First Major Trip - Part 5: Stunts and Spectacle!
26 Sep 2020Torrle
I overslept. We pushed ourselves quite a bit on that last leg, so the extra bit of rest was well deserved. When I woke up, CMDR Kipeo had already taken off and was exploring a few nearby systems, and found something interesting nearby.From only a few dozen light years away, a small cloud like this could be easy to overlook...
...But it turned out to be our next destination. It features a pretty black hole in a planetary nebula that casts this green haze over absolutely everything. It's a very striking system, that, if I were just wandering about space alone, I might have easily missed this place altogether!
I'm going to have to get better at finding some places like this. There were only 2 places that I knew of that I wanted to see, and we're a long way off from either.
We'd spent a good amount of time here, and wondered how a lot of tourist ships ended up inside the exclusion zone without any problems.
This one was so well known and popular out here (at least, for those that come out here), that it has its own tourist beacon and it's own rest area! Neat!
Also, even this deep in space, there are pirates. ... why?
I never look good in vacation photos. Do these rings make my Asp look fat?
If I fits, I sits. (What is this ring for, anyway?)
After a visit to a nearby fleet carrier to top up and repair (Sorry, I don't remember whose), we were on the neutron highway again.
Our next stop would be another black hole, but an even more impressive destroyer ... the Great Annihilator!
Humbled by this great golden lens, I think I could spend a good long while looking at this monster...
... but I feel like it's watching me back.
We pulled over just to stretch our legs (on ZUNI AP-Y D1-1114 3 G) and have some lunch when we found out that the tiny co-orbiting planets we landed on had water geysers.
Like most vents, I never bothered wandering close, especially if they were active, but CMDR Kipeo had some other ideas.
Time for some fun?
Woah! CMDR Kipeo gets some fast altitude! Seeing that he only took a small amount of damage, I decided to give that a try, too.
I should have stuck with my instincts, since I got launched much higher than he did. So high, I thought I was going into orbit. Thankfully, I'd only ("only") topped out at an altitude of 3.8km before I started to descend again.
I'm ok, obviously, but the SRV is toast.
Neither of us left that planet with our SRVs that day. Oops.
So we'll have to stick to regular celestials from now on. I don't mind taking the time to line up different types of stars together for fun...
But I wasn't prepared for what we came across next. This system STILL blows my mind.
Black hole and a neutron star? Check.
2 white dwarves in close orbit? Check.
Pretty? Double check!
Wait... what is that ... ? Is that a planet?
The white dwarves orbit within only a few Ls of one another, which alone isn't a big deal...
... but there is a whopper of a class V gas giant orbiting around JUST ONE of them. What??
It's like an album cover in here. Totally nuts!
What's more, that gas giant is well within the exclusion zone of the white dwarf, and yet.. someone has mapped it! (Shoutout to JEFF GOD OF BISCUITS)
If that pic doesn't quite put things in scale, maybe the orrery will.
You can go see this for yourself in PHOI SCREIA GG-Y F314
MOVING RIGHT ALONG. o.o
Here we go. A sign I've been waiting for see since I became a new commander, just over a year ago!
One last set down on a hot rock. We're both pretty tired after a long day of travelling, but sometimes you just can't resist a landable planet in close orbit.
This one had a particularly scarlet red surface, but it's hard to really see it in this light.
Ahhhh, Explorer's Anchorage. Feels good to set down on a pad for once. ATC even gave us pads next to one another. How nice!
And here we are, only just hop from Sagittarius A*! We're saving it for next time, as it's been an extra long journey today and we've seen a lot of sights.
It'll make a bigger impact on us when we're well-rested.
Time for a real shower -- the water pressure in my Asp is sorely lacking.