A New Adventure Begins - Part 1 of my First Major Trip into the Black
25 Aug 2020Torrle
Well, that didn't take long.Fresh on the heels of deciding to chronicle the more significant events of my ongoing career as a pilot, I received a message from my fellow wingman CMDR Kipeo. He'd made mention in weeks previous that he was feeling the call of Colonia, and perhaps visit the supermassive black hole at the galactic center, Sagittarius A*, and now there was nothing holding me back from joining him.
This was something that I've been wanting to do for a while now, so it wasn't hard to get me to agree, especially if I had some company along the way with which to share the sights!
Ever since he'd first mentioned a full excursion way out there, I'd been putting focus into piecing a ship together for it. I had my super-stripped long-range Diamondback Explorer for such a purpose, but I'll talk about that ship another time. The ship that really made exploration fun for me, was the Asp Explorer. People may complain about the engine noise, but .. call me crazy .. I actually kind of like it.
This particular Asp is the one ship that I've logged most of my career hours in, by far. When I first left the Pilots' Federation District, it was the first ship that I bought. It was easy to outfit, suits a variety of purposes, and does a lot of things with a decent amount of proficiency. Sure, there's always better ships for a particular purpose, but to new commander, the flexibility for such a low price was invaluable.
It was only fitting that I bring her along for my most ambitious excursion to date.
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We started out from Jameson in the evening of August 23rd. After fumbling a bit with learning how to jump with a wing, I eventually got into a good rhythm with it. It wasn't too long until CMDR Kipeo alerted me to there being a neutron star coming up after the next jump.
Now, up until recently, I gave neutron stars a VERY wide clearance. I'm pretty sure it's because the first time I encountered one, it wasn't actually a neutron star, but a white dwarf. I'm sure you know what happened next, and while I survived, I didn't want to make that mistake again. With similar visuals, I only presumed that neutron stars behaved similarly, made worse from not even being able to see the exclusion zone.
I said 'up until recently' because I'd found myself in Jackson's Lighthouse about 2 weeks ago, and decided just to slowly sneak up on it, just to see what would happen. To my surprise, I just kept getting closer, and to my further surprise there were fleet carriers right up next to it. I found that I could gently cross over the exclusion zone near the star and not overheat, and that there was a limit on how close you could actually get in meatspace before you'd just get pushed gently back. That's the day I lost my fear of neutron stars.
Or at least, most of my fear. I thought Kipeo's alert to me was one of caution, but when he asked if I had charged up, I had a sudden confession ...
I'd never attempted a neutron jump before.
With some good advice, I finally got the hang of it, and was soon making some 240Ly+ jumps on the regular. It's still tough for me to get all the way charged in one run, though. I don't know if that's the norm, or something you get better at, but time will tell.
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As one of our goals was stellar sightseeing, CMDR Kipeo had a couple places in mind that he'd researched ahead of time, and we'd soon found ourselves in some rather pretty systems!
Some had oddly delicious-looking gas giants...
One had a gas giant that glowed a vibrant green from rampant bioluminescence ...
and one even had 9 stars .. including a neutron star with rings!
If that last one sounds familiar, I was told it's locally known as Heaven's Lathe (HD 175876)
I know that there'll be a lot more unique and wonderful systems waiting for the next time we set out, and I'm looking forward to sharing what we find.
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Of things that I've learned... if you turn off orbit lines so that you can take a better screenshot, but sure to turn them back on immediately afterward, or at least before you jump again, so that you don't run into an invisible exclusion zone
... again.
I seem to do all my most embarrassing mistakes when someone's watching, but at least packing two AFMUs came in handy.
At least we got a good chance to stretch out legs with a stop at the Lagoon nebula. One thing I noticed from poking around is that a lot of nebulae, at least the ones near the bubble, have at least one system with a port. We'd set down at Amunsen Terminal for a bite to eat, but they only had a SubWay. No wonder this system is in civil unrest.
At least the view's nice.
We pushed on a bit further and ended up in the gas station rest stop that is Observation Post Epsilon in the Trifid Nebula.
It's already exciting to me that the central core of the galaxy is significantly brighter as we draw closer.