Here's a story about two little nebulae. They are called IC 4997 and NGC 6891, and by little, I mean planetary ones. If you like long walls of text, grab a cup of your favourite beverage and read on! It might even be educational or useful for you.
On one recent day, I was surfing the galaxy map, looking for someplace to visit because I wanted to get exploration data to stuff down Professor Palin's throat, now that he had me massacre over a dozen unknown artefacts because he only wants their fragments. I was looking to pick some destination to visit, as I don't really like to do expeditions where my only aim is to gather an X amount of credits. Besides, I did make a shiny 55 ly jump range Anaconda that I haven't taken out on a longer expedition, so I wanted to go somewhere farther. However, I didn't really feel like exploring the Southern part of the galaxy again (this was before I read Vitamin Arrr's most splendid route map though). Thinking about the Formidine Rift mystery again, I was instead browsing our galactic arm. You know, "edge of the galactic arm and keep going" and all that. (I did have some theories that she didn't say "keep going straight forward", but nothing ever came of those.)
I was mostly looking at the procedural nebulae close by first, but then I had a thought and started to browse not the top, but the bottom of the galaxy instead. Then out of sheer luck, I came across something quite small: a little blue dot of a planetary nebula, with a simple label of "IC 4997" above it. That name sounded unfamiliar. I looked up drkaii's excellent list of nebulae, and found out that it's not on there.
At first, I wanted to make a post that it's missing, but then a thought struck me: what if nobody had been there yet? I've been to several hard-to-reach nebulae before, but there had always been somebody there before me first. It has been a long while since Horizons' release though, but still, this might be my lucky shot. So I took a good look at the systems near the nebula, and saw that it should definitely be reachable with my jump range. Then I found something else too: another planetary nebula nearby, roughly 1000 ly away.
This one's called the NGC 6891 nebula, and it's at the very bottom of the galaxy. Whereas the IC 4997 looked definitely reachable at first, I was doubtful that I could reach this one. Especially because I had only enough materials for three T3 boosts. But this one wasn't on the list of nebulae either, so I had two targets now. Surely one of them would be undiscovered, right? So I made the bookmarks, looked over my ship's outfitting again, made sure the David Braben bobblehead was firmly in its place, imagined rubbing it for good luck (it worked before) and off I went.
The route to the vicinity of the IC 4997 nebula was eight light millenia of uneventful travel. My Anaconda could make one with 19-20 jumps, which was a welcome change of pace, although I was always slightly nervous that I was flying in a paper ship which couldn't even boost its thrusters. I was mostly travelling a bit under the galactic plane, but as I neared the nebula, I began to dive down. No systems I reached were explored, but I knew this meant little: when I'll get to the sparser regions in the vicinity of the nebula, then I'll see if others were there before me.
Just as I was getting hopeful that they weren't, in the Yaikue sector where the density of stars dropped suddenly, I saw the tag of one of the more well-known explorers. I felt somewhat disappointed, as I was quite sure that if either nebula were reachable - and I was reasonably certain that IC 4997 was - then they were there first. But I'd only know for certain that if I got there myself.
Then as I neared the the nebula, I noticed no tags. Could I be first, or did they just not bother tagging the systems, going straight for the prize? Despite knowing that the chances of me discovering a new non-procedural planetary nebula were slim, I was still rather excited when CSI+16-20178, the central star of the planetary nebula, came within range and I charged my drive. Being at the bottom edge of the galaxy, it was bright white star with the pale blue glow of the nebula around it in a sea of complete darkness. Here's how it looked. (Warning: it's a large image. I went with including just this one screenshot to show a bit better how lonely space can be around those parts. And most certainly not because my other screenshots turned out to be mediocre.)
Then I arrived to IC 4997, quickly fired off my D-scanner, was pleased to see that there were four bodies there - perhaps if they were there before me, they might have left at least something to tag. (Although I've never had that happen to me before.) To my surprise, when I looked at the nice Wolf-Rayet star, it was untagged. I got to a virgin system, and tagged my first real nebula and real star. I was quite elated to have finally done that, and considered rushing back to the bubble to sell the data as quick as possible - but then, there was the other tantalising nebula not far away. Would I risk wasting my few boosts to get there, or perhaps to get stranded, just to perhaps claim another nebula?
