Red Sky At Night
11 Jun 2017Robert Phillips
From here onwards, you get used to seeing a red sky. Most, if not all, the sky is dominated by a red nebula of some kind, whether it's the Orion Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula, Flame Nebula, or Barnard's Loop itself.One of the nearby nebulae is NGC 1999. At it's heart is V380 Orionis, a ternary star system with landable bodies orbiting V380 Orionis C. Landing on V380 Orionis C 1 offers a tremendous view of the nebula from inside:
HD 36560 is pretty close to the Orion Nebula. It's hot B-Type blue star lines you up quite nicely with all the major nebulae that make up Barnard's Loop, so you can see where you're heading. I intend to go through the centre:
Whilst looking for materials at V1956 Orionis, I stopped at an interesting looking icy moon orbiting V1956 Orionis 2:
It is one of 2 moons orbiting this planet, and the moons orbit fast enough for you to see them moving with the naked eye at this distance. It's blue ravines contrasted against the red backdrop of the Orion Nebula made for some great scenery:
V1956 Orionis 2 B was home to some high grade materials (Yttrium) which would come in handy when trying to traverse the sparser regions of the galaxy later on.
It was one of the most densely textures surfaces I have encountered in my travels, and I felt compelled to see if I could traverse it.
I could not.
Unfortunately, the surface was beyond the capabilities of my SRV, and I ended up stuck in a hole that was too steep for my SRV to climb out of, and too high to jump out of:
I was stuck.
After trying for over half an hour to break free from this trap, I was left with the realisation that there was no way out of this. There was only one thing left to do - self-destruct. This transported me back to my mothership, but I was now down one SRV.
Thankfully, unlike last time, I am equipped with a bigger ship that can accommodate 2 SRV's. So I still had one left to do surface prospecting and collect the necessary materials for increased jump ranges later on.
Phewf!