Hi, So maybe a dumb question but this is my first jump out of the bubble, currently about 7k ly from SOL, having fun and exploring a lot, found a Black Hole and everything. (not discovered, just seen) anyways. I have the "screenshot" on my main PC, which I hope to get to soon for you, but as I was jumping lets say my last 40 jumps, I always noticed this strange/cool looking "cluster" of stars, and then every jump I went, it got "bigger" "brighter" and looks like about 15-20 VERY bright looking stars now.... So my question is, is there anyway to actually "find" what I am seeing?? galaxy map or anything? Or is all that "star" stuff just randomized? TY ALL
Stars I see while exploring, Can you "find them"?
- Thread starter cassini12
- Start date
Usually when somebody asks about an unusually bright cluster of stars it's NGC 7822!
But since you say you're 7kly from sol, that seems a little far out to be seeing 7822.
I'd say the best way to find the stars you're looking at is to filter the galaxy map by star class, uncheck every box except "O class" and "non sequence stars", then just fly the camera in the approx direction of the mystery cluster untill you see it. It may take a bit of panning the camera around, and the cluster is probably further away than it looks.
But since you say you're 7kly from sol, that seems a little far out to be seeing 7822.
I'd say the best way to find the stars you're looking at is to filter the galaxy map by star class, uncheck every box except "O class" and "non sequence stars", then just fly the camera in the approx direction of the mystery cluster untill you see it. It may take a bit of panning the camera around, and the cluster is probably further away than it looks.
Last edited:
Last edited:
Something some people do is to point your ship in the direction of the thing you can see and then go to the navigation panel and keep selecting stars until one of them is selected in approximately the direction you are pointing. You keep doing this until you arrive at your destination.
I tried it once and found it way too tedious but it should work.
I tried it once and found it way too tedious but it should work.
I've tried that too, and I gave up after about five jumps, when I realized that I had no clue how far away the stellar object I wanted to go to was.
A better method, I think, would be to first orient your ship to the cardinal axis of the galaxy map. Once you've done that, you can tell where your target is relative to the system you're in. Go out a good enough distance to select a star that is on the line of sight to your target, and you can plot a route that will move you generally in the right direction.
Hmm.... I would swear it sounds like another one of "what is this cluster of stars" that turns out to be NGC 7822, but then again; 7k out? In what direction?
I would look for "landmarks" close to you on the galaxy map ie nebula and selecting them (not waypointing) and see if some is close to what you seek.
I would look for "landmarks" close to you on the galaxy map ie nebula and selecting them (not waypointing) and see if some is close to what you seek.
I do that but not to keep jumping to that system - just once so I can get a line in the galmap that leads from my current position in roughly the right direction so that I can then scroll that way in the map and try to find the thing I've seen in the sky. That works quite well for me.
Bright stars you can see a long way away are usually bright O-type and B-type stars, which can be seen from hundreds, even a couple thousand LY away. B-type stars can appear in quite large procedurally-generated clusters, often cube-shaped, but clusters of O-type stars tend to be hand-placed, real-world star clusters. The ones in the agme are often associated with real-world nebulae, though due to FD using different data sources for stars and nebulae, the star clusters are often separated from the nebulae by quite some distance.
Which one you're seeing does depend on which direction you're moving. NGC 7822 is the one new explorers often see, but the Orion Nebula, Heart & Soul and Eagle nebula regions all have prominent star clusters or "star beams" near them.
But to answer your question: yes. The skybox you see in any system is calculated to represent what you would actually see if you went to that system (it's one of the things the game is calculating during the hyperspace loading screen). So every star you can see while flying around is, theoretically, findable and selectable from the galaxy map.
Which one you're seeing does depend on which direction you're moving. NGC 7822 is the one new explorers often see, but the Orion Nebula, Heart & Soul and Eagle nebula regions all have prominent star clusters or "star beams" near them.
But to answer your question: yes. The skybox you see in any system is calculated to represent what you would actually see if you went to that system (it's one of the things the game is calculating during the hyperspace loading screen). So every star you can see while flying around is, theoretically, findable and selectable from the galaxy map.
True. For a real-world example, Sol is just beyond the edge of the Hyades star cluster, an open star cluster 60 LY across but only 150 LY away; it's so close, it doesn't really look much like a typical star cluster in our night sky, it's just a bunch of stars (the "head of the bull" in Taurus).
As a tip for finding specific star clusters in ED, try filtering the galaxy map to only the O and B star types, then scrolling the map in the general direction of your target until you see the cluster.