I was on my way to a lesser investigated sector well below the galactic plane just to the north west of the core, when I started seeing a lot of really big bright stars all around me in the Phroi Pruae sector. I was still several thousand light years from my destination, but I decided to stop and start poking around the Gal Map to see what I could see there. The filtered map view wasn't much real help, so I decided to flip over to the realistic view, and whoa! This was the first time I had ever really spent any significant time browsing in realistic view, because it always seemed too cluttered and cumbersome to me. Well, I can now see the tremendous value in it, and how amazing it really is in certain circumstances, namely the one I found myself in. Most of the star representations were pretty common, but there were a few points of light that looked more rare than others. I set out to learn what the various map representations meant, so I could pick out at a glance the star type, and even estimate its luminosity.
There was a good reason for all those big bright spots that initially led me to stop. I found myself in the middle of a cluster of super giant stars. After spending a few weeks surveying this area, it did have pretty discrete boundaries in the rough shape of an oblate spheroid with the major axis being about 700ly, and the minor axis being about 200ly give or take. Outside those boundaries, there were a few stragglers, but the super giants pretty much all but disappeared. Inside the boundaries though...
Blue-WHite Supergiants - 53
White Supergiants - 82
Red Supergiants - 38
Total supergiants - 173
EDSM totals pulled from this page - https://www.edsm.net/en/statistics/bodies Including both hand crafted, and procedurally generated systems
Blue-White Supergiants - 891
Yellow-White Supergiants - 295
Red Supergiants - 101
Total supergiants - 1287
Based on EDSM totals of these star types, roughly 13.4% of all reported supergiant stars are in this small cluster.
Blue-WHite Supergiants - 6%
Yellow-White Supergiants - 28%
Red Supergiants - 38%
Total supergiants - 13.4%
All of these were in E mass code systems, and the supergiant variant was always one spectral class higher than the regular variant as displayed in the gal map.
Blue-white normal variant - A Supergiant variant - B
Yellow-White normal variant - G Supergiant variant - F
Red normal variant - M Supergiant variant - K
I do plan on doing a bit more in depth analysis of the data that I collected on these stars.
While I was working on this survey, this thread caught my eye...
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/377432-The-Quest-for-a-Planetary-Nebula
And it finally got me to say screw it, I'm going to find me one of those nebulas. I had always wanted to find one, and had tried in the past, but always ended up getting frustrated because I could never find them on the map, let alone actually find one that was untagged. Time and time again, I just gave up and looked for other things.
I dilligently completed my survey over the next couple of days, and then set out searching the GalMap using the method set out in the aforementioned thread by Ziggy Stardust. It didn't take long before I saw those nebulas popping up quite regularly, and even now, I am still kicking myself for never taking the time to learn, or discover a reliable and methodical process of finding them. As they popped up in the GalMap, I crossed referenced the systems with EDSM to filter out ones that had certainly been previously discovered, and went after ones that were not in EDSM. It became a bit disheartening and frustrating when the first dozen or so candidates had been tagged, but not logged in EDSM. None the less, I pressed on. It was on the second or third day that I found a few more that were in relatively close proximity but unfortunately tagged. Then as I was scanning around for more, on a whim I decided to drop further below the plane than the suggested -1000ly minimum. After a fair amount of scanning the map, I actually found one not in EDSM, that was a distant -1457ly below the plane. Likely candidate I thought, but tried not getting my hopes up.
I popped into the first one, and yet again, it was tagged, but the second one...popped the scanner, and loaded the system map. I moved to the sinlge non primary body in the system and hovered. No tag. My anticipation continued to buld as I moved towards the primary black hole, and with breath held, I hovered over that primary, and with an excited yelp, Rotheou SZ-O E6-874 was mine!
At this point, I had bookmarked a few more possible candidates, but bypassed several of them in my 13,000ly rush for my first visit to Colonia, the nearest place to turn in my data. I did stop at a few of them however, and found two more untagged ones. EOK GREE QI-T E3-6532 was another one with a black hole primary, but this one had landable moons. In my excitement induced haste to claim the tags, I forgot to actually land and get a picture. My third undiscovered of this mission was Phipoe OY-R E4-6253. This one had a neutron star as the primary, and the albedo of the icy moons made for some incredible views.
I will return to EOK GREE QI-T E3-6532 to get some pictures, as well as looking at the ones I bookmarked, but bypassed.
