Galactic Wanderers Day 3
03 Jun 2021Osiris.
Day three is our layover in the Lagoon Region. I'm writing this mid-day because already it's been a big day and I want to record things before they slip my overexcited mind.To whet you're appetite, dear reader, here's a nice abstract shot of the rainbows some of the day's discoveries produced on my hull:
My goal for the day was to go visit a legendary sight. The glowing green gas giant ("GGG") about 500 LY from our current stopover. That's not a short trip but it's not going to get any shorter. Glowing gas giants are so rare that only a handful of them have ever been recorded in the entire galaxy. The one is supposed to be one of (if not the very) best of them all. So its a tourist attraction and a big one, but still a must see.
However I hate crowds and this is an exploration trip so I set my nav computer to make two jumps perpendicular to the course that would lead to the the GGG. So that my route in towards it might be an untrodden path. Well I didn't get past my first jump before I was already seeing unexpected sights!
This wasn't an unexplored system no, but I spotted not one but two "Notable Stellar Phenomena" on the system scan. 120,000 LS out from the jump in but I've never seen one of these before and here's two of them on my day off. Best take advantage of the luck when you can get it.
After a long flight in to the first Notable Phenomenon I drop out of frame shift and all the stars VANISH. A disconcerting total black presents itself in front of me. I never realized how comforting the stars were in the black of space until they were suddenly gone. Coming to a full stop lest this be some vantablack planetoid directly in my path, I start reaching out with my scanners and my eyes, looking for limits. Ships light do nothing. Composition scanner says nothing is in front of me.
Night vision. Night vision lights up a whole field of floating objects in the blackness ahead of me. Blobs of connected spheres lit up in the eerie green of the night vision scanner with absolute black behind them. Either a mixture of large and small ones or they are at different ranges, I can't tell. Nothing will give me an idea how near or far they are. Some stellar phenomena can damage ships so I'm pretty nervous about these.
The POI for the stellar phenomena is about 25km ahead so I make slow progress at about 25m/s through the black. I finally get the nerve to scan one of the object and the scanner reports it's a collection of solid mineral spheres and adds it to my codex. Not alive. I breathe a sigh of relief and head deeper into the cloud. Halfway through my ship scanners ping me again. They identify the cloud as a "Rubicundum Lagrange Cloud." Whatever that means. I know two of those words but it doesn't tell me much.
Moving further the blackness recedes and I glide into an open circle of bright red gas with more mineral spheres floating among it. A ghostly and beautiful sight. I stop to try and get the best pictures I can.
Moving around I spot something small in the space ahead of me and come to another dead stop. Composition scanner! What is that!
It's an albulum gourd mollusc! Wow, three discoveries in one and an eerie start to my exploring trip today. What a find. The ships records tell me they have no history of harming ships so I take the camera drones in close for a few shots. Amazing creature.
Approaching within 150m caused the mollusc to come inspect my ship, making eerie whale-like calls as it did so. It got as close as 40m before darting away again. I did try collecting one for further study aboard the expedition carriers but collector limpets refused to target it and the thing resisted being cargo scooped. Can't say I blame it. Scanners-only research then.
Looping back to the mineral spheres I tried to get some good shots of them but each one sits in its own debis cloud of dark black material. Even ships lights barely reach, and getting a sense of scale was difficult. I estimate they are about 150 to 200m on average, rotating in their individual clouds.
I took my lunch in the red cloud and also took some shots of the way this system's sun and the cloud generated some great rainbow iridescence in my hull paint. I had no idea this light blue was so versatile.
Stopping by the second stellar object I found a second cloud. This one wasn't as dark or scary but just a bright lively spring green. There were more molluscs (cross-pollinated from the other lagrange cloud no doubt! ) and more of the lumpy mineral clusters that I presume they have a hand in building. There was also some beautiful large spiky crystals.
Here's a shot with the location name in case people want to find where I was:
Satisfied...I moved on to the second jump of the 25 I had planned for the day. This was going to be a long day. Mercifully, the next 11 jumps to the green gas giant were neither unvisited nor eventful and the trip went relatively quickly.
The GGG did not disappoint. I stopped for pictures and to map it before moving 100LY below the plane of my approach to find a less commonly taken route back.
And boy was I successful. Most of the systems on the way back were unvisited. I got my first completely unvisited system (the one two days ago had the star mapped but not the planets. This one is just two stars and a single class II gas giant but I think the gas giant will pay pretty well... Class IIs are always in demand at the cartographics office.
Continuing on, I spotted several more systems that had never been seen by human eyes. Unfortunately the day was getting late and I was running out of time or I would have stopped to map or land on more of these worlds. Someone should check them out. Maybe me on another trip.
Six jumps from home, I was stopped by a monster. 44 planets unmarked and unmapped. The stars had been seen by a CMDR DROIDBOT in the past but he or she missed the cornucopia of planets. At least a third of them high metal content. Several with geological features. This system begged for more exploration on the ground. I looked at the map. One of them was an unmapped terraforming candidate.
So I guess I'm staying longer.
Mapped that planet (landable but mercifully no geologics there. I couldnt resist mapping and landing on one other but the geologics there were kind of a bust. Back to the final jumps home to the carriers.
Just like the beginning, this trip ended big. I noticed a (previously discovered) metal planet with 6 biological signatures on it. I stopped and spent a few hours mining the first three locations dry for tons of materials. Lots of good Yttrium for trading with the materials trader.
Today's trip was far too long. What was supposed to be a quick two hour jaunt ended up taking half a day. I have a lot of work I put off to make these discoveries and I'll have to play catchup, slaving over the terminal in my quarters in the coming days.
Still, great memories. A great day for a layover. As I write these last words the jump drive is spooling to take the carrier another several thousand light years ahead. The first days have already been so good. This expedition just gets better and better!
