Brown Dwarf Tour & Fact Finding Mission

I've found quite a few gas giants with water-based life (another one today, actually), but I'm not sure how close they were to their parent bodies. I would need to check my data for that.

Anyway, today - on this last day of the year - I decided to run through a few more class L systems after a few days of inactivity. Gotta say, today's yield was really good! In addition to the gas giant with water-based life I'd already mentioned, there was one terraformable high metal content world, a class II gas giant and even an ammonia world! All that in just ~80 jumps.

Here's the ammonia planet, it's one of those sightly cloudy ones:

elite-233-AM.jpg

In addition to that I decided to snap a photo of a class I gas giant with a wide B ring that I stumbled over today. I'm not too familiar with wide rings, so I'm not sure how special this is, but its outer radius measured slightly over 2.3 million kilometres at about 2.2 trillion tons of mass while still being slightly visible, even from nearly 700Ls away. Once again, the visibility was much better in my OLED HMD than on my AH-IPS desktop monitor. I assume it depends on your display device and its contrast/brighthess/gamma settings as to whether you can see it in this photo or not:

elite-232-widering.jpg
 
Last edited:
Ah right, there is something else I find strange in those class L systems. It's not rare or anything, I just find it weird or hard to explain. High metal content worlds close to their parents tend to be small. Sometimes they're about the size of Earth, but not more than that, according to my findings so far. But quite often you'll find a relatively large and massive one that is always the farthest planet from the dwarf.

They can have a radius of over 10.000km and tend to have g's in the range from 2-3. They'll be ice cold, usually 20 K and may or may not describe an eccentric orbit. Their atmospheres are always quite thin. Here's an example, this is one on the smaller / less massive end of the spectrum:

elite-234-hmcw-farout.jpg

In some cases I find them as sole satellites of class T secondary dwarfs, in which case the world is much closer to the dwarf. In such cases they can be as warm as 40 K in my experience, but hey, that's still pretty chilly.

The thing that I find interesting is that in every single case that I encountered, the large and massive HMCW would always be the outermost planet in the system, or at least follow the outermost orbit around the parent body. I have never encountered one without an atmosphere, nor one with a thick atmosphere. None were even close to 1 atm.

In cases where their orbits are relatively circular, they shouldn't have been captured, meaning that they formed in that very system. But why would so much metal and so little gas come together so far out in a protoplanetary disk, and so often to boot?

Maybe there's a good reason for this, I just found it interesting.

Also: One more terraformable HMCW and two gas giants with ammonia-based life have been found today already.
 
I'll spam some more if nobody's gonna stop or interrupt me!

Today I noticed a "stellar" flare from an L dwarf for the first time. This is probably not rare at all, but I hadn't noticed them before. The flare lasted for a very brief period only, maybe less than one minute, maybe just slightly longer:

elite-235-quasisolar-flare.jpg
(Unfortunately, it wasn't at its brightest when I took that photo)

And then, after rougly a 1000 systems of nothing regarding them, I encountered two class M red dwarf stars in quick succession. I'm curious about them. Maybe it's really tied to specific sub-sectors? But then again, this is only my second sample. One of those systems also had one of those "far out" HMCWs I'd mentioned in the post before, this time it's one with a radius greater than 10.000km:

elite-237-m2.jpg


elite-236-m1.jpg
(One was sitting in a L2 system and the other in a L1 system)

Ah right, at the moment I'm not actually in the Empyrean Straits. I'd returned to Anchorage via neutron jumps to sell my data, and I'm heading back to where I left off in the Straits using eco jumps. While doing so, I stumbled over a stellar remnant nebula with a neutron star inside. Since that nebula was right inside the brownie layer, I decided to visit it. Here's a photo of the last brown dwarf before entering it, right in front of the nebula (which was - of course - already discovered):

elite-238-stellar-remnant-nebula.jpg
 
Last edited:
Sorry, I've been gone for a long time. A lot of work in December. Congratulations on all the wonderful finds. I also switched to T-stars now.
I'm not sure, maybe I didn’t pay attention before. But now it seems to me that all the T-stars that I meet are single. While L-stars were often double or more. How about this?
 
Last edited:
Leif already mentioned that I believe, yes. But hey, come on, guys... You're gonna leave me behind as the only one doing class L stars? Hah... The failing route plotting can be fixed quite easily...

Ah, wait. How many people are there actually doing this? Me (only for a short time), you, Klepto, who is probably the most experienced, and recently also Leif... Are there any other explorers? Leif, you said "a few of us" in the opening post, right?

I'm just curious there.

btw., just finished watching the Vinland Saga in one go today, because my gaming machine had to be reset to fix some major issues. Leif Erikson's got a pretty cool role in that, too. ;) That's one great name to pick indeed.
 
