The Sirius Colonies, Heart and Soul

Jackie Silver · May 11, 2015

The new Sirius colonies are in a line pointing more-or-less directly* at the Heart and Soul nebulae.

I find this moderately suspicious, so I'm following the line as closely as I can keeping an eye out for anything strange en-route.

Anyone been to Heart and Soul? See anything octagonal out there?

*honest, guv, I did a least-squares thingy.

Allitnil · May 11, 2015

I first went there in January & passed through the Heart one just a couple of days ago. They are pretty large nebula but plenty have been to them and most of the systems have probably been visited at least once.

If you want 'suspicious' though, that's more or less the alleged route to the Formidine Rift

Ulysses_W · May 11, 2015

I was there too in early February. I passed through both nebulae.
I saw no octagonal objects or anything else non-celestial.

But that was then. Who knows what could have occurred since that time.....

Jackie Silver · May 11, 2015

Allitnil said:
If you want 'suspicious' though, that's more or less the alleged route to the Formidine Rift

Ha, I knew there was something funny going on! Now I'll need a ship with longer legs if I'm going further than the nebulae.

iain666 · May 12, 2015

Traversed both in the last week, nothing untoward to report.

Jackie Silver · May 13, 2015

People are making noises about being close (or already having done so, but this is the internet) to finding the solution to Drew's riddling, but I'm just going to keep plodding along this track regardless.

I went back to fetch an Asp, and then decided I might as well stick with my Cobra after all; after a fair bit of faffing about I'm now half way to Heart and Soul. I don't think that I'll be able to cross the rift beyond the nebulae before the furthest arm unless I make a very long detour, but I think I will try.

dognosh · May 13, 2015

So 1.3 might add something there guys ?

Dommarraa · May 13, 2015

I am all up for a Wild Goose Chase (if you saw my last log, its what I do!), but not so keen when there are both a) New Exploration Ships b) An opportunity for FD to drop a pile of content if they deem it suitable just a week or 3 away.

Jackie Silver · May 14, 2015

Volle Fahrt voraus und Kurs auf's Riff! - nearly there, only a little diversion here to see a black hole inside this li'l cloud.

View attachment 36031

I'm in the fortunate position that I'll be able to try out the new ships in the Beta and not have to rush back.

Jackie Silver · May 15, 2015

I've found the first unusual thing of the trip; a catalogue-named red dwarf system surrounded by ordinary proc-genned stars, over 6000 ly from Sol. I don't think I've ever seen a single one of these before, certainly not this far out; they usually come in clumps.

(edited to add) Ah, they are in a cluster, but much more spaced out than the usual, and with a bunch of 2MASS objects around too; I think they're loosely pointed at the Soul Nebula, IC 1848.
It's interesting that the stars associated respectively with Heart and Soul are situated well before the nebulae themselves.

Kancro Vantas · May 15, 2015

Jackie Silver said:
It's interesting that the stars associated respectively with Heart and Soul are situated well before the nebulae themselves.

Exactly same experience that I had with ETA CARINA. As per wikipedia, it encompasses ETA Carinae, NGC 3293, and many other objects....in the game, the cloud of the nebula is the background for Eta Carina, but there was this unchartered sea of red dwarves all over the place!!! And then I spotted NGC 3293 which is a cluster...I was like.."wait a minute! hmmm all of this is going on as it should in the nebula, but the cloud is so far and everything is so scattered"...then I realize that probably they couldnt make the cloud larger but I was indeed, in the nebula system already...

Orange Sheets · May 15, 2015

Jackie Silver said:
Volle Fahrt voraus und Kurs auf's Riff! - nearly there, only a little diversion here to see a black hole inside this li'l cloud.

Oo, I've been there too. Nice little thingee. Grats to Cmdr Rocketjoint for the first discovery!

