On May 23, 3301, CMDR Kelly Eldridge, who had been exploring deep in the black, took the following photo of what she described as "the strangest gas giant I've seen so far."
She would continue to finish her expedition and ultimately reset her account. Years later, when the significance of her rare discovery came to light, the system that this gas giant was located in was forgotten to time. She never made note of the name of this system, and we only had this single photo, her logs, and her memory to go off of.
I'm am proud to say that we have finally found this gas giant on August 16, 3308. Lost to time for over 7 years, Kelly's GGG is located in Shaulai DL-P d5-274, within the Perseus Arm. The first photo I took was an attempt to imitate Kelly's image (there is symbolism in this, which I will detail later in this post). I think I may have been slightly too close to the gas giant, but it's good enough:
How was it found?
Finding it required the efforts of many people, who I will do my best to name as many people as possible. Please let me know if I missed anyone. Also, this timeline is not exhaustive of all the efforts that other CMDRs took that didn't necessarily directly lead to finding the GGG.
First, CMDR Richard Fluiraniz M organized the "At the Eldritch Gate" expedition, which was the starting point for the collaboration among many CMDRs. Many hands make work light, but beyond that we were able to pool our ideas together. He also found Kelly Eldridge on discord (under a new account) and communicated with her.
CMDR SpaceTrash67 and CMDR Mooing (correctly) hypothesized the most probable route that CMDR Kelly Eldridge took. We could deduce from her flight log dug up by CMDR Matt G that she had travelled from Sgr A* to The Great Annihilator. Then she travelled to a blue supernova remnant gas cloud which we believed to be Splohoa BL-P e5-814 (Matt G confirmed this) because it is a blue planetary nebula with the system first discovered by Kelly. Finally, she travelled down the Perseus Arm, finding the GGG at some point, and then bumping into the Hyponia permit-locked region. We also know she stayed near the y = 0 plane during this leg of her journey.
This is still a massive search area. However during the expedition, CMDR SigmaExplorer, CMDR Matt G/CMDR Grea Phantom, and CMDR Mooing with IGAU discovered three neutron stars tagged by Kelly leading up to Hyponia. They are the bottom 3 green marks in the map below. This lead me to survey many neutron stars beyond the bottom 3, and I was able to find 8 more neutron stars (those are the additional green points) north of the bottom 3 green points.
This is critical. We have now narrowed our search to this thin line of stars. I did not think that the GGG was located any further north because then Kelly's GGG image should have more bright stars; we would see more bright blue star "cube" patterns reminiscent of a trip to Colonia. Within this strip, there are still a massive number of stars but by limiting our search area we make the probability of discovery much higher. While the neutron stars were critical, they were not a panacea. One might think we could simply find all the stars by brute force searching 1 jump away from any of these stars. The issue is that her jump range was unknown (though estimated to be around 30 ly), but more importantly, this discovery was so old that a CMDR had to directly look at a star in order to first discovery tag it. She was in a rush, so it would seem that she could have traveled thousands of ly without tagging anything!
Oh, and journal logs did not exist yet, so that wasn't an option either.
Throughout the expedition I had been obsessed with the gas clouds in the top left of the GGG image.
If you open the galaxy map, you can observe brown gas/dust clouds throughout the galaxy. It turns out the clouds in the galaxy map represent what is seen in the actual game when looking out of your ship. Some areas of her path intersect with a large brown gas cloud. Thus, we know the GGG cannot be here because then the background of the image would be saturated with brown dust, but we only see the top left. The top left always has some brown dust because that area is looking down the plane of the galaxy (i.e. that is the galactic bar). I was able to rule out certain areas of her path by crossing out areas with disagreeable brown dust patterns.
The most massive, brightest stars can be seen further away than nearby stars. A useful practice is what I've called taking imitation screenshots, where we align the freecam with the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy in the top right of the image so that we have the same background as Kelly's GGG image. One alone isn't useful, but if we take many along a straight line such as her route, we can see the starfield move along the path of her travels. Some stars are only visible for a single screenshot (a single jump) before they disappear off your screen. Those are nearby. Others can be seen for a few screenshots. Those are likely B class stars from an E or F mass system. However, a select few stars are H mass supergiants or wolf-rayet stars, and they can be seen for a dozen screenshots, or roughly a thousand light years of travel. If the H mass star can't be correlated with a star in the GGG image, we rule out this thousand-light year stretch of per path.
Ultimately, the aforementioned tactics rule out certain areas which is crucial to finding our needle in a haystack, but we had yet to find said needle!
CMDR Wayne Oldfield found another Kelly Eldridge star, but this one was different--Shaulai CB-W c15-45 was not a neutron star. It was an ordinary K class system with a single normal gas giant. This was a lucky find in what I'd call a targeted search--he was jumping between the recently discovered neutron stars and this was one of the stars he found. I decided this would be a good area to search more scrupulously.
