Very nicely done!I decided to visit 5 of the candidates and took screenshots of each where I tried to replicate the Codex picture the best I could. I thought it might give us some insight into what the actual system we are looking for might look like.
Agreed, I think this very convincingly rules out red dwarf stars. That's good, because there are millions of them.Again, I don't think it's possible for a gas giant with 8+ moons to orbit a M class star as close as the Codex image depicts unless the solar radius is over 20-30. If that's true then the Dark Wheel station in 100% not in, or near the bubble.
Red supergiants are exceptionally rare and I would guess all the ones anywhere near the bubble - say, within a few thousand LY - are visited by now, and probably catalogued in EDSM.
So that leaves red giants - reasonably common, plenty both procedural and hand-placed relatively near the bubble, and likely plenty of uncatalogued ones out there. Also very difficult to specifically search for with map filters, and the like.