27/12/3301 - 1 - First Entry, Loneliness
27 Dec 2015Michael Dodds
The depths of space get lonely. Real lonely. All ships have a keyboard in them and, apart from typing in search keywords for star systems and texting pirates that I'm about to kill, it never gets used. So I thought I would make the most of it and use it to create a log. A log of all my 'adventures' and points of value to me that I come across on my voyages. As I sit here writing this, I can look up and see the Veil Nebula West looming all around me out of the canopy of the IES Dark Winter, my Asp Explorer. I only rank Surveyor with the Pilot's Federation, but that's just because I prefer shooting pirates in my main line of work. The Veil Nebula West is only my second port of call on what I consider my first real exploration mission. The first mission where I looked around and picked places I wanted to go with the purpose of documenting my findings when I got there. I've been for a quick jaunt to the Pleiades with a wingman, even visited the black hole there, but that is about as exciting as it got. Now though, I can say I've been to the Veil Nebula West and previously, LBN 623. I won't get into too much about myself, but all I will say is I'm not as seasoned as some, but I'd give you a run for your money in a dogfight. I'm also aligned with the Empire, with the People's Princess in particular. After this log is complete, I shall return to The Bubble to help liberate another system from pirates.EXP-001 - LBN 623 and Veil Nebula West
After leaving the civilised edge of The Bubble, there was a sudden drop off of fuel scoopable stars. Checking the galaxy map showed that OBAFGKM star classes were few and far between. I'm not too up to scratch on how the galaxy is laid out but it would be interesting to know why this band of different stars is present. Anyhow, apart from having to be extra careful about fuel, the journey to LBN 623 was uneventful and I only paused briefly to take a few snaps on approaching the nebula from about 100Ly out. Upon arrival, I was not disappointed by the vista laid out before me. The view filled one half of the total space visible to me around the ship and it felt like I was riding the waves of a mystical purple ocean. I stayed for a while, snapped a couple of pictures and had a think about how many people had actually come out to this nebula. A few might have done, but not many, and so even with our marvels of spacefaring technology in the 34th century, it will always be hard to explore everything there is. After staying my time here, I set a course for the Veil Nebula West, a band of pink and orange stretching through space and a bigger than LBN 623. When plotting the route, I noticed that the frequency of scoopable stars had increased dramatically to the point where almost all of them were. On my way there, I did come across one photo opportunity when I came into a system with binary pair of T Tauri stars. I positioned myself in orbit around the destination star, angled its partner into the shot and took a snap. About 200Ly from the Veil Nebula West, I could see it quite clearly, getting closer and closer as I made each jump. The last jump brought me right out next to it, a ship staring right at a giant wall of blue and pink. I have to admit, the rendering on the galaxy map made it a bit more vivid and so when I arrived it was not as bright as I had imagined. Still though, it was still a sight to behold and like its predecessor, I couldn't resist making a photo shoot. I jumped through the nebula to see if I could get any change of colours but was met with a quite similar backdrop. It did allow me to get a shot of it partially covering the view of the galactic core though, which was pretty sweet.
This brings me to the end of my log. I still reside in 1.6KLy from Sol in VEIL WEST SECTOR DL-Y D68 having jumped through the nebula. As I mentioned at the start, I will now bring a close to this mission, hand in my cartographics data and get out the ISS Storm Of Justice, my Fer-De-Lance. I have uploaded the photography from my mission for your perusal.
CMDR Michael Dodds, signing off.