While this was no where near my first extended voyage into the black either in duration or distance, it was an extremely enjoyable mission, and I learned a lot about the more intricate mechanics and nuances of exploration. Far more than ever before. I am going to make my first visit Jaques here in the next day or so, and then head back out for my next adventure, armed with my newfound knowledge, and with a renewed sense of excitement and wonder!
There was a good reason for all those big bright spots that initially led me to stop. I found myself in the middle of a cluster of super giant stars. After spending a few weeks surveying this area, it did have pretty discrete boundaries in the rough shape of an oblate spheroid with the major axis being about 700ly, and the minor axis being about 200ly give or take. Outside those boundaries, there were a few stragglers, but the super giants pretty much all but disappeared. Inside the boundaries though...
Blue-WHite Supergiants - 53
White Supergiants - 82
Red Supergiants - 38
Total supergiants - 173
EDSM totals pulled from this page - https://www.edsm.net/en/statistics/bodies Including both hand crafted, and procedurally generated systems
Blue-White Supergiants - 891
Yellow-White Supergiants - 295
Red Supergiants - 101
Total supergiants - 1287
Based on EDSM totals of these star types, roughly 13.4% of all reported supergiant stars are in this small cluster.
Blue-WHite Supergiants - 6%
Yellow-White Supergiants - 28%
Red Supergiants - 38%
Total supergiants - 13.4%
All of these were in E mass code systems, and the supergiant variant was always one spectral class higher than the regular variant as displayed in the gal map.
Blue-white normal variant - A Supergiant variant - B
Yellow-White normal variant - G Supergiant variant - F
Red normal variant - M Supergiant variant - K
I do plan on doing a bit more in depth analysis of the data that I collected on these stars.
While I was working on this survey, this thread caught my eye...
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/377432-The-Quest-for-a-Planetary-Nebula
And it finally got me to say screw it, I'm going to find me one of those nebulas. I had always wanted to find one, and had tried in the past, but always ended up getting frustrated because I could never find them on the map, let alone actually find one that was untagged. Time and time again, I just gave up and looked for other things.
I dilligently completed my survey over the next couple of days, and then set out searching the GalMap using the method set out in the aforementioned thread by Ziggy Stardust. It didn't take long before I saw those nebulas popping up quite regularly, and even now, I am still kicking myself for never taking the time to learn, or discover a reliable and methodical process of finding them. As they popped up in the GalMap, I crossed referenced the systems with EDSM to filter out ones that had certainly been previously discovered, and went after ones that were not in EDSM. It became a bit disheartening and frustrating when the first dozen or so candidates had been tagged, but not logged in EDSM. None the less, I pressed on. It was on the second or third day that I found a few more that were in relatively close proximity but unfortunately tagged. Then as I was scanning around for more, on a whim I decided to drop further below the plane than the suggested -1000ly minimum. After a fair amount of scanning the map, I actually found one not in EDSM, that was a distant -1457ly below the plane. Likely candidate I thought, but tried not getting my hopes up.
I popped into the first one, and yet again, it was tagged, but the second one...popped the scanner, and loaded the system map. I moved to the sinlge non primary body in the system and hovered. No tag. My anticipation continued to buld as I moved towards the primary black hole, and with breath held, I hovered over that primary, and with an excited yelp, Rotheou SZ-O E6-874 was mine!
At this point, I had bookmarked a few more possible candidates, but bypassed several of them in my 13,000ly rush for my first visit to Colonia, the nearest place to turn in my data. I did stop at a few of them however, and found two more untagged ones. EOK GREE QI-T E3-6532 was another one with a black hole primary, but this one had landable moons. In my excitement induced haste to claim the tags, I forgot to actually land and get a picture. My third undiscovered of this mission was Phipoe OY-R E4-6253. This one had a neutron star as the primary, and the albedo of the icy moons made for some incredible views.
I will return to EOK GREE QI-T E3-6532 to get some pictures, as well as looking at the ones I bookmarked, but bypassed.
While this was no where near my first extended voyage into the black either in duration or distance, it was an extremely enjoyable mission, and I learned a lot about the more intricate mechanics and nuances of exploration. Far more than ever before. I am going to make my first visit Jaques here in the next day or so, and then head back out for my next adventure, armed with my newfound knowledge, and with a renewed sense of excitement and wonder!
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Seems like an interesting find.