Of course I would.
Even nearing that nebula was much more difficult than nearing IC 4997 was, as even though it was bordered the same Yaikue sector, the sparse stars were arranged rather unfortunately between the two nebulae. Procedural generation can be a harsh mistress. While it took me only eight jumps to traverse Yaikue to the IC 4997 sector, it took twenty-nine to reach the NGC 6891 sector. I had to several times during that too - I do remember taking a deep breath before I fired off my first T2 boost, as I knew I was fully committed then.
Navigating that area wasn't the most difficult I have done, although that's probably owed to my considerably increased base jump range. Still, it took a fair amount of planning to minimise the boost usage, as I wanted to save my T3 boosts for the very last jump to the nebula. When it got within 110 ly, I was tempted to just use it straight away - but then I saw that I might be able to make some jumps with T2 boosters instead. Oddly enough, the little lines didn't appear when I selected the FSD boost on the route planner, but I risked wasting a synthesis anyway, and it still worked.
Finally, I was within range of BD+12 4266 too. And all the systems I've traversed were untagged. I was feeling quite hopeful now that I'd enter another undiscovered nebula.
As I stared at the first class O star that might finally be undiscovered, it turned out that I was right. This was another system that didn't have many bodies, but I was the first there, and they were all mine to take. So I decided to do what I did with the IC 4997 nebula, and leave some bodies for others to tag too.
I deliberately left this info out earlier, so that if you've read this long, you could have a headstart on others who might want to get their own tags inside a real planetary nebula too.
After I traversed this nebula, made some screenies and marvelled one last time looking at the Milky Way from the bottom edge through the blue nebula clouds, I looked at the galaxy map again. I was around 8500 ly from the bubble. (As it turned out, BD+12 4266 is exactly 8500.02 ly from Sol.) With route planning, scooping and whatnot, I estimated I could do one thousand ly stretches in around 20-22 minutes, so I could do it in a bit over three hours hopefully. I was somewhat tired by then, but I decided that I'd rather not risk anyone beating me to returning the data, even though the chances of that were very slim, so I'd rather buckyball back to the bubble.
On my way to IC 4997, I left a nice ringed ammonia world in Yaikue LR-C d1 unscanned, as my FSD finished charging while I was looking at the system map. I planned to scan it on my way back, but didn't do so as I was in a rush. If you're in the area, feel free to grab it.
My rush back to the nebula was mostly uneventful at first, but as I did keep an eye open for anything interesting along the way, I was lucky enough to stumble upon an Earth-like around 7200 ly-s from Sol. I would have been perfectly fine with not discovering any on this expedition, but there it was. It was one of those more uncommon ones that had argon in its atmosphere, although not enough to make ice appear in the surface composition. However, the Earth-like had a binary partner that was obviously a water world: as I scanned it and looked at the details, I noticed that it was mostly the same as the ELW, but the reason I didn't found a binary pair of Earth-likes was that the WW was just under the mass range. If it weren't, I would have found a binary ELW pair. Oh well, you can't win them all, and I already found something better.
Having recorded everything, I moved on, but it only took a handful of jumps before I stumbled upon another Earth-like, 6950 ly from Sol. I hereby apologise to iain666 for saying that there was nothing very special about that Earth-like. They are always nice to find.
Fast forward another 1300 ly-s, and I found my third and last ELW. This one was on the outer fringes of the habitable zone of a class F star, and at 260K average temperature, just barely warm (or chilly, rather) enough to be classified as an Earth-like planet by the Stellar Forge. With a nice orbital period of 3.12 years too.
The remaining ~5500 ly-s of my trip were mostly uneventful, save for some slight headache from losing my net connection for twenty minutes or so. Mostly because I didn't know when I'd get it back, of course. I grabbed some coffee and had a short nap so I wouldn't be too tired when I made it to the most dangerous part of my expedition, which is getting back to inhabited space. (I tend not to call it civilised space.) Then once I heard the notification that I had internet connectivity again, I jumped back into the game to do the last stretch back.
