The First Spirograph Nebula Planetary Landing

I originally visited the Spirograph Nebula on my trip to visit Orion during Easter earlier this year.  It has been a place I have wanted to return to ever since then and the opportunity to actually land there with Horizons was such an excuse.  The system is quite large with 50 celestial bodies, many of which are suitable for landing, as can be ascertained from the blue ring around the planets and moons on the system map.

The unique feature of the Spirograph Nebula is that it is a planetary nebula which has been formed from matter released from the large central B-Type star at the centre (in star catalogues BD-12 1172), the nebula is nearly a third of a light year across.

In the game the Spirograph Nebula translates to a vast region of "Green Space" which is quite unique.  I have watched so many Sci-Fi shows and movies over the years, but I have never seen anything like it. So for our first alien planetary landings CMDR Dingo77 and myself thought it was number one on the bucket list!

Planet 5 - complete with a ring had a moon with a 0.35 surface gravity, almost the same as that of Mars so we decided that would be a good place to start landing our large and heavy Imperial Clippers.

And we made it down without even a scrape!

The really cool thing about the Spirograph Nebula's green space is that it actually looks as if we have landed on a planet with a green atmosphere (maybe composed of Chlorine gas?) lol

What a view! 

To me in my Buggeh, it looked as if Dingo scratched his paintwork in the dust rings of the 69 Lambada Epsilon's 4th T Tauri star! lol

My lonely Buggeh!

Sag A* Screenies

Eighteen Hours into Our Sagittarius *A Pilgrimage

CMDR Dingo77 and I have undertaken the Sagittarius *A flight together as a wing.

Currently we are just over 18 hours into the trip and are 17,840 light years from Sol with just over 8,100 light years to go until we reach the Core.  We've made over 500 jumps so far, and the starfield ahead has now just "Popped" into light.


 
We are not stopping to scan anything; this is purely a speed run averaging just under 1,000 light years an hour.  We should reach the Core this coming weekend :-)

Explorer's Log: 4-APR-3301

One more day of travelling and Barnards Loop and the Orion Nebulae are growing in the sky.

Four stars in System Synuefe TA-M D8-18, three of them are quite close together, just as well I jumped into the system at the Primary F star instead.

 

 This star is all set for #rednoseday :-)

I don't know if it's just me, but I can see part of a face in the Nebula (eyes added later)

39 jumps today and 650 light years travelled.

You can see how close the jump range got - I can jump 19.75 ly, whew!

So I can report that at the end of this evening I have reached the Witch's Head Sector and the Clipper's got her hat on, hip hip hip horray!

 

And finally, this CMDR's name made me laugh - oh the irony #refund!!! lol

Explorer's Log: 3-April-3301

Exploration in #EliteDangerous is like riding a rollercoaster, once you go for one ride you get the buzz and want to go again.

This morning I headed off out again from Tsu.  I didn't notice last night, but trading in that 5.5 million credits worth of Universal Cartographics Data has also made me friendly with the Alliance. A secondary gain, yay!

I missed my Imperial Clipper on the last trip in the ASP.  While I appreciate the ASP has a superior Frame Shift Drive by a factor of 3:2, I just can't take the Selfies I want to in it.  So I headed back to Beta-1 Tucanae first of all to change out the ASP for the Clipper.  I left all the modules and armaments intact that I have been building up in the ship.  Yes I still have class 6 shields and 2 large Class 3 pulse lasers!  The only things I stripped out were the Cargo Bays - swapped out for Auto Repair systems, and the large cargo bay for a Class 7 fuel scoop (star dimmer).

Its taken a lot of jumps to get 500 light years from Sol but now finally at the end of the day I am starting to find unexplored systems for the first time.  Everyone heads to Orion on their first couple of exploration trips, it is like a lighthouse because of Barnard's Loop; but the stellar carpet is getting quite highly trampled by explorers passing the same systems that in a few months I would not expect to find any unexplored systems at all between Sol and that sector for hundreds of light years across.

I had to laugh at a few CMDR names that I passed on the way:

* I guess it didn't work out with Daniel Jackson of Stargate SG-1

* And the epic fail of the CMDR with the mis-spelt name

A whole planet of Rosé??

Cherry Ice Cream Planet?

 Off to Orion....

And yes, although the Clipper is limited to just under a 20 light year jump range, it will get me to Orion as I can plot a route to get there; EZ Orionis is right there in the middle of the Orion Nebula Stellar Nursery :-)

Explorer's Log: 2-APR-3301

I have returned to TSU.

Total distance travelled in the last 6 days = 3170 Light years.

Number of jumps since leaving Beta-1 Tucanae = 143

Hull integrity still 100%, minor repair bill of 26 credits, Ship Integrity down to 74% which means a 139,200 credit cost for the ASP.

Exploration Profits pre sale: 6,069,693

Exploration Profits post sale: 11,769,568

Trip Profits: 5,699,875

Explorer's Log: 1-APR-3301

I discovered something tonight, if you want to find lots of things to scan you need to cherry pick the stars and plot your route yourself, as the automatic route planner tends to hit most stars that you would not usually bother with i.e. T-Tauri's or sub K-Class.

Made a lot of progress distance wise heading towards another nebula I spotted IC 4606 but systems with interesting things worth scanning were pretty slim pickings.

I am still currently 35 light years away, but I'll cover that easily enough this evening.

Explorer's Log: 31-MAR-3301

Haven't travelled far today, just an hour or two after I got home from work:

The Praea EUQ WJ-I D9-56 was a very profitable system, A Class star and all 8 planets were worth scanning.  This is why it is taking me ages to get anywhere!

Here's the picture I took of the water world with it's own ring system.

Explorer's Log: 30-MAR-3301

Ok, so everyone is trolling +Mahd Dogg about his inability to find Earthlikes; and he is convinced that David Braben and Michael Brookes are removing the Earthlikes from the Stellar Forge just as he approaches a system containing one.  And yes he does wear tin foil hats which adds to the fun of baiting him.

Nevertheless 65 systems out from Beta-1 Tucanae and 1450 light years later I found my first EarthLike planet.  Woo Hoo!!!  Needless to say I didn't wait to gloat @Mahddogg on Twitter! lol

It even had a water world as an orbiting companion.

During the evening CMDR Sam Ishum followed me up to the vicinity to view Shapley 1 - which I have blogged about separately.  We joined up in a wing and did a little co-exploration. 

We discovered that the wing instance seems to break when you get further than 3000 ls apart while surveying a system, but for the systems where it did work, we got co-discovery together:-

Explorer's Log: Day Two

Day two of travelling towards the Core and 631 light years travelled.  I hit G-Type stars almost ever stop and found 2 water worlds.  Only 2 systems first discovered by other Commanders, the rest are all mine!

Here's the water world at Swoliz WG-Y C3-12, with a High Metallic world in the background (it's binary twin).