Today I had one funny thought. That the reason for this kind of exploration is that it looks like the exploration before 3.4. It's too simple, you just honk and jump on ))
 
Today I had one funny thought. That the reason for this kind of exploration is that it looks like the exploration before 3.4. It's too simple, you just honk and jump on ))

It is simple-before the update I tended to scan the first star in a new system but as they are auto scanned now I just jump in, honk, check FSS and shoot off checking system map for any tags. Takes just under a minute usually for me.

I think only us three are actively checking Brown Dwarf systems I know of, although MattG took an interest at looking at T stars not sure if he is planning anything. But to be honest, you need to have real stamina and single minded focus to do this thoroughly as most of the systems have a 'meh' factor.

After checking only T and Y stars have nothing of note found. Have found four T stars with close orbiting worlds (all icy) and as they all are single stars only (think these star classes are the only ones you cannot find paired stars in) can work out exactly how many I've found on EDD. The total is 267 T stars so the chances of close orbiting worlds come out at 1 in 66-67 jumps.

Cannot say about Y stars as I've hit around 1,000 of these and still only 1 close orbiting system found. Perhaps due to the rarity I should submit it to the Galactic Mapping Project but as one of the condition is whether a Cmdr would travel thousands of Lyrs to see it I'm not so sure.....😂
 
Hmm, I can usually do single-dwarf systems with nothing of interest in them within the FSD cooldown time, including the FSS check. For systems with multiple dwarfs I have to check the system map, because I'm looking for class M stars as well. Maybe 20 seconds? Not sure. I'm not looking for tagged bodies though. Reason being that there simply are none? When I entered the layer from Anchorage, I've seen discovered systems for 3-4 eco jumps, and after that, nothing. And that's with L's, no T's or Y's...

I admire your persistance though. I believe that Y and T stars would break me after maybe a thousand or so jumps...

Edit: And one more non-terraformable water world and one gas giant with water-based life have been found.

I'm starting to have an itch though. Uh, is that how you say it in English? Actually, I've had it for a while. As much as I want to find an Earth-like world, there is something I want to find even more than that for some strange reason.

A water giant!

Considering how they're supposed to be created, I doubt it's even possible in a class L system. As far as I understand it, it would require a massive ice or ocean world as a base and enough heat to make it all evaporate (not sure how the forge does it though). They don't form by accumulating gas from a proto-planetary disk, right?

Have any water giants been found in brown dwarf systems, ever?
 
Last edited:
Decided to break the monotony with a sightseeing of water geysers on a world close to a T star.

Water Geysers 4ls T Star JPEG.jpg


8,000lyrs to Anchorage and big issues with the route plotting. Perhaps it's the potato PC in my ship but regular failures plotting over 250lyrs in eco mode. Despite the potted plant saying everything is ok can feel the strain and worried I may fly into the next star, crouch in the corner with two pencils up my nostrils saying wibble or even taking drastic action like fast routing with filters off away from here......

So am rerouting journey travelling to my original destination of Jaques, 10k away. This has already helped with eco plotting and have an explorers initiative that the Inner Scutum-Centaurus Arm region is the area where wonders may be found.....
 
Last edited:
That's a nice picture! :) I should land on planets more...

About the routing; I might have an idea to (maybe) solve this. It has worked for me dozens of times now:
  1. Plot your route. It will fail. But keep it like that, don't attempt to plot a closer one or anything.
  2. Pick the next best star as a target (not route!) and jump there.
  3. Revisit the galaxy map. Your route target from before will have been retained, and the route should now auto-plot, likely with success.
I've done this with L's only though, so I'm not sure about Y+T, where the stellar density must be much higher, but maybe this can help you, too.

My apologies if this method is already widely known...
 
Ah crap, I'm double-posting again.

Today I had the best class M encounter so far! I felt really elated when I layed my eyes on this sight right after hyperspace exit:

elite-239-close-M.jpg
(Heartwarming!)

Am I too easily impressed or something? I guess I am by now. That's by far the closest class M / class L pair I've seen in the layer so far. Naturally, I used the red dwarf star for fuel scooping. The two are so close that you can easily see the brown dwarf from the vicinity of the nearby star, which is both smaller and less massive:

elite-240-close-M.jpg
(Thank you for the fuel!)

The orrery was pretty interesting too, that's a nice co-orbit:

elite-242-close-M-orrery.jpg

And here's the system map view:

elite-241-close-M-sysmap.jpg

That was a lovely experience today. :)

Ah, and there was also another non-terraformable water world orbiting a class L9 dwarf at about 9 ls. It was pretty warm, but it required 512 atms for that, so not exactly the place for a nice boat ride I guess.

elite-243-ww.jpg
(I guess the water worlds are getting a bit boring by now, though)

That's it for today.
 
