How can I identify direction?

Kyr One

Kyr One
I'm on my way from the bubble to the Formidine Rift.

On the way I started noticing an interesting object outside each system, that became closer with each jump. It grew larger and became more well-defined, and I took screenshots and recorded each system, until I apparently passed it and it started getting smaller again.

I could not find this object on the galactic map near my route. I don't know where to find or how to determine a direction to extra-system objects, like right ascension and declination, to triangulate its position from each system I screenshot it.

I wondered if it might be possible to use the relative angle indicator to each destination system on my route while the object was centered on my cockpit window, but actually doing the math on that is beyond me.

Is there a way to determine a vector to extra-system objects?
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
It's probably NGC 7822.

EDIT: but in answer to your question, the best you can do is to use the relative position of the galactic core to make a rough guess as to direction, then target a nearby system in that direction and see how close you are, target different nearby systems until you've got one that's pretty close, then use the galaxy map to see what's further away in that direction.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
There's no formal way of translating what you can see "out the windows" to what's on the galactic map but it is possible to do with judicious use of the galmap.

Basically, use the galmap to target a system, switch back to the cockpit view, orient yourself so the nose of your ship is pointing at the targeted system, use the camera-suite to estimate a bearing on the thing you're interested in and then switch back to the galmap to find a system roughly along that bearing.

Trouble is that, to use the cliche, space is very big.
Even if it's "only" 20Ly between two systems, if the thing is in front of you when you're in the first system and behind you when you're in the other system, it's going to be almost impossible to reach it via supercruise.
If you've got a ship that's using, say, 3t of fuel per hour and it's got a 32t tank, that means you've got fuel for 10 hours of flight in SC.
At top speed (not accounting for acceleration time) our ships can do roughly 0.2Ly/hr so a tank of gas is only going to get you about 2Ly toward something that might be 10Ly distant.
 

varonica

varonica
Yep NGC 7822 alright, look here;

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

NGC 7822

The NGC 7822 nebula has a collection of stars arranged in a rough cylinder facing Sol. The red glow of the nebula meets the blue glow of a class O star. NGC 7822 is well above the galactic ecliptic. It is about 2,790 light years from Sol. Life Sciences Expedition has an asteroid base in NGC 7822...
elite-dangerous.fandom.com elite-dangerous.fandom.com

They have picture as well;

1633861933370.png
 

Frankymole

Frankymole
Right Ascension and Declination are only useful on the surface of the Earth or close to it, because they're based on the ecliptic (the relative movement of the position of the sun compared to Earth) and the earth's own equator - which is totally irrelevant once you get into space, especially away from our own solar system. Elite uses galactic plane measurements, with North and South being "above" and "below" the plane. You can use "coreward" and "rimward" for distance towards or away from the central hub of the galaxy.

Converting between equatorial and galactic coordinates is tricky but there are online converters to calculate it. Knowing RA and Declination, and the distance from Sol to an object, can give its X, Y, Z on the Elite galaxy map if you want to visit stuff we observe in real life, in the game.
 

Frankymole

Frankymole
Stealthie said:
Trouble is that, to use the cliche, space is very big.
Even if it's "only" 20Ly between two systems, if the thing is in front of you when you're in the first system and behind you when you're in the other system, it's going to be almost impossible to reach it via supercruise.
If you've got a ship that's using, say, 3t of fuel per hour and it's got a 32t tank, that means you've got fuel for 10 hours of flight in SC.
At top speed (not accounting for acceleration time) our ships can do roughly 0.2Ly/hr so a tank of gas is only going to get you about 2Ly toward something that might be 10Ly distant.
Click to expand...
You won't reach it anyway. Even another system just 0.22ly away (say) can't be rached by supercruise. You have to go into hyperspace which is the "loading screen" I've reached a neighbouring system in a few hours, got the targeting reticule 1m away from me, and it wasn't actually there until I jumped. At least this stops people cheating the permit-locked regions...
 

Kyr One

Kyr One
varonica said:
Yep NGC 7822 alright, look here;

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

NGC 7822

The NGC 7822 nebula has a collection of stars arranged in a rough cylinder facing Sol. The red glow of the nebula meets the blue glow of a class O star. NGC 7822 is well above the galactic ecliptic. It is about 2,790 light years from Sol. Life Sciences Expedition has an asteroid base in NGC 7822...
elite-dangerous.fandom.com elite-dangerous.fandom.com

They have picture as well;

View attachment 267825
Click to expand...
Is it just me or is that not in fact the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind?
 

WeComeInPeace

WeComeInPeace
Kyr One said:
I'm on my way from the bubble to the Formidine Rift.

On the way I started noticing an interesting object outside each system, that became closer with each jump. It grew larger and became more well-defined, and I took screenshots and recorded each system, until I apparently passed it and it started getting smaller again.

I could not find this object on the galactic map near my route. I don't know where to find or how to determine a direction to extra-system objects, like right ascension and declination, to triangulate its position from each system I screenshot it.

I wondered if it might be possible to use the relative angle indicator to each destination system on my route while the object was centered on my cockpit window, but actually doing the math on that is beyond me.

Is there a way to determine a vector to extra-system objects?
Click to expand...
If you have the time, go and have a look at it. If I remember correctly, you'll find a lot of black holes, and those are quite beautiful and not as lethal as they ought to be. You can fly into one, hammer down, without much more damage than losing 1% of hull, and if you fly slower you won't get a scratch. The same goes for neutron stars, except messing around in a jet too close to the star. If you approach it at a 90 deg angle to the jets, you're fine.

And yes! It would be a nice feature to just be able to point in a direction (like selecting a target), and tell the "GPS" that I wanna go there. It's one of those things that they probably would have fixed in 3304, but honestly I'd prefer better (more consistant) fps at the time being :alien:
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Frankymole said:
You won't reach it anyway. Even another system just 0.22ly away (say) can't be rached by supercruise. You have to go into hyperspace which is the "loading screen" I've reached a neighbouring system in a few hours, got the targeting reticule 1m away from me, and it wasn't actually there until I jumped. At least this stops people cheating the permit-locked regions...
Click to expand...

Uhuh,

Thing that cheesed me off most was that I once tried to fly between Sol and Alpha Centauri, burned through most of my fuel travelling 4Ly and then, after I "arrived", I still had to use the normal amount of fuel to make a 4Ly jump between Sol and AC.
I guess the game just calculates fuel-usage based on Ly distance between systems and not your actual position relative to your intended destination.

Regarding the OPs query, though, it might have been plausible that the objective was actually within the instance of a system and be possible to travel to.
I was just pointing out the sort of quantity of fuel required to travel between stars in SC to investigate.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Bigmaec said:
I'm disappointed no one mentioned Raxxla.
Click to expand...

Bah! Amateur!

Based on what we know from Lore of shady characters allegedly travelling back and forth to Raxxla and from what we know of ship's travel capabilities back then, Raxxla must be pretty close to the bubble, if not actually within it.

Assuming, of course, that Raxxla doesn't provide some kind of super-fast travel method across huge distances.
 

Kyr One

Kyr One
Bigmaec said:
I'm disappointed no one mentioned Raxxla.
Click to expand...
I started this trip to light up a badge on EDSM. Before I started out, I researched the FR, which led me to The Zurara, which then led me to Raxxla. I was on my way to The Zurara when I saw this object. I actually tried putting Raxxla in the route plotter, if that makes you feel any better. :)
 
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