First Major Trip - Part 4: Space is Weird
18 Sep 2020Torrle
Morning!Woke up after a good long sleep, and again, the view was different, but not THAT different. That other planet was still looming over the horizon, but I don't know how many times that it'd crested the horizon and circled around. Maybe none? There's a lot of tidally locked pairs, after all.
Nevertheless, it's a very pretty tri-nebula sunrise!
My wingmate, CMDR Kipeo, has been a great pathfinder and has been taking the charge to lead us both on this trip. I'd seen black holes before, but there's some really strange stellar warping when we wander closer to some of these bigger entities.
This one caught me off guard and I spilled my drink. I hope that's not going to be drifting around the cabin later, so I'll have to make a note to clean this cockpit out the next time we land.
Huh. Nebula growth by mitosis? Or just more lensing? Space is weird.
Not only did this neutron star have massive rings, but the tight concentric ripples resemble some old playback medium that used to be popular in humanity's past.
A play?
No, wait... a Record!
One can only wonder what galactic message could be encoded in all of these rings. Probably nothing, but ... there's a lot of time to imagine things when you're out here, like what it must've actually been like to put up with owning read-only physical media. Practically stone-age stuff right there.
Like our last leg, we came across another weird hybrid pair, and I'm again surprised that they're not tearing one another up.
It's pretty, at least.
This intensely bright blue star is impressively huge. Is it bigger, brighter, and hotter than, say, Sirius?
YES.
I wasn't sure, until I checked.
At 6.2 solar radii, and burning at over 40,000K, it's nearly 4 times the radius AND the temperature of Sirius, and I think that's the hottest star I've ever seen.
We continued on to a place called the "Singularity Playground" (MYNDAW AA-A H26), with 2 pairs of black holes, a white dwarf, and a neutron star! None of them were all that close together, but the lensing against the brighter edge of the galactic plane looked nice!
During a more thorough investigation of Singularity Playground, we found that the one of the most picturesque places didn't have anything to do with the singularities at all. Check out this trinary sunset! I presume that this must be pretty rare, but this planet does orbit insanely close, and it's period is only a matter of days. Sure is toasty down here.
While we were landed, I took a few moments to repair the FSD. It was making some strange noises after being through so many jet cones... and was starting to act up.
While that was happening, I cleaned up the cockpit. My drink had dripped over the edge of my platform and down into the lower cockpit. It was all over the lower dashboard.
What a mess.
Soon, we were back on the road to the core.
Finally, after 15,000 Ly or so, we finally come across an Earth-like world in the wild. It'd already been discovered, but not mapped. The dream of discovering one is still alive and well.
It was a long leg this time, and the core of the galaxy just keeps getting brighter. Not only that, but the galactic plane is starting to get bright in all directions. We're well over halfway there and it's getting exciting.
Touchdown tonight was pretty much the closest land-worthy rock we could find. I'm sure it deserves more respect than being yet another barren planet to touch down on, but when you've seen so many of them, they all start to blur together. Or maybe it's just because we're tired.
Today was a good day. Tomorrow will be a good day.