Mintaka!

Mephane

Mephane
Preamble: Everyone who already had a look at Mintaka on the galaxy map will likely know what this leads up to. Please do myself the favour and indulge in the entire post and don't just jump to the juicy bit at the end. :)

Preamble 2: I've expanded my journey towards the Orion Nebula now, check out the other posts, too.

The approach:
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Bright, blazing, beautiful:
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The first two planets form a binary pair between a gas giant...
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... and a volcanic rock:
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Let's see this one up close:
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Next is a binary pair of a brown dwarf and another rocky planet:
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Then we have a binary of two brown dwarves...
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... together orbited by a planet which from now on I will call 'hell':
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Before we get to the best part, let's have some perspective:
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The juicy bit has companion of its own:
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Nice attention to detail, FD - you can see how elevated terrain still receives some light while the surrounding lower areas are already in shadow:
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And now, without further ado:
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You can see that you can't see anything. That is unless you put yourself in the right place...
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... but of course you want to see that in motion:
[video=youtube;7txixfOI0tE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7txixfOI0tE[/video]
 
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Mephane

Mephane
Commander SQQUARE said:
incredible. can you go INTO the black hole? and, well technically you're already inside it..

mind blowing. wow.
Click to expand...

No, I am 0.13ls away from its center, and considering it is rather small, there is still some massive distance between the event horizon and myself (in the video you can see it shortly as a tiny black dot in front of the lensed milky way).
 

Jigsaw

Jigsaw
You made it to a Cobra and travelled almost 700 LY within 24 hours, while others complain about being 150 LY away from their buddy, claiming that it would set them weeks apart. ;)


Undecided said:
Well that was trippy. Anyone know how accurate a simulation of gravitational lensing that is?
Click to expand...

Looks very close to the representation of the black hole in Interstellar, which in turn is a highly accurate simulation of actual scientific theories.
 
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Mephane

Mephane
Jigsaw said:
You made it to a Cobra and travelled almost 700 LY within 24 hours, while others complain about being 150 LY away from their buddy, claiming that it would set them weeks apart. ;)
Click to expand...

While those complaints are a bit silly indeed - I did not "make" it to the Cobra, I cleared my save and selected the Cobra/Explorer kickstarter package for a new CMDR, removed weapons, installed a fuel scoop instead.
 

Calaban

Calaban
so..... no closeup/flyby?

Glad to see your survived it and that it was not actively... feeding.

I am curious, however, if FD implemented my suggestion that:

Calaban said:
if a pilot floes into a black hole (more accurate than "flying into", subatomic spaghetti strands and all), he is effectively erased from reality/the Universe, and all data is irretrievable... thus the player needs to repurchase another license version of the game, and choose a different commander name; as some forms of Darwinism should not be recoverable. (for being quite so foolish)
Click to expand...
 

Jigsaw

Jigsaw
Mephane said:
I did not "make" it to the Cobra, I cleared my save and selected the Cobra/Explorer kickstarter package for a new CMDR
Click to expand...

Ah okay, that would give you a bit of head start. But still... I travelled 70 light years in half an hour in the stock Sidewinder, with shields, weapons and D-Scanner removed. That didn't take weeks either. ;)
 

Mephane

Mephane
The view just outside the Witch Head Nebula:
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Looking out of the left window:
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Uh, oh! There are some restricted systems out here!
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Edit: Turns out it must have been a temporary bug, for after jumping to a different system, both systems don't require a permit any more. Here I am in the system from the last of the screenshots above, looking right through the Witch Head Nebula towards the Orion Nebula:
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Edit2: I hereby challenge myself to fly the rest of the distance to the Orion Nebula:
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Mephane

Mephane
369ly to go!
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The Witch Head Nebula - from behind:
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Orange Giants are also good for scooping fuel:
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At first glance, this system seemed rather boring...
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... but I was wrong!
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And I was not alone:
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A planet almost entirely covered in water:
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The map of the system:
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291ly to go!
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Oh hi I heard you like nebulae so I put nebulae in the path to your nebulae - aka next stop NGC 1999:
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Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Great thread and you can have some more rep for it. It appears you had the same idea as me, but are a lot further ahead of me, maybe I'll catch you up at some point ;)
 

Mephane

Mephane
76.8Ly - almost there:
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The Orion Nebula and EZ Orionis are also drawing closer
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The nebula is now bright enough to be still visible through the canopy auto-dimming near stars:
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Enjoying the view while refueling the ship:
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One last jump!
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V380 Orionis A is really, really pretty:
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Curiously, from within the V380 Orionis system, the NGC 1999 Nebula is listed as a jump target. But jumping to it only causes the game to disconnect to the main menu (ticketed).
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Alas, NGC 1999 is surrounding me anyway, everywhere I look there is this faint red-brown haze:
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And only 146Ly to EZ Orionis:
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