The Quest for 1,000,000ly - Log #2
30 Sep 2020Stellas Incola
The 81 jumps to the Monkey Head Nebula passed without anything outstanding to report or remark upon, other than my surprise at there being relatively few undiscovered systems along the path I'd taken. I figured I was still fairly close to the Bubble in real terms and I'd obviously chosen a well trodden route for my first waypoint. The very pretty Jellyfish Nebula grew larger in my window until it I passed it by and saw my destination begin to resolve itself in the distance. A blue and red nebula, named I can only guess because it was reminiscent of the face of one of those weird Mandrill primates from Earth's history I vaguely recall from lessons in school. We didn't have anything like that on LHS 3447 A 5 (or simply 'Five' as we locals call it). The planet's fauna hadn't evolved that far by a long way so it was always weird to see these almost human-like, hairy little aliens on the holo-vid and being told that we are part of their family tree... crazy. Pity they're all long gone from Earth now.
En route, all of the system 'Discovered by' names were unfamiliar as usual until I reached the nebula itself and the legendary CMDR Allitnil's name popped up on my FSS. I smiled, knowing I'd never reach the heady heights of that particular CMDR's achievements, but happy in the knowledge that I was at least adding to humankind's exploration history in some small way.
I paused for a short time, taking in the nebula before I plotted my next few thousand light years further 'south', closer to the meridian. I thought I'd head down, away from the central part of the galactic plane and see if that was a path less trodden. It seemed to do the trick and I was excited as I began to scan an undiscovered system and saw a signal in the 'Earth-Like' range on the FSS. As Randomius would have it though, it was a rocky ice world... I laughed and rolled my eyes. How many more times was this going to happen during my journey?
I did happen upon an Earth-like a couple of jumps later, previously discovered, but I mapped it myself anyway and took a couple of photos to add to my records. My best find on the trip so far has been an undiscovered system with two nice terraformable high metal content planets and a terraformable water world.
I'm heading to Gongae QW-L c24-0 which has a striking glowing green gas giant with purple clouds by all accounts and would be a great sight to see on the way to 'Notus' on the southern meridian.
Time and date of journey start: 13:10 UTC, September 27th 3306.
Hyperspace distance travelled at journey start: ~749,000ly
Total Hyperspace distance travelled to date: 758,092ly