I decided to go to Palin Research Centre in Maia, as I wanted to sell my data there, and thankfully, as I was arriving from the West, my route there didn't take me through any inhabited systems. I knew that as I was carrying no cargo and no weapons, my chances of pirates interdicting me were slim, but I also know that my ship's chances in combat were slim to none instead. Which was why I opted to go in solo mode - I did most certainly not want to encounter any maniacs in Maia who'd blow up an unarmed explorer for no in-game gains.
I briefly entertained the idea of going to the station instead to sell the two nebula systems' data first, but then I decided that taking two in-system routes was more risky than dashing for the engineer's planetary base straight away. So I did that, while keeping a constant eye on the scanner for any NPC-s positioning themselves for an interdiction. Thankfully, there were none. I arrived to the research centre when it was night, and while I don't like to do planetside landings in darkness, in Maia's there's plenty enough light from the nebula to do so.
But there was one last obstacle before I landed safely. As I was positioning myself to land, my Anaconda's weak thrusters still struggling against the planet's rather light gravity, my docking requests kept timing out. I only ever saw that in open play before, but of course it would happen to me now.
I tried relogging a couple of times, always hoping that I wouldn't spawn inside the planet or something. After four times doing so, my docking request finally went through and I could land. I was more careful than when I landed a shieldless Cutter full of valuable cargo, probably because I had more valuable things on board. As one last hicc-up, I managed to touch down on the pad without actually landing on it close enough to register as docking with the station, so I had to take off and touch down again.
Finally I was there and the landing pad lift whisked my ship away to complete safety. I quickly picked out the systems from the exploration data, sold them and got the "Congratulations Commander Marx, you are the first to discover..." messages. Yesss. After playing since the alpha, I finally got my first own non-procedural nebula stars, my first own Wolf-Rayet and class O stars as well.
Plus the decent amount of exploration data (even though I didn't detail scan many planets) got me to rank 4 with Palin. Of course, it was not enough to fully sate his hunger for data, but it shouldn't take more than three mods to reach rank 5.
Now, I'll just wait patiently for someone to send me a postcard (or at least a PM) after having visited these nebulae too. Plus getting more mods for my ships, of course. And looking at the galaxy map some more, because you might never know when you find something cool.
So, thanks for reading this long post! (Assuming you didn't just skip to the end to see if I included any tl;dr there.) Good luck out in the black!
On one recent day, I was surfing the galaxy map, looking for someplace to visit because I wanted to get exploration data to stuff down Professor Palin's throat, now that he had me massacre over a dozen unknown artefacts because he only wants their fragments. I was looking to pick some destination to visit, as I don't really like to do expeditions where my only aim is to gather an X amount of credits. Besides, I did make a shiny 55 ly jump range Anaconda that I haven't taken out on a longer expedition, so I wanted to go somewhere farther. However, I didn't really feel like exploring the Southern part of the galaxy again (this was before I read Vitamin Arrr's most splendid route map though). Thinking about the Formidine Rift mystery again, I was instead browsing our galactic arm. You know, "edge of the galactic arm and keep going" and all that. (I did have some theories that she didn't say "keep going straight forward", but nothing ever came of those.)
I was mostly looking at the procedural nebulae close by first, but then I had a thought and started to browse not the top, but the bottom of the galaxy instead. Then out of sheer luck, I came across something quite small: a little blue dot of a planetary nebula, with a simple label of "IC 4997" above it. That name sounded unfamiliar. I looked up drkaii's excellent list of nebulae, and found out that it's not on there.
At first, I wanted to make a post that it's missing, but then a thought struck me: what if nobody had been there yet? I've been to several hard-to-reach nebulae before, but there had always been somebody there before me first. It has been a long while since Horizons' release though, but still, this might be my lucky shot. So I took a good look at the systems near the nebula, and saw that it should definitely be reachable with my jump range. Then I found something else too: another planetary nebula nearby, roughly 1000 ly away.
This one's called the NGC 6891 nebula, and it's at the very bottom of the galaxy. Whereas the IC 4997 looked definitely reachable at first, I was doubtful that I could reach this one. Especially because I had only enough materials for three T3 boosts. But this one wasn't on the list of nebulae either, so I had two targets now. Surely one of them would be undiscovered, right? So I made the bookmarks, looked over my ship's outfitting again, made sure the David Braben bobblehead was firmly in its place, imagined rubbing it for good luck (it worked before) and off I went.
