I think we, the UAs and Palin are searching for the same thing.
The UAs know that this thing is located 135-150ly from Merope. They know this because an UA found it. That UA fell out of a human ship and therefor only managed to send a litle bit of data before it expired.
UAs were therefor sent to the Pleiades to locate a spesific star that matched this data.
When it was detrmined that the star was Merope, a bunch more UAs were sent out to the shell. They all point to Merope to check their distance.
Palin has a vauge idea where to search, because he is the one who lost the first UA. He is therefor relocating to the closest inhabited system to his search region.
We as Jmains pointed out, have found a compass and rushed of to the north pole.
Those of us that have been searching in the shell, have mostly been on the side facing civilization.
I don't know if this makes sence? At least the bits sort of fits