Distant stellar phenominae- what is it?

[Calaban]

OK, to see this for yourself, jump to the Eranin star system. Set a course for the distress signal, and halfway there, start to put Eranin3 between eranin 5 and 6 in the background (so like ooo). when it is bracketed, level with the orbital plane (the lines are horizontal), oriented so 5 is level with 3, and 6 is slightly above (that way we know we are the same "up")

Then look up in your cockpit. There it is, 11 o clock high. The Pleiades are 1 o clock high.

Its some sort of... thing. Not quite a distant galaxy (Andromeda?), not quite an accretion disk of a Black hole, not quite a planetary nebula, not quite a Wolf-Rayet outflow, but that's my closest fit. (see; I know my stellar phenom.)

I dunno what it is.. but I'm itching to go explore it!

So what do you think it is?

 

[Arindor]

It's a nebula consisting of dust and gas, and should be in the Messier catalogue, or similar. There are loads visible in ED. Hopefully we'll be able to fly to such things when the final game is released.

 

[NoirWolf]

Looks like a globular cluster to me

 

[Asp Explorer]

Well there are two of them.

My guess would be large and small Magellanic clouds.

Obviously rotate for perspective and allow for parallax, but that's my best guess.

 

[NoirWolf]

Well there are two of them.

My guess would be large and small Magellanic clouds.

Obviously rotate for perspective and allow for parallax, but that's my best guess.

Neither are regular constructs when viewed from our galaxy...a supernova which would occur between now and Elite would be another fair guess.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Neither are regular constructs when viewed from our galaxy...a supernova which would occur between now and Elite would be another fair guess.

I seem to recall specific mention of these when Alpha 4 was released. It was in Newsletter 21.

http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u...=cfcdbae60e&e=bb149574d8#Toto, I've a feeling

I could still be wrong, of course.

 

[JazHaz]

Zooming into the image in the first post, reveals spiral arms. Therefore I would say its a galaxy. Don't know which one though.

 

[NoirWolf]

It's a supernova, the "arms" seen on zoom is actually the shock front of the explosion...looks like a type 2 , young one at that.

 

[Asp Explorer]

Where's the NASA guy when you need him?

Wookie! Any ideas?

 

[Vargur]

Well this is what i like about this game.
It makes me go look at starcharts

After doing some research, it appears to be the andromeda galaxy.
The small blob is the triangulum galaxy.
And the star formation as you said is the pleiades.

Their triangulation checks out with what i see on star charts.
Some deviation is expected though since in game is 40ly away from earth.
So pleiades will have moved a little bit compared to both galaxies because of parallax, but not enough to make me doubt too much.

Also if you take a 4k screenshot and zoom in you can see spirals in both blobs.

Edit: adding some evidence

Here's in game screenshot.

Spoiler

And here's from srarcharts from Wikisky.org

Spoiler

 

[Slawkenbergius]

So what do you think it is?

Technically that's known as a big yellow star.

 

[Vargur]

Well there are two of them.

My guess would be large and small Magellanic clouds.

Obviously rotate for perspective and allow for parallax, but that's my best guess.

The large and small magellanic cloud look like this in game.
They are quite close to the galactic plane, should be easy to find.

Spoiler

 

[Dr Wookie]

OK, to see this for yourself, jump to the Eranin star system. Set a course for the distress signal, and halfway there, start to put Eranin3 between eranin 5 and 6 in the background (so like ooo). when it is bracketed, level with the orbital plane (the lines are horizontal), oriented so 5 is level with 3, and 6 is slightly above (that way we know we are the same "up")

Then look up in your cockpit. There it is, 11 o clock high. The Pleiades are 1 o clock high.

Its some sort of... thing. Not quite a distant galaxy (Andromeda?), not quite an accretion disk of a Black hole, not quite a planetary nebula, not quite a Wolf-Rayet outflow, but that's my closest fit. (see; I know my stellar phenom.)

I dunno what it is.. but I'm itching to go explore it!

So what do you think it is?

That's M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy); we can only see the bulgy bit in the middle because the spiral arms are much fainter . The smaller thing is M110. The whole thing is about 7 times the size of the moon on the sky!

It's 2.5 million lightyears away, so it would take ages to get to, even if there were enough stars to make the trip !

 

[Asp Explorer]

Thanks Wookie - very informative!

 

[M Pat]

Technically that's known as a big yellow star.

Yes I was hoping for a bit more realism from FD to be honest. Hope they fix it in the next release. And put better faces on some of these so called moons.

 

[Arindor]

Doh! On closer inspection (i.e. not at 1am in the morning on an iPad after a skin full of beer), it does, indeed, look like the Andromeda Galaxy.

 

[Arindor]

A galaxy jump drive please, FD. Would love to explore this baby after I run out of things to do in the Milky Way!

 

[NoirWolf]

A galaxy jump drive please, FD. Would love to explore this baby after I run out of things to do in the Milky Way!

Wormholes are all you are gonna get lad.

 

[Gibbonici]

I'm late to the party but yeah, it's Andromeda.

I think between us, the First Great Expedition has investigated every smudge, blob and cloud on the galactic map

 

[NoirWolf]

I'm late to the party but yeah, it's Andromeda.

I think between us, the First Great Expedition has investigated every smudge, blob and cloud on the galactic map

Identified, investigated means you even used some gas from the raspberry nebula for topping a particularly sweet pastry