So I managed to work up enough cash to properly fit an Asp Explorer and have good buy back money. I targeted the "South East" nebula group, starting with the witch head nebula with option to go to Orion nebula and Barnard's Loop if the notion took me.
Things didn't start well. The first star the fuel scoop started running and I was like, "Wow!". I had only ever had a crap scoop before and this one shot up to 400 or beyond and I was so much enjoying seeing how high it would go when I dropped out of SC with "Too Close!". Then being a bit dumb for some reason I tried to FSD out of the star's atmosphere and cooked most of my modules with heat damage. Set the field management unit to repair them and looked for stations to repair. None. Made another jump out, no stations. It was then that I realised with a 31ly jump range you get out of the bubble pretty quickly. So I carried on.
As I got about half way out I started to become a bit disappointed. As I got closer and closer to the nebula they seemed to be getting fainter, not brighter and eventually I couldn't really see them at all. I made another few jumps and was only a few hundred light years out when I started to do some discovery and scanning of systems. After a few with very little to scan I landed in a large system and spent close to an hour scanning it.
It was when there was only one planet to study and it was on the other side of the star that I turned around in the system and ... my jaw dropped. WOW!
It hadn't occured to me, but when you are close to the star, as you arrive out of FSD the cockpit windows are doing a huge amount of dimming to protect you from being blinded by the star. When you are 3,000ls away from the star however, the galaxy backdrop comes alive. There, filling more than my cockpit view was this huge purple, pink and blue nebula, the witch head nebula. I floated around for a while in awe at how lovely it looked and amazed to see what I'm sure was paralax scrolling in some of the detail of the gas clouds as I SC'ed across the system to the planet 6,000ls away.
I made another few jumps into the nebula itself and explored a few systems with the pink, purple and blue dust surrounding me.
However, I didn't go out further, I figured I would turn back for civilisation and consider this first run out a practice, quit while I was ahead and maybe next time motor on past the witch head nebula out to Orion.
As it turned out, I made the 1400ly run back to civilisation in about an hour and a half. I sold the data of probably 10 full systems and a handful of ADS and star scans only and made a rather mediocre 350,000cr. So, it's certainly not about the money this exploring. A full system detailed scan can take an hour and isn't going to net you much more than about 50k, though I gather it depends on what is in the system.
Anyway, time to max out my Vulture fit and make some more money bounty hunting now for a while.
Things didn't start well. The first star the fuel scoop started running and I was like, "Wow!". I had only ever had a crap scoop before and this one shot up to 400 or beyond and I was so much enjoying seeing how high it would go when I dropped out of SC with "Too Close!". Then being a bit dumb for some reason I tried to FSD out of the star's atmosphere and cooked most of my modules with heat damage. Set the field management unit to repair them and looked for stations to repair. None. Made another jump out, no stations. It was then that I realised with a 31ly jump range you get out of the bubble pretty quickly. So I carried on.
As I got about half way out I started to become a bit disappointed. As I got closer and closer to the nebula they seemed to be getting fainter, not brighter and eventually I couldn't really see them at all. I made another few jumps and was only a few hundred light years out when I started to do some discovery and scanning of systems. After a few with very little to scan I landed in a large system and spent close to an hour scanning it.
It was when there was only one planet to study and it was on the other side of the star that I turned around in the system and ... my jaw dropped. WOW!
It hadn't occured to me, but when you are close to the star, as you arrive out of FSD the cockpit windows are doing a huge amount of dimming to protect you from being blinded by the star. When you are 3,000ls away from the star however, the galaxy backdrop comes alive. There, filling more than my cockpit view was this huge purple, pink and blue nebula, the witch head nebula. I floated around for a while in awe at how lovely it looked and amazed to see what I'm sure was paralax scrolling in some of the detail of the gas clouds as I SC'ed across the system to the planet 6,000ls away.
I made another few jumps into the nebula itself and explored a few systems with the pink, purple and blue dust surrounding me.
However, I didn't go out further, I figured I would turn back for civilisation and consider this first run out a practice, quit while I was ahead and maybe next time motor on past the witch head nebula out to Orion.
As it turned out, I made the 1400ly run back to civilisation in about an hour and a half. I sold the data of probably 10 full systems and a handful of ADS and star scans only and made a rather mediocre 350,000cr. So, it's certainly not about the money this exploring. A full system detailed scan can take an hour and isn't going to net you much more than about 50k, though I gather it depends on what is in the system.
Anyway, time to max out my Vulture fit and make some more money bounty hunting now for a while.