The route to the vicinity of the IC 4997 nebula was eight light millenia of uneventful travel. My Anaconda could make one with 19-20 jumps, which was a welcome change of pace, although I was always slightly nervous that I was flying in a paper ship which couldn't even boost its thrusters. I was mostly travelling a bit under the galactic plane, but as I neared the nebula, I began to dive down. No systems I reached were explored, but I knew this meant little: when I'll get to the sparser regions in the vicinity of the nebula, then I'll see if others were there before me.
Just as I was getting hopeful that they weren't, in the Yaikue sector where the density of stars dropped suddenly, I saw the tag of one of the more well-known explorers. I felt somewhat disappointed, as I was quite sure that if either nebula were reachable - and I was reasonably certain that IC 4997 was - then they were there first. But I'd only know for certain that if I got there myself.
Then as I neared the the nebula, I noticed no tags. Could I be first, or did they just not bother tagging the systems, going straight for the prize? Despite knowing that the chances of me discovering a new non-procedural planetary nebula were slim, I was still rather excited when CSI+16-20178, the central star of the planetary nebula, came within range and I charged my drive. Being at the bottom edge of the galaxy, it was bright white star with the pale blue glow of the nebula around it in a sea of complete darkness. Here's how it looked. (Warning: it's a large image. I went with including just this one screenshot to show a bit better how lonely space can be around those parts. And most certainly not because my other screenshots turned out to be mediocre.)
Then I arrived to IC 4997, quickly fired off my D-scanner, was pleased to see that there were four bodies there - perhaps if they were there before me, they might have left at least something to tag. (Although I've never had that happen to me before.) To my surprise, when I looked at the nice Wolf-Rayet star, it was untagged. I got to a virgin system, and tagged my first real nebula and real star. I was quite elated to have finally done that, and considered rushing back to the bubble to sell the data as quick as possible - but then, there was the other tantalising nebula not far away. Would I risk wasting my few boosts to get there, or perhaps to get stranded, just to perhaps claim another nebula?
Of course I would.
Even nearing that nebula was much more difficult than nearing IC 4997 was, as even though it was bordered the same Yaikue sector, the sparse stars were arranged rather unfortunately between the two nebulae. Procedural generation can be a harsh mistress. While it took me only eight jumps to traverse Yaikue to the IC 4997 sector, it took twenty-nine to reach the NGC 6891 sector. I had to several times during that too - I do remember taking a deep breath before I fired off my first T2 boost, as I knew I was fully committed then.
Navigating that area wasn't the most difficult I have done, although that's probably owed to my considerably increased base jump range. Still, it took a fair amount of planning to minimise the boost usage, as I wanted to save my T3 boosts for the very last jump to the nebula. When it got within 110 ly, I was tempted to just use it straight away - but then I saw that I might be able to make some jumps with T2 boosters instead. Oddly enough, the little lines didn't appear when I selected the FSD boost on the route planner, but I risked wasting a synthesis anyway, and it still worked.
Finally, I was within range of BD+12 4266 too. And all the systems I've traversed were untagged. I was feeling quite hopeful now that I'd enter another undiscovered nebula.
As I stared at the first class O star that might finally be undiscovered, it turned out that I was right. This was another system that didn't have many bodies, but I was the first there, and they were all mine to take. So I decided to do what I did with the IC 4997 nebula, and leave some bodies for others to tag too.
I deliberately left this info out earlier, so that if you've read this long, you could have a headstart on others who might want to get their own tags inside a real planetary nebula too.
After I traversed this nebula, made some screenies and marvelled one last time looking at the Milky Way from the bottom edge through the blue nebula clouds, I looked at the galaxy map again. I was around 8500 ly from the bubble. (As it turned out, BD+12 4266 is exactly 8500.02 ly from Sol.) With route planning, scooping and whatnot, I estimated I could do one thousand ly stretches in around 20-22 minutes, so I could do it in a bit over three hours hopefully. I was somewhat tired by then, but I decided that I'd rather not risk anyone beating me to returning the data, even though the chances of that were very slim, so I'd rather buckyball back to the bubble.
