Holy grail in exploration?

I would love to find either a Green Glowing Gas Giant, or a Super Shiny Gas Giant. There are only a small handful of each known.

Agree with this. Claiming a Tag on a GGG or GWG is an exploration goal of mine. But with only four of each known in the Galaxy so far, the odds are very, very low.

I've come across a couple of ElW and a lot of water worlds many of which have been terra-formable but until this system I'd no idea u could find high content metal worlds that are candidates for terraforming.
The planet just looked a weird colour yellow so I gave it a scan and bingo high content metal world that's a TF candidate as was its neighbour, so every day is a school day as they say. Only problem is I'm now wondering what else I've missed in my ignorance and also the journey backs going to be a long one if my OCD kicks in on the metal worlds.

Every star has a "Goldilocks zone", the area within which it is not too hot, not too cold, and an Earth-like planet can theoretically exist. The current atmospheric composition, surface temperature and presence/absence of water is irrelevant. Any planet orbiting within the Goldilocks zone is likely to be a terraforming candidate, so long as it is (a) not too heavy - surface gravity below 4 G; (b) not too light - surface gravity above 0.08 G; and (c) orbit not eccentric i.e. so elliptical that the planet regularly swings in and out of the Goldilocks Zone.

When scanning planets in the Goldilocks zone, don't ignore the moons. Moons in the Goldilocks zone are always Rocky, but if they're above 0.08 G, they are likely to be terraformable too.

After exploring for a while, you tend to get a feel for roughly where the Goldilocks zones are for the different star types. But look at Sol as an excellent example: Sol is a typical G-class star and Earth is 500 Ls away from Sol and right in the middle of Sol's Goldilocks zone; so for G-class stars, 400 to 800 Ls is a good typical range to hunt for terraformables. For smaller, dimmer stars (eg K class) the zone is closer, for hotter, brighter stars, it's further away.

Multiple-star systems tend to throw off these calculations, as the stellar forge considers the heat supplied by each star to be additive. But as a general rule, multiple stars tend to make the Goldilocks zones larger and further out.
 
The minimum gravity for a terraformable candidate planet seems to be 0.40G, not 0.08G. I think Sapyx is mixing the mass numbers up a bit. A HMC planet with a 0.40G gravity generally equals to a 0.08 earth mass planet.
The smallest I've found so far is 0.0691 earth masses. Not the smallest on record, but I'm creeping closer.... :D
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Ah, yes, that's the statistic. I'm assuming that it's gravity, rather than Earth-masses, that's the important criteria. And it looks like 0.40 G might be the cutoff for habitability. Still, you should get used to looking at the planet mass index, rather than the gravity, because it tells you the planet mass after the system honk while the planet is still Unexplored, but won't tell you the gravity until after the planetary scan - by which time, it's too late to guess whether it's terraformable or not.
 
Ah, yes, that's the statistic. I'm assuming that it's gravity, rather than Earth-masses, that's the important criteria. And it looks like 0.40 G might be the cutoff for habitability. Still, you should get used to looking at the planet mass index, rather than the gravity, because it tells you the planet mass after the system honk while the planet is still Unexplored, but won't tell you the gravity until after the planetary scan - by which time, it's too late to guess whether it's terraformable or not.

Yeah. One would assume that it has to have enough gravity to keep the gasses required for biological life from bleeding off into space.
 
I used to think Helium giants or Water Giants were very rare. I thought that they would have a more unique looking icon/texture. It turns out that they're aren't that rare and once I saw what they looked like in person it was kind of underwhelming.

I have yet to see an undiscovered ringed Earth Like or a twin Earth Likes. I'd also like to see an Earth Like in a system with a neutron, white Dwarf, or black hole.
 
I guess every explorer has their own set of holy grails. My personal top 5 most valued discoveries:

1. ELW moon orbiting a lava planet in the center of planetary nebula
2. M class Red supergiant
3. A class blue supergiant.
4. A ringed ELW orbiting a neutron star
5. This :)

What i havent found yet is a shiny gas giant.
 
I would love to find either a Green Glowing Gas Giant, or a Super Shiny Gas Giant. There are only a small handful of each known.

I am actively seeking these as well. Unfortunately so few have been found, that it is difficult to draw any conclusions that would help narrow the search for others.
 
Well my fav find of the trip so far is probably worth very little credit wise but it taught me something I didn't know so in that sense it's priceless.
I've come across a couple of ElW and a lot of water worlds many of which have been terra-formable but until this system I'd no idea u could find high content metal worlds that are candidates for terraforming.
The planet just looked a weird colour yellow so I gave it a scan and bingo high content metal world that's a TF candidate as was its neighbour, so every day is a school day as they say. Only problem is I'm now wondering what else I've missed in my ignorance and also the journey backs going to be a long one if my OCD kicks in on the metal worlds.

To go a bit further with this...I have found a handful of terrfaorming candidates with no atmosphere...
 
Yeah, for me it was more like a bucket-list. I started with relatively mundane things, like putting my name on something, and then putting my name on an entire system, and then putting my name on a Neutron Star, and then a Black Hole.

It started getting more challenging after that. I managed to put my name on a planetary nebula (technically a supernova remnant, but we tend to lump those together) and everything in it. Just once.

Beyond that, I'm not setting many more goals specifically, other than destinations. I'm letting the RNG gods determine what I see along the way. :D
 
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