Strange pathway of stars found... [video]

DigitalAura

D
I've been playing awhile but never took the explorer route until recently. Today, while I was close to Khun system I panned out and scrolled around and noticed something very odd indeed... see if you catch it. Has anyone noted this already, or is there an explanation for this? (no filters are on in the galaxy map)

https://youtu.be/94G0uf8tTD4
 

Petey4335

P
Those stars are probably a slice of reality. With a little research you can probably find who and when studied that tiny slice of our galaxy.
 

Foxiol Eagle

Foxiol Eagle
I was there a few months ago and it is just a cluster with that particular "line" formation. I discovered some systems over there and there are some cool sights at some points but nothing too exciting to see. I was on my way to the edge of the Galaxy when I went to that, and also visited Hearth And Soul Nebula in the way.

There are more places with that kind of "line" formation, for example, at California Nebula there is also a similar cluster with the same pattern. It was actually the very first place I visited on my very first trip after the game released back in the day.
 

DigitalAura

D
i see another one by the witch head nebula.

I've always found that these straight lines and especially weird densities like this do not happen in nature. That's why I'm stumped. Notice they're all orange / red stars.
 

Zenith

Zenith
I know where it is. Looking from the bubble, it is below and to the right of California Nebula.

It's a lane of stars in a row and it's how Frontier simulate star clusters. When seen in a line from Earth, that lane of stars will look like a tight cluster. If I remember, that one is also permit locked. I'm not signed into the game so I can't check what it is called.
 

Maolagin

M
Petey4335 said:
Those stars are probably a slice of reality. With a little research you can probably find who and when studied that tiny slice of our galaxy.
Click to expand...

This. To be more explicit, these "lanes" usually occur when Frontier has imported real stars from astronomical survey data. Many of the nebulae near the Bubble have them. The cause is that our ability to record the position of a star on the sky is far more precise than our ability to determine the distance to that star. In open space it doesn't make much difference, because the stars are already randomly distributed. But when a tight cluster is surveyed, the error in distance may well be larger than the actual cluster. As a result the stars in the cluster have their positions smeared out along the line pointing back towards Earth. It's called the "Finger of God" effect because in 3D plots it looks like the universe is pointing at us.

One way to check this is to look at the star names in the galaxy map. The stars making up the name will almost always have names based on the star catalogue they come from (2MASS-XYZ being a common one). They will never have names like FOOBAR SECTOR AA-A etc, because those are procedurally generated by Stellar Forge and really are randomly distributed.
 
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