Barnard's Loop
09 Mar 2016Thelan
And so, this mostly meaningless expedition eventually brought us to the very center of the immense gas cloud that we humans call "Barnard's Loop" after some long-dead astronomer in a silly millennia-old tradition. 
The Loop stretches for hundreds of light years and is full of stars, but the central cloud is relatively empty, save for a few unremarkable T Tauris, red and orange dwarves. But, surprisingly, it's one of those dim reddish stars right at the center that hides a wonder more valuable than any neutron remnant or a black hole.
That's right, an earth-like world with a moon, orbiting a type M binary star in the omnipresent red glow of the surrounding molecular cloud.
...So, one may ask, how it feels like in the center of Barnard's Loop?
It's pink.
Very, very pink.
The Horsehead Nebula, notably lacking any horses or heads, hangs over the pink horizon, like some kind of apocalyptic firestorm.
The planet next to the earthlike it is a candidate for terraforming, and other terrestrial worlds are also worth something. One of the systems next door also has an interesting terraforming candidate that's almost an earthlike and has plant life on it.
One day - in a two or three years from now - I'll be back here with an Atmospheric Shielding.