sol main asteroid belt.

If the DB quote is correct then Omphalos/Raxxla should be locatable by repeated scanning in the correct position (Jorki is triple Elite, it will be interesting to see if this glow can be detected by anyone regardless of rank) without any alien artefacts onboard. The appearance of the green glow I encountered seems to support this.

The discovery scanner takes 6 seconds to charge before the honk and thereafter 10 seconds to recover; a lot of distance can pass in 16 seconds at supercruise! At minimum speed it's 480 Km. It struck me during my search (see green glow videos) that the honk that triggers its appearance must occur within a very short distance of the correct position, since it disappears after around 5 ls of ship travel. It seems to me that the only practicable method to locate the source of this green glow is to search in a Wing of four with coordinated honks of the discovery scanners every 4 seconds near the outer edge of the asteroid belt in sector 16. Speed needs to be near minimum. One ship will trigger its appearance but travel past it & cannot not turn fast enough before the green glow fades, so if one wing member triggered the instance the other pilots would need to quickly locate it and keep it instanced (coordinated honking?) to allow it to be accessed.

Of course it is also possible the green glow is a space phantasm that might itself be the source of the Raxxla myth and there may be no concrete solution, but I don't really believe that!!

Good hunting!!!
I've always liked the idea that Raxxla may be in Sol. I've never really considered the asteroid belt, but I lke it.
In ED the asteroid belt is listed with a total mass of 0.0553 Moon masses. RL data lists about 4% of the mass of the Moon. That leaves room for an object about the mass of Ceres.
Ceres was of cource possible to land on in FE2/FFE. In ED it's not there. I don't know why. It's well above the minimum radius of 135 km, that seems to be the min limit in Stellar Forge.

The asteroid belt orbital inclination in ED is set to 4° (ring in Orrery). Real asteroids are distributed with up to 40° inclination. It might be an idea to go of the plane to check, as well.

I'm uncertain about the DB quote. It doesn't quite work out to have an 'Elite requirement' in Sol. There is no gate-mechanic in the game to use there. Having the object (Raxxla) not spawn for non Elites, would be to silly. Non silly Elite gates in the game are basically limited to Shin Des, missions and potentially the Dark Wheel.
 
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