Some white dwarf, they look like that. You have to be careful when trying to fly close to them - gravity is much stronger than your engines can overcome. Then again, the sights are unforgettable.
An explorer, I see.
:salute:

wellll... ya'know.... when you're on your third of fourth griffin after trading down for some tough military quest, you're credits are represented by such a big number you have to point at it while trying to say how much you have and and this time you've fired all the guys on 5 or 10 credits, and replaced them with guys on 20, just because, hey, what else ya gonna do with your money, sometime around then, when, maybe you've got an elite rating, or found out what that means (how many kills!?) and you've just kinda givin up on working towrds that accolade, maybe you've grown tired of climbing the ranks of both militarys, and you think you know all the best trading routes, including those convoluted 3, 4 or 5 system chains out in the weird places (and thats not including the jumps just to reach them), you'll no doubt have all the permits to get to those special places, and almost certainly will have spent some time exploring the various ships and paying attention to all their stats and so on, and also quite likely, if it's your first time getting to this kind of state in the game, you'll likely know everything about all the ships except... eeeeexcept! ... which ones have all the fuel (and/or cargo) scoops... and you're going to need that for what's next to do in the game.... you're running out of ideas, and... you really want to test this place out... find out how much really can be stored on a couple of floppies, how big this universe really is.... you start to wonder..... what's out there? maybe you've even been surfing the map already, and will have stumbled into some obscure faaaar out there tourist trap... out there so far that there's barely even any mining out there anymore. incidentally.... anyone actually wonder.... how much **** do all the people in this galaxy need to have mined for them? i mean... that's some seriously materialist heavy consumers... how much wrapping do they put on their food? do they wrap every pea, every armanth grain, individually? well anyways... yeah, ya gotta go exploring eventually, especially when you're rich, notorious and powerful. i will admit though... i did start exploring before i started mining. mining seemed like too much effort for not enough gain.... and this brings me back on topic... where's the good planets for mining?
where's the planets where all you find are gems and alien artifacts?
or do ya just hop up n down on planets until you find some spot better than the lowest two likely states of things to find?
actually, i've just remembered another planet i love to visit.....
io.
moons are planetoids too right? planetary bodies?? i can love to visit io right? i dont recall ever landing... but i just like the little fella. in real life and the game.
and one last aside... wouldnt it have saved a whole lot of fuss and hullaballoo on that whole pluto issue if those astronomers who came up with that stupid idea had just played elite? "oh, "planetary bodies"!? why didnt we think of that. boy that will save us alot of difficult head scratching and arguments and ruffled feathers."