At the northern half of this search area, the brown gas clouds were too thick and unconvincing. I didn't think the GGG could be there. I used my jumpaconda Edge of Eternity with its 91 ly jump range to make quick work.
As I was jumping in the southern half, one particular system's celestial sphere (skybox) caught my eye. It had a lozenge shaped constellation that looked familiar.
Can you spot this shape in the GGG image?
Well, it's probably just my pareidolia. I should just move on...ehhh...you know what? I'll take a second look perhaps 30 lys down the line.
The constellations only became more and more similar, rather than less similar the dozen times I had been fooled in the past.
After about 8 or so stars jumping around, fine tuning the skybox, I got my closest match yet. Compare the image below with the GGG and you will see what I mean.
And finally, I jumped to Shaulai DL-P d5-274.
Immediately after the jump, I saw a single planet on my radar (no main star scanned). I didn't even need to look at the system map to know that I had found it.
After FSS scanning the system I mapped the GGG and took the "imitation" image above, with the SMC in the top right and the constellations prominent. I commanded my fleet carrier to come over (it was luckily only 1 jump away). I took in some beautiful views from the GGG's inner-most moon. And then I told the ATEG discord about it.
Check out the ATEG discord for more screenshots.
How did it feel to find it?
A few people asked this and I figured I would consolidate my responses. I felt more excitement when I found the neutron stars and when I found the constellations than when I found the actual green gas giant, because I knew the difficulty factor of this search was in limiting the search area. Imagine if I had to find a needle in a haystack. This would be an impossible task alone, but if I could manage a way to eliminate certain areas of the haystack, then it would make the impossible possible. I knew if I found the constellation pattern it would be relatively easy to find the actual star system--indeed it only took me about 10 jumps between spotting the pattern and finding the actual star (I carefully jumped to purposely move the constellations left, right, forward, backward until they matched the GGG image). The real difficulty was limiting the search area to said constellation pattern as I said before. When I found the neutron stars, I knew I had limited the search area from thousands of ly to a 20 ly thick line between said neutron stars. And when I found the constellation, I knew my efforts to eliminate certain sections of her path appeared to work.
Once I had the constellations, I knew finding the GGG was inevitable so I wasn't excited in the same way as when I found the constellations themselves. However, I did feel an eerie calm knowing I had been the only person in this system in the last seven years. I can only imagine what great explorers felt when they entered a restricted tomb, closed off for thousands of years.
Cheers everybody.
She would continue to finish her expedition and ultimately reset her account. Years later, when the significance of her rare discovery came to light, the system that this gas giant was located in was forgotten to time. She never made note of the name of this system, and we only had this single photo, her logs, and her memory to go off of.
I'm am proud to say that we have finally found this gas giant on August 16, 3308. Lost to time for over 7 years, Kelly's GGG is located in Shaulai DL-P d5-274, within the Perseus Arm. The first photo I took was an attempt to imitate Kelly's image (there is symbolism in this, which I will detail later in this post). I think I may have been slightly too close to the gas giant, but it's good enough:
How was it found?
Finding it required the efforts of many people, who I will do my best to name as many people as possible. Please let me know if I missed anyone. Also, this timeline is not exhaustive of all the efforts that other CMDRs took that didn't necessarily directly lead to finding the GGG.
First, CMDR Richard Fluiraniz M organized the "At the Eldritch Gate" expedition, which was the starting point for the collaboration among many CMDRs. Many hands make work light, but beyond that we were able to pool our ideas together. He also found Kelly Eldridge on discord (under a new account) and communicated with her.
CMDR SpaceTrash67 and CMDR Mooing (correctly) hypothesized the most probable route that CMDR Kelly Eldridge took. We could deduce from her flight log dug up by CMDR Matt G that she had travelled from Sgr A* to The Great Annihilator. Then she travelled to a blue supernova remnant gas cloud which we believed to be Splohoa BL-P e5-814 (Matt G confirmed this) because it is a blue planetary nebula with the system first discovered by Kelly. Finally, she travelled down the Perseus Arm, finding the GGG at some point, and then bumping into the Hyponia permit-locked region. We also know she stayed near the y = 0 plane during this leg of her journey.
This is still a massive search area. However during the expedition, CMDR SigmaExplorer, CMDR Matt G/CMDR Grea Phantom, and CMDR Mooing with IGAU discovered three neutron stars tagged by Kelly leading up to Hyponia. They are the bottom 3 green marks in the map below. This lead me to survey many neutron stars beyond the bottom 3, and I was able to find 8 more neutron stars (those are the additional green points) north of the bottom 3 green points.