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drkaii · May 15, 2015

This is so ... tantalising (hate that word but it's the best one for what this is)

Ach, I want to sell my data and come join everyone in this hunt. But I MUST save it for Power Play. The odds of it being useful there far outweigh the odds of me being there when someone solves the riddle

Jackie Silver · May 15, 2015

I've passed the nebulae by now. Crossing the Rift (if my Cobra can even manage it) will be at least as far again, and perhaps leave me stranded out in the darkest depths of the galaxy just when interesting things are about to happen...

...oh well, what the heck. I'll keep following this line.

Oh no I won't. The answer to "can the Cobra do it" is "just, no."

Jackie Silver · May 18, 2015

Well I went out, I came back, and I didn't find anything special on or close to that line, right out to Heart & Soul. It does end up right underneath the Soul nebula.
Many brown were surveyed en route and some wild geese were stalked.

The proceeds of the trip went towards various system permits.

who? · May 18, 2015

How are you getting about so quickly??

I'm about halfway between NGC 7822 and the Heart & Soul nebulae; and it's taken me the best part of a week to get this far - in an Asp which should have better range. Are you not stopping to scan anything?

Jackie Silver · May 18, 2015

who? said:
How are you getting about so quickly??

I'm about halfway between NGC 7822 and the Heart & Soul nebulae; and it's taken me the best part of a week to get this far - in an Asp which should have better range. Are you not stopping to scan anything?

That's about the size of it - I was in a great hurry to get to a particular system (part of the wild goose chase) and flew most of the way back without doing any more scanning than firing the space horn at each system. And I did spend a good part of yesterday flying with only Jack Terricloth, Shirley Manson, Gustav Holst, Mashrou Leila and Billy Bragg for company, which is enough to make anybody run.

Also I had scanned dozens of very boring systems in Heart and Soul completely down to the last iceball just in case there were Thargoids lurking under the Hutton-style Brown Dwarfs so I wasn't really in the mood for extensive exploration on the way home either!

who? · May 19, 2015

Jackie Silver said:
That's about the size of it - I was in a great hurry to get to a particular system (part of the wild goose chase) and flew most of the way back without doing any more scanning than firing the space horn at each system. And I did spend a good part of yesterday flying with only Jack Terricloth, Shirley Manson, Gustav Holst, Mashrou Leila and Billy Bragg for company, which is enough to make anybody run.

Also I had scanned dozens of very boring systems in Heart and Soul completely down to the last iceball just in case there were Thargoids lurking under the Hutton-style Brown Dwarfs so I wasn't really in the mood for extensive exploration on the way home either!

Ok, that makes sense. I'm crawling along, in comparison to you. But then I'm only slowly getting over my OCD compulsion to scan *everything* I find. Not the first discoverer - yup, scan it. Icy, rocky planet - yup, scan it. 400,000Ls away - oh, definitely scan that! The other 1 or 2 explorers who ever visit that system will be amazed at my feat of derring-do, persistence and boneheadedness when they see my name by that tiny lump of rock on the edge of the system out on the edge of the galaxy.

Now that I've stopped doing that, I'm starting to get somewhere!

iain666 · May 19, 2015

who? said:
Ok, that makes sense. I'm crawling along, in comparison to you. But then I'm only slowly getting over my OCD compulsion to scan *everything* I find. Not the first discoverer - yup, scan it. Icy, rocky planet - yup, scan it. 400,000Ls away - oh, definitely scan that! The other 1 or 2 explorers who ever visit that system will be amazed at my feat of derring-do, persistence and boneheadedness when they see my name by that tiny lump of rock on the edge of the system out on the edge of the galaxy.

Now that I've stopped doing that, I'm starting to get somewhere!

Took me from 31st January to 7th May to get to and traverse Heart and Soul before I managed to escape the compulsion to scan everything. Covered about 4kylies since then...

CMDR DoubleSkulls · May 19, 2015

Going "fast", honking the horn and scooping, I can do about 1kly in 35-40 mins (so about 1 jump per minute). As soon as I even look at the system map, because then I start scanning shiny stuff I end up at least twice as long per system. If I start scanning the valuable stuff (inner planets mainly) then probably twice as long again. I don't have the patience to scan every icy moon or pink ball...