On my way to IC 4997, I left a nice ringed ammonia world in Yaikue LR-C d1 unscanned, as my FSD finished charging while I was looking at the system map. I planned to scan it on my way back, but didn't do so as I was in a rush. If you're in the area, feel free to grab it.
My rush back to the nebula was mostly uneventful at first, but as I did keep an eye open for anything interesting along the way, I was lucky enough to stumble upon an Earth-like around 7200 ly-s from Sol. I would have been perfectly fine with not discovering any on this expedition, but there it was. It was one of those more uncommon ones that had argon in its atmosphere, although not enough to make ice appear in the surface composition. However, the Earth-like had a binary partner that was obviously a water world: as I scanned it and looked at the details, I noticed that it was mostly the same as the ELW, but the reason I didn't found a binary pair of Earth-likes was that the WW was just under the mass range. If it weren't, I would have found a binary ELW pair. Oh well, you can't win them all, and I already found something better.
Having recorded everything, I moved on, but it only took a handful of jumps before I stumbled upon another Earth-like, 6950 ly from Sol. I hereby apologise to iain666 for saying that there was nothing very special about that Earth-like. They are always nice to find.
Fast forward another 1300 ly-s, and I found my third and last ELW. This one was on the outer fringes of the habitable zone of a class F star, and at 260K average temperature, just barely warm (or chilly, rather) enough to be classified as an Earth-like planet by the Stellar Forge. With a nice orbital period of 3.12 years too.
The remaining ~5500 ly-s of my trip were mostly uneventful, save for some slight headache from losing my net connection for twenty minutes or so. Mostly because I didn't know when I'd get it back, of course. I grabbed some coffee and had a short nap so I wouldn't be too tired when I made it to the most dangerous part of my expedition, which is getting back to inhabited space. (I tend not to call it civilised space.) Then once I heard the notification that I had internet connectivity again, I jumped back into the game to do the last stretch back.
I decided to go to Palin Research Centre in Maia, as I wanted to sell my data there, and thankfully, as I was arriving from the West, my route there didn't take me through any inhabited systems. I knew that as I was carrying no cargo and no weapons, my chances of pirates interdicting me were slim, but I also know that my ship's chances in combat were slim to none instead. Which was why I opted to go in solo mode - I did most certainly not want to encounter any maniacs in Maia who'd blow up an unarmed explorer for no in-game gains.
I briefly entertained the idea of going to the station instead to sell the two nebula systems' data first, but then I decided that taking two in-system routes was more risky than dashing for the engineer's planetary base straight away. So I did that, while keeping a constant eye on the scanner for any NPC-s positioning themselves for an interdiction. Thankfully, there were none. I arrived to the research centre when it was night, and while I don't like to do planetside landings in darkness, in Maia's there's plenty enough light from the nebula to do so.
But there was one last obstacle before I landed safely. As I was positioning myself to land, my Anaconda's weak thrusters still struggling against the planet's rather light gravity, my docking requests kept timing out. I only ever saw that in open play before, but of course it would happen to me now.
I tried relogging a couple of times, always hoping that I wouldn't spawn inside the planet or something. After four times doing so, my docking request finally went through and I could land. I was more careful than when I landed a shieldless Cutter full of valuable cargo, probably because I had more valuable things on board. As one last hicc-up, I managed to touch down on the pad without actually landing on it close enough to register as docking with the station, so I had to take off and touch down again.
Finally I was there and the landing pad lift whisked my ship away to complete safety. I quickly picked out the systems from the exploration data, sold them and got the "Congratulations Commander Marx, you are the first to discover..." messages. Yesss. After playing since the alpha, I finally got my first own non-procedural nebula stars, my first own Wolf-Rayet and class O stars as well.
Plus the decent amount of exploration data (even though I didn't detail scan many planets) got me to rank 4 with Palin. Of course, it was not enough to fully sate his hunger for data, but it shouldn't take more than three mods to reach rank 5.
Now, I'll just wait patiently for someone to send me a postcard (or at least a PM) after having visited these nebulae too. Plus getting more mods for my ships, of course. And looking at the galaxy map some more, because you might never know when you find something cool.
So, thanks for reading this long post! (Assuming you didn't just skip to the end to see if I included any tl;dr there.) Good luck out in the black!
Last edited:
