Sightseeing and Exploration Project

[Romeo India Charlie]

Today was basically "nebula day" and, overall, a good day. The overwhelming number of dark sectors that I navigated to, led me to actually study which nebulas exist, why some are colourful and bright while others are dark. Guess I picked mostly dark ones. I ended up filtering a hand full of them which certainly sped up the trip.

Some of the places I visited today were outstanding in their beauty with the system Sheron and NGC 6729 aka R CrA Nebula taking the top spots. The day ended in a place I've visited before but never took the time to appreciate: Maia. To make things even better, today I had a conversation with a coworker about the Pleiades in general and Maia in particular. The universe does not care about the big-brain-apes ability to find patterns everywhere but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate it.

Tomorrow I'll take my time around Maia and get moving again. A small green area, indicative of visited systems, is starting to appear on my galaxy plot. I'm looking forward to adding even more green to it. It's humbling to see that the green mark left by these 28 waypoints already visited is almost nothing when plotted over a picture of the galaxy.

Thank you for reading, commanders. Be safe out there.

(In the meantime, FDev support kindly changed my CMDR's name to something that I'm comfortable sharing, so if any of you fine explorers wants to add me to their friends list, feel free to do so. I'm now Romeo India Charlie in-game too).

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

After finishing visiting Maia, I set sail to visit more systems. Six more waypoints we reached and I'm currently safely on land at BD-12 1172. Like Maia, I'm surely going to spend some hours here and appreciate it. I won't be flying much for the next three days, unfortunately. Ironically I won't be flying in game because I will be flying in real life.

On the other hand, I picked everything I recorded last week and uploaded three videos that I'll release during the upcoming week.

Also found some inconsistencies in the spreadsheet. Nothing I can't solve with a bit of coding.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Several updates...

The fantastic BD-12 1172

Today I did nothing but to visit this system and I found it quite entertaining and surprising. The whole system is wrapped by the Spirograph Nebula which makes things pretty. But we shouldn't judge a book by its cover or a system by its minor planetary nebula. Bodies 1 and 2 are very similar. Similar sizes, similar rings, similar biological AND geological and similar composition. Examining one or the other makes very little difference. Same applies to planetary exploration.

Body 14 is a gorgeous HMC planet with beautiful rings, and body 13 is a ringed brown star with wide beautiful rings. Body 15CA is a landable, close and fast orbit moon.

But the group of planetary bodies I spent most time observing was 10 and it's moons. Body 10 has an axial tilt of -86.28º. Everything about it, from the rings to its moons is almost perpendicular to the plane.

Spoiler: Orreri detail of DB-12 1172 10

I can't imagine how this is even possible to be quite honest. This system will surely have a video of its own.

Week 1 Recap and a brief pause

These first days were largely successful. I managed to cover 34 of the waypoints on my list and put on ignore 13 more. I'm currently at V380 Orionis, 1.1kly from Sol and I'll probably go back for some repairs from a rough landing, taking the opportunity that I'm still extremely close to the bubble. That will effectively reset the functions I wrote to define the route, but that was intended from start, so it's not an issue.

Unfortunately, I won't be flying until Wednesday for professional reasons, but I'll resume flying asap. Until then I'm hoping I can code a bit.

Youtube updates

As I mentioned in my previous post, I uploaded and scheduled three videos. The first was released a couple of hours ago and you can check it here. The other two will go live Wednesday and Friday, and I'll post them here.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Three days after the last flight, I returned to the cockpit of now my beloved Phantom. The distance between my last waypoint and the current is 2004 light-years. I visited a hand full of nebulae and returned to one of my favourite systems: Hades Edge. I am now 3000 light-years away from Sol and the first couple of undiscovered systems appeared. They were uninteresting but at least I'm finding them again, which is a fantastic feeling.

I plotted the current state of the visits.

Two things pop up. The first is the green blob. That green is the systems of the list I already visited. It's already very visible! That little green blob is a sign that I'm progressing. The second thing that pops up is that the way I coded the function that returns the next system to visit is sending me away from the bubble for now. I'm certain that in a day or two it will start sending me back, but for now it's good that I'm venturing in places I have never visited.

This project is being great, I'm happy and enjoying the game.

Last but not least, the second of the three videos I scheduled was released today. It's about a well-known place: Mitterand Hollow! Although it is well known in the community, it was the first time I visited it and it was a blast.

 

[Nort]

Very interesting project, and good collaboration from like minded commanders. It’s nice to see this kind of helping each other to betterment of the Explorers. Perhaps Explorers will eventually become a superior race, making the Stars they're home.
I am on a fools run, Heading South. No particular place to go, just bouncing around with Space camera at the ready. Already got some shots, just by luck. I use the cheep fuel with expansion bubbles, it gives an erratic ride, but pops you out who knows where? Thus making for a mad and silly route. Been finding all kinds of unvisited places of interest, You will have to wait for my list, that will be released upon my return if I survive!

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

It’s nice to see this kind of helping each other to betterment of the Explorers.

Personally, I find it very rewarding. For instance, it is very common that I share the list of POIs and someone tells me of a couple missing, or some error. On the technical side, there have been hurdles that I dwelled for days until I got help from the right person. A good example is the plot you see above. It was Orvidius that helped me sort that out and made simple something that I had so much trouble with.

I could go on, really. From a couple of coworkers that give feedback on the videos I released, to the CMDRs that send me a message in game when I am in some cool place in the galaxy. Although the code and the videos mostly entertain my inner geek, I find that improving and curating the list is a service I owe to the CMDRs that follow and help this project.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

First and foremost, apologies for the links but I was unable to share images here today, for some unclear reason.

Day 10. I visited 4 waypoints today, some of them magnificent. ALS 299 offered me a brown dwarf with large rings on top of the Seagull Nebula nearby. At Rosette Sector RD-S b4-0 I found several interesting bodies orbiting 3 stars in close orbit. But the star of the day was my first Wolf-Rayet star. Alone in the middle of its own dust but magnificent. You can find it at BD-14 2129.

Two additional notes are that I found a small pocket of undiscovered systems and that I used neutron jumps for the first time in this expedition. The initial excitement with the systems was high but the painful truth is that all of them were uninteresting, to say the least. The neutron jumps allowed me to arrive at the last system. All in all, the distance between the starting point and the current system was 2435 light-years and I am now at 5321 light-years from Sol.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Day 11 took me to from Rosette to the Crab Nebula, passing by Jellyfish, Monkey Head Cyoidai GH-U Supernova Remnant. In the process, I entered several previously undiscovered systems, most irrelevant, a couple valuable and one that stands out as a personal max.

Spoiler

Cyoidai LY-Q b38-5 has 74 bodies, which in itself is quite a number! But what makes it special is how they are arranged. I spent a lot of time going through the orrery and appreciating this galactic clockwork.

Spoiler

Every time we zoom in we find another arrangement, and then another, and another. It's like a cosmological fractal unfolding. It's mesmerizing. Only a handful of bodies are interesting and most of them are too poorly lit to be fully appreciated, but the system, the whole system and the act of exploring its details will live as one of my great experiences in Elite Dangerous.

The expedition day finished with 6 waypoints visited, including this unexpected one, 2900 light-years distance between the start and finish at exactly 7000 light-years from Sol.

EDIT: Would be really interesting to understand why screenshots work here every other day.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

After a couple of days out with the family, I'm back in my cockpit and flew 2,325 ly, starting in the Crab Pulsar where I left off and now mid-way to my next waypoint.

Between the two points, I found a handful of undiscovered systems, one of which offered a nice surprise. I was greeted by a white star but a bit far away a yellow star was shinning with very high intensity. Upon inspection, I found this:

Spoiler

These two yellow stars are 2.6ls away from each other and roughly 200ls from the main white star. Neat! The other great visit of the days was this beauty:

Spoiler

Glowing Green Giant 11! And what a beauty it is.

I have the whole day to fly tomorrow. Let's see where it takes me.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Today I broke the 200.000 light-year mark and decided to return to the bubble for a quick break. While travelling back I found a neat system with a small moon with high mountains in close orbit to a ringed gas giant.

Spoiler

I'm going to stay here for a couple of days. I joined The Fatherhood about a week ago and I'm going to give a hand with missions until I'm ready to start another run.

In the meantime, the scheduled releases of Youtube content continues. Early today I released a video with footage of the Spirograph Nebula that I mentioned here some days ago.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Today I just flew tourists, moved cargo, blew stuff up and murdered civilians (yes, specifically civilians) and, if I'm honest, it was good fun to change pace for a bit. Although there was no exploration or sightseeing per se, I took a bit of time to curate my list. First order of business was to put all "dark regions" on ignore. The second was to check every single POI that was marked as "Want to Visit" because if there was something I learned in the last run is that some planetary nebulas are just like every other planetary nebula and that many beacons are plain boring. So I checked every single one of them both in the Galmap and on EDSM. Some "survived" but about 10% of all POIs got to the ignored list too. I deleted 4 other ones, mostly duplicated viewpoints of already established POIs.

The big question of the moment is if I should include a work-in-progress list I currently have going. It's related to other POIs, namely Megaships, Guardian Sites, Crash Sites, Famous Stations, etc that I asked on another thread. The list is done but after plotting those POIs I noticed that they are all very close to the bubble, which isn't really a surprise. However, it is something I want to avoid for now. On one hand, the current list is mostly about galactic bodies and player achievements while the second one is more lore oriented. On the other hand, I'm still not sure what would come out of this second list, content wise. This said I'm going to keep the WIP list as a future project and maintain focus on the current list.

Anyone interested in the spreadsheet, here's a link.

Tomorrow I'm going to pile up on materials for synthesis and start another run. I'll report here, as usual.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

I don't think I'll be doing any flying today, so I'll just leave today's video here. A teaser of one of my favourite systems: Hades Edge.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Double update today following two days of flying. Restarting from the bubble I flew to 10 waypoints on a total of 6,210 light years. Of these CD-26 1339 (Robin's Egg Nebula) and HD 1740 (Double Mountain Blue Beacon) were outstanding and well worth the visit. Surprisingly I discovered a new system, although I'm very close to the bubble. The system itself is unremarkable but it's interesting to note that there are systems to discover even close to the bubble.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Today was the most intensive and packed day I've had in this project. 18 waypoints, 8,750 light-years travelled. Unfortunately, this quantity means that quality was relatively low. Other than some brilliant waypoints around NGC 7822, most were average or worst. Even the systems I discovered boiled down to rock and ice. I am now 3,000 light-years from Sol and slowly creeping in the direction of Colonia.

The big point today was a difficulty I had around manual plotting. One of the waypoints was high in the galaxy. I was expecting not being able to plot to get there, but I did expect to be able to slowly plot my way to there. I wasn't. This is a skill I must learn if I want to get to the most extreme points in the galaxy, the ones on the edge, top and bottom, away from arms and the core. I ended up putting that waypoint on the ignore list and move on, but I'm not happy with that. It is something I'll need to sort before venturing to the outer parts of the galaxy.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Let's start with the stats: 4,287 light years covered across 8 waypoints. The cool thing about these waypoints is that two of them were interesting systems previously undiscovered.

The first one had a couple of things that caught my eye. The first one was two planets co-orbiting star B. What caught my attention was their distance to the arrival point that had a difference of less than 0.01 even minutes later. The cool thing is that star B is in an orbit with star A and both with star C. It was as if the two bodies co-orbiting B were tidally locked to A which didn't make sense. With the info I got from @Baxder and @Vithigar I checked the orrery to find this.

Spoiler

That small little orbit around the star are bodies 3 and 4, the ones I was checking. And the orbit of the 3 stars is the following:

Spoiler

Truth be told, this ended up being a lot less exciting that the questions I had in my head while trying to figure this out. But it is a cool system nonetheless. And if that wasn't enough, there were 2 NSPs and a WW in it.

The second system showed the interesting part as soon as I arrived in it.

Spoiler

That planet is a Class IV gas giant. It orbits a Red Dwarf on an 8 hour orbit with a radius of less than 2 ls. But it gets better!

Spoiler

The planet's Red Dwarf has a co-orbit with another Red Dwarf at a distance of 30 ls. Then there are three HMCs orbiting these two stars. There's a bit more to the system but these 3 take the prize for the coolest finding of the day.

Cool fun day of exploration! More tomorrow, hopefully!

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

I reached the Bubble Sector where I visited the POIs "The Dark Forterss" and "Fumarole in a bubble". On route to it, I discovered about a dozen new systems, one of which with an ELW, my second. Mixing both sightseeing and exploration was a fine way to commemorate a milestone. Today I reached 100 visited systems in this project. The galaxy now looks like this to me:

Not bad for 3 weeks, not bad at all! If I ignore the systems that I find and add to the list, I'm about halfway through it which is a good time to make a balance.

First and foremost, to say I'm halfway is wishful thinking. When the expedition becomes less sightseeing and more of exploration will take me to systems with considerable distances between them. While I'm almost halfway in the number of systems visited, I've barely started as far total distance travelled goes.

The second point, and in a way the bad news, is that many waypoints, especially nebulae and beacons are disappointing. I admit that this is subjective. Aesthetics is relevant because I'm recording video, but the kick I get is from intellectual satisfaction. Asking questions and looking for answers or finding something rare or odd is my happy place. A good example is Hades Edge, a system I absolutely love. It is beautiful and I had a lot of fun recording and editing the video, but understanding what makes Hades Edge that special place is way more satisfying. To me at least!

So, and this is the third point, while nebulae and beacons were the low points, what I learned in the process was the top note. I recall discussing temperatures with some of you, or googling "wolf rayet star". I spent a good amount of hours reading and watching videos about astronomy. I'm lucky to meet a couple of people that studied cosmology and quantum mechanics with whom I discuss many of the things I find in-game. All of this has been profoundly rewarding and, more important because this is a game, FUN!

While I was exploring the galaxy that Frontier Development made available for us, I had new ideas and projects but for now, I'm just focused on continuing this journey.

And since I prepared two videos this weekend, one was released today, so here goes an hipnotic view of a black hole... Can't wait to do this with Sagittarius A*!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbfY53JGHew

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Today started with a bang, quite literally. While checking the terrain textures after changing some settings, I crashed and found myself looking at the rebuy screen. I don't care about having my name in systems in-game and the estimated 22 million credit loss is not a big deal, but I was still upset because it wasn't an accident while playing. It was an accident while checking video settings... meh...

I "woke up" in Elephant's Trunk Mine and quickly checked what my code had to say about this mess. Turns out the code doesn't care and quickly set me up on a new course. I ended up visiting Little Dumbbell Nebula, Trifid of the North Nebula and, finally, Slegi ZA-W e2-9 and what a finale. Not only it is the home of the 6th largest ring by ring mass but it also hosts 3 other wide rings and 1 ringed landable planet and a handful of other interesting features. The main attraction with its massive ring is planet 9 that also has 3 shepherd moons, one of them landable. A gem of a system.

All is well when it ends well.

 

[Romeo India Charlie]

Took the day to do a pit stop and some coding, so no expedition updates today. Not all his lost though, this is the second video of the week...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ILUr9JFpiQ

 

[Nort]

Decent music this time, Green music !

 

[Orvidius]

Nice! Short little expositions of some of the rare and beautiful locations out there is a great idea. Very cool.