This is critical. We have now narrowed our search to this thin line of stars. I did not think that the GGG was located any further north because then Kelly's GGG image should have more bright stars; we would see more bright blue star "cube" patterns reminiscent of a trip to Colonia. Within this strip, there are still a massive number of stars but by limiting our search area we make the probability of discovery much higher. While the neutron stars were critical, they were not a panacea. One might think we could simply find all the stars by brute force searching 1 jump away from any of these stars. The issue is that her jump range was unknown (though estimated to be around 30 ly), but more importantly, this discovery was so old that a CMDR had to directly look at a star in order to first discovery tag it. She was in a rush, so it would seem that she could have traveled thousands of ly without tagging anything!
Oh, and journal logs did not exist yet, so that wasn't an option either.
Throughout the expedition I had been obsessed with the gas clouds in the top left of the GGG image.
If you open the galaxy map, you can observe brown gas/dust clouds throughout the galaxy. It turns out the clouds in the galaxy map represent what is seen in the actual game when looking out of your ship. Some areas of her path intersect with a large brown gas cloud. Thus, we know the GGG cannot be here because then the background of the image would be saturated with brown dust, but we only see the top left. The top left always has some brown dust because that area is looking down the plane of the galaxy (i.e. that is the galactic bar). I was able to rule out certain areas of her path by crossing out areas with disagreeable brown dust patterns.
The most massive, brightest stars can be seen further away than nearby stars. A useful practice is what I've called taking imitation screenshots, where we align the freecam with the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy in the top right of the image so that we have the same background as Kelly's GGG image. One alone isn't useful, but if we take many along a straight line such as her route, we can see the starfield move along the path of her travels. Some stars are only visible for a single screenshot (a single jump) before they disappear off your screen. Those are nearby. Others can be seen for a few screenshots. Those are likely B class stars from an E or F mass system. However, a select few stars are H mass supergiants or wolf-rayet stars, and they can be seen for a dozen screenshots, or roughly a thousand light years of travel. If the H mass star can't be correlated with a star in the GGG image, we rule out this thousand-light year stretch of per path.
Ultimately, the aforementioned tactics rule out certain areas which is crucial to finding our needle in a haystack, but we had yet to find said needle!
CMDR Wayne Oldfield found another Kelly Eldridge star, but this one was different--Shaulai CB-W c15-45 was not a neutron star. It was an ordinary K class system with a single normal gas giant. This was a lucky find in what I'd call a targeted search--he was jumping between the recently discovered neutron stars and this was one of the stars he found. I decided this would be a good area to search more scrupulously.
At the northern half of this search area, the brown gas clouds were too thick and unconvincing. I didn't think the GGG could be there. I used my jumpaconda Edge of Eternity with its 91 ly jump range to make quick work.
As I was jumping in the southern half, one particular system's celestial sphere (skybox) caught my eye. It had a lozenge shaped constellation that looked familiar.
Can you spot this shape in the GGG image?
Well, it's probably just my pareidolia. I should just move on...ehhh...you know what? I'll take a second look perhaps 30 lys down the line.
The constellations only became more and more similar, rather than less similar the dozen times I had been fooled in the past.
After about 8 or so stars jumping around, fine tuning the skybox, I got my closest match yet. Compare the image below with the GGG and you will see what I mean.
And finally, I jumped to Shaulai DL-P d5-274.
Immediately after the jump, I saw a single planet on my radar (no main star scanned). I didn't even need to look at the system map to know that I had found it.
After FSS scanning the system I mapped the GGG and took the "imitation" image above, with the SMC in the top right and the constellations prominent. I commanded my fleet carrier to come over (it was luckily only 1 jump away). I took in some beautiful views from the GGG's inner-most moon. And then I told the ATEG discord about it.
Check out the ATEG discord for more screenshots.
How did it feel to find it?
A few people asked this and I figured I would consolidate my responses. I felt more excitement when I found the neutron stars and when I found the constellations than when I found the actual green gas giant, because I knew the difficulty factor of this search was in limiting the search area. Imagine if I had to find a needle in a haystack. This would be an impossible task alone, but if I could manage a way to eliminate certain areas of the haystack, then it would make the impossible possible. I knew if I found the constellation pattern it would be relatively easy to find the actual star system--indeed it only took me about 10 jumps between spotting the pattern and finding the actual star (I carefully jumped to purposely move the constellations left, right, forward, backward until they matched the GGG image). The real difficulty was limiting the search area to said constellation pattern as I said before. When I found the neutron stars, I knew I had limited the search area from thousands of ly to a 20 ly thick line between said neutron stars. And when I found the constellation, I knew my efforts to eliminate certain sections of her path appeared to work.
Once I had the constellations, I knew finding the GGG was inevitable so I wasn't excited in the same way as when I found the constellations themselves. However, I did feel an eerie calm knowing I had been the only person in this system in the last seven years. I can only imagine what great explorers felt when they entered a restricted tomb, closed off for thousands of years.
Cheers everybody.
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And indeed, they are proud:
But I'm just the guy that brought everyone together, the discovery credit goes to the expedition itself and