I HAVE FOUND LIFE ORBITING Y STARS...…...although it's water and ammonia based Gas Giant related.
Y Star Water Based GG JPEG.jpg


Y Star Ammonia GG JPEG.jpg

Sorry to come across all shouty but it's the only things I've come across this week other than icy world tedium!

Much congratulations to Klepto for finding only the second recorded ELW around a T Star...…… when I realised he found one within 500 T Star jumps I do admit I gnashed my teeth in frustrated jealousy 😁 😁😁 The odds of finding such a rare item in relatively short time is a rarity in itself!
 
You guys make me feel like I have it too easy with them class L dwarfs. :LOL:

Some good catches today so far: One terraformable high metal content world (and a very small one too!), one gas giant with ammonia-based life, two class II gas giants and yet another M9 red dwarf star with an L2 primary:

elite-244-l2+m9.jpg

According to my current data, the rarity of those red dwarf stars is on the level of ammonia worlds and gas giants with water-based life. Updated stats after roughly 3700-3800 systems:
  • Ammonia worlds: 5
  • Earth-like worlds: 0
  • Water worlds (non-terraformable): 14
  • Water worlds (terraformable): 2
  • Water giants: 0
  • High metal content worlds (terraformable): 10
  • Metal-rich worlds: 0
  • Gas giants with ammonia-based life: 12
  • Gas giants with water-based life: 8
  • Class II gas giants: 18
  • Class III gas giants: 2
  • Class IV gas giants: 1 0
  • Class V gas giants: 0
  • Oddities: 7
    • Class M red dwarfs orbiting class L brown dwarf(s): 7 (4 × L2 + M9, 1 × L1 + M9, 2 × L0 + M9)

I feel I have to re-verify the class IV gas giant. That's the only one I'm not perfectly sure about anymore. Maybe it was a class III instead? Just saying, because that was at the beginning of my survey, where I was less methodical. I'll parse my logs just to make sure.
 
Last edited:
I think only us three are actively checking Brown Dwarf systems I know of, although MattG took an interest at looking at T stars not sure if he is planning anything. But to be honest, you need to have real stamina and single minded focus to do this thoroughly as most of the systems have a 'meh' factor.
Yep, I've been trawling through Ts aimlessly for a while. I can feel the last of my sanity slipping away. It is, at least, very quick to dismiss a system as uninteresting and move on though - is there anything to the right of FSS line, any planet auto-scanned by proximity or any HMCs? No? Move on.

I am seriously concerned that the odds are - apologies in advance - astronomical. And yet this is one unicorn I feel I need. Should be a fun battle between my collecting nature and the mind-numbingness of the task...

I stopped at an A-class yesterday to refuel and to have a break from the mundane - first non-T in a while. There was an ELW there. Never have I been so resentful of discovering an ELW.
 
I stopped at an A-class yesterday to refuel and to have a break from the mundane - first non-T in a while. There was an ELW there. Never have I been so resentful of discovering an ELW.

Ha ha- that's the reason why I only refuel on M Stars, at least they are somewhat rare. Good look on finding the ELW (and keeping your sanity) and as Klepto found one within 500 jumps it is possible, I'm at guesstimating 2500 and only a HMC and WW to show for it. Next jump perhaps......

You guys make me feel like I have it too easy with them class L dwarfs. :LOL:

Nothing easy about eco jumping to stars you can't scoop from and mainly finding nowt of interest so fair play to your perseverance in continuing the L Star trek :)

With Gas Giants I haven't looked in depth but haven't found anything higher than class III in the FSS scanner and no sign of Water Giants or Metal Rich worlds around any brown dwarfs so far.......... and ELWs of course!
 
Though I'm making a sport out of not leaving the layer at all anymore. As long as I can find class M9 stars every once in a while I don't need to leave for refueling either! Let's see for how long I can keep that up.

Also: I fear I have presented you with wrong data. I checked my logs in detail today, and there was no class IV gas giant. I had that feeling for a while, but now I'm sure: The highest class I've encountered is III. :(

Also: No metal-rich worlds. I'll add them to my list of things to look for.
 
Here's my report for the last three days: Two days of absolutely nothing (roughly 120-130 jumps). Just icycles, high metal content pebbles and some Jovian planets. And today? Today was gas giant day. Caught one of the rare class III gas giants plus one with ammonia-based life and one with water-based life.

Nothing else to report, I'm afraid.
 
Top Bottom