High Mass Structure Discovery...

[Straha Yeagar]

I was on my way to Colonia out near Sacagawea when the Children of Raxxla community goal started, so I decided to head back and turn my data in for the goal. After doing that, I turned around and headed back. My initial intent was to simply buckeyball back to my starting point, but after jumping into yet another system I had already been to, I fell back into my old pattern of dropping off the beaten trail, and slowed things down a bit by taking fastest route with only F and non sequence stars.

This time, I dropped about 750ly down, and angled out to a slightly more westerly path. After a while, I hit a neutron star, and then another, and then another, and they were all un tagged. Quite surprised at this since it was so near such well traveled space, I started poking around the galaxy map, and found myself inside what I would imagine is called a neutron star field...I say that because I have never been to the documented fields so have no real perspective in numbers and density, but the little bit of poking around I did, there was over a hundred of them within a 100ly cube.

I grabbed a handful of them but kept on going as I was meeting up with a friend at Sacagawea. I did keep an eye on things as I went, and there was a very steady stream of neutrons, though I kept angling lower and they thinned out a bit, and that is when I found the f mass black hole, and then another, and then another. I followed that trail all the way to what I would almost call a black hole field...a single G mass subsector with 174 systems with G mass black hole primaries, and several of them with black hole secondaries, and numerous with multiple neutron star secondaries. I went on a mission to visit each one of them and 83 were already tagged, but 91 of them are now mine. I have not dug into the H mass objects yet.

Now for the sciency stuff...given the path I took, I think there is a very real possibility that the distribution of neutrons and black holes may be part of a decent sized structure, and I am planning on doing a better and deliberate survey of the area to hopefully define the size and shape.

And for the benefit of some of you other explorers, and you know who you are, I also collected about 25 earthlikes on the trip, and a bunch of other terraformables

And now for a request from the programmers, especially ED Discovers...is there any way, and how difficult would it be to make a utility that could map out specific systems based on the system names and star types? What I would envision is having my journal star systems listed by name and star type and then check mark the ones I want on the map? I really think this would be very handy...

 

[Redfox]

Nice info, thanks. Looking fwd to see what you'll make of it.

As for visualization: You can already do this with EDD today. EDD logs the star type and you could give the systems with the star types that match your criteria a specific (or differentiating) 3D map colour(s). This way you'd have those systems nicely displayed in the 3D map. Optionally you can give the non-interesting systems a dark colour so they aren't so prominent. Only manual part would be finding and colouring those systems in your travel history.

 

[Straha Yeagar]

I will try and get screen shots posted later, but it is interesting, and I am wondering if it may just be a quirk of Stellar Forge... here is my edsm profile and travel map for viewing...

https://www.edsm.net/en/user/travel-map/id/7211/cmdr/Straha+Yeagar

But what I have found is a fairly thin tube of neutron stars following the galactic arm at the normal ~1000kly below the plane. Following it around clockwise, so curving in towards the core, I hit a BA-A G subsector with ~150 G mass black holes. I looked through the neighboring subsectors, and none of them had more than 10 G mass bodies at all, so this cluster was pretty confined in scope. The distribution was not uniform however. The highest concentration was away from the core.

Continuing on along the arm, there was a gap in black holes and a thin tube of neutrons, until I came to another cluster. This time OS-U F2, and likewise, this one had over 150 F mass in the smaller 640x640x640 ly cube, though more evenly distributed than the G mass cluster. Again, I looked through neighboring subsectors, and again, the numbers dropped off very dramatically.

Wash, rinse, repeat with continuing around the curve of the arm inwards...thin tube, leading to AA-A F, another high concentration of F mass black holes with sharp drop off in neighboring subsectors. The best description I can come up with is a spaced beaded necklace.