Pulling Back From the Edge
After finally getting the cockpit control system repaired, the first destination was my guide star, Myeia Thaa UX-L d7-2. I hadn't visited this before going out to Ishum's Reach, as I'd just picked it as being on the direct line back to Sol. However, I was delighted to discover that although the primary had been registered, the secondary star had not. It was the first discovery that I registered the moment I had access to Universal Cartographics:
Around that time I caught wind of CMDR Deluvian's second record attempt, so I went back to Ishum's Reach to witness that.
After that my fighter pilot Sabrina and I started exploring in earnest. That particular area was pretty thoroughly surveyed, so instead I headed back a bit to where I'd bookmarked a field of single star nebulae, hoping to find one that hadn't yet been discovered, and was delighted to find several. In more traveled parts of the galaxy, these are usually already discovered.
I'd gotten so used to the emptiness near the edge, heading back towards the core was almost a shock to the system.
The rest of the return journey to Colonia was dedicated to nebula hopping. In the end I think I visited a dozen different ones. But the best find of all was what I came to call The Dried Blood nebula, because of it's designation (dryio bloo) and it's deep red color:
A lot of it hadn't been surveyed - rare for one of these larger nebulae, but that may be partially because there seems to be an issue with the galaxy map - it wouldn't always show up unless you were looking from the right angle, or were right at it.
At first my plan was to try and survey it completely. I was hoping that by bookmarking every black hole in and around the nebula and then zig-zag between them with economical route plotting enabled. After about 40 or 50 systems completely surveyed, every star, planet and moon I found I'd hardly made a dent in covering the whole thing. So I did some back of the envelope math. If you model it as a sphere, I estimated that it was at least '10 systems' in radius - i.e. the average spacing of systems meant that you'd encounter about 10 stars from the center to the edge with economical route plotting. Sticking that into the volume of a sphere formula you get: 4/3 * 3.14159 * 10^3 = 4188 and change. And I think that was a conservative estimate. So yeah, I'd need to spend around 100 times longer then I'd already done to survey the whole thing. So after that I turned of economical plotting and just finished off visiting all the black holes I'd bookmarked.
A week of traveling and few nebulae later and we were finally back in Colonia.
While the Rough Landing was back in dock for a proper repair after our little (mis)-adventure, Sabrina and I switched over to the Jack of Flames to finally start to make good on my vow to Flora. But I somehow couldn't devote myself fully to the prospect. My journey home wasn't really done. And hadn't turned in most of my exploration data - the plan is to sell it mostly in Mischief controlled space (Unfortunately it was only later that I (re?)discovered that there's a Fuel Rat faction out in Colonia).
So it was back to the Rough Landing, and back to the bubble.
After finally getting the cockpit control system repaired, the first destination was my guide star, Myeia Thaa UX-L d7-2. I hadn't visited this before going out to Ishum's Reach, as I'd just picked it as being on the direct line back to Sol. However, I was delighted to discover that although the primary had been registered, the secondary star had not. It was the first discovery that I registered the moment I had access to Universal Cartographics:
Around that time I caught wind of CMDR Deluvian's second record attempt, so I went back to Ishum's Reach to witness that.
After that my fighter pilot Sabrina and I started exploring in earnest. That particular area was pretty thoroughly surveyed, so instead I headed back a bit to where I'd bookmarked a field of single star nebulae, hoping to find one that hadn't yet been discovered, and was delighted to find several. In more traveled parts of the galaxy, these are usually already discovered.
I'd gotten so used to the emptiness near the edge, heading back towards the core was almost a shock to the system.
The rest of the return journey to Colonia was dedicated to nebula hopping. In the end I think I visited a dozen different ones. But the best find of all was what I came to call The Dried Blood nebula, because of it's designation (dryio bloo) and it's deep red color:
A lot of it hadn't been surveyed - rare for one of these larger nebulae, but that may be partially because there seems to be an issue with the galaxy map - it wouldn't always show up unless you were looking from the right angle, or were right at it.
At first my plan was to try and survey it completely. I was hoping that by bookmarking every black hole in and around the nebula and then zig-zag between them with economical route plotting enabled. After about 40 or 50 systems completely surveyed, every star, planet and moon I found I'd hardly made a dent in covering the whole thing. So I did some back of the envelope math. If you model it as a sphere, I estimated that it was at least '10 systems' in radius - i.e. the average spacing of systems meant that you'd encounter about 10 stars from the center to the edge with economical route plotting. Sticking that into the volume of a sphere formula you get: 4/3 * 3.14159 * 10^3 = 4188 and change. And I think that was a conservative estimate. So yeah, I'd need to spend around 100 times longer then I'd already done to survey the whole thing. So after that I turned of economical plotting and just finished off visiting all the black holes I'd bookmarked.
A week of traveling and few nebulae later and we were finally back in Colonia.
While the Rough Landing was back in dock for a proper repair after our little (mis)-adventure, Sabrina and I switched over to the Jack of Flames to finally start to make good on my vow to Flora. But I somehow couldn't devote myself fully to the prospect. My journey home wasn't really done. And hadn't turned in most of my exploration data - the plan is to sell it mostly in Mischief controlled space (Unfortunately it was only later that I (re?)discovered that there's a Fuel Rat faction out in Colonia).
So it was back to the Rough Landing, and back to the bubble.
