I’ll be posting my Elite Dangerous Exploration Galleries here so I can have them somewhere safely archived (and more accessible than Facebook or G+). So here’s my first proper exploration trip to Deneb and the Sadr Nebula in my Asp Explorer! (December 3302).
I finally saved up enough from doing Skimmer missions to get a new Asp Explorer (with old-school wireframe paintjob!). So I headed out into the black to see what I could find… I decided that my first big exploration expedition to break the ship in would be to Alpha Cygni, a.k.a. Deneb.
Refuelling somewhere in the Wredguia sector. Er, don’t mind the blistered paint and steam venting, nothing to see here 🙂
First pit stop – HIP 101825, a B V star with an M V companion and several brown dwarfs and other assorted planets.
The view from one of the planets around the M V companion was pretty spectacular. Even if I did accidentally crash into a mountain and go down to 45% hull, ooops.
That’s a pretty amazing view.
I drove around for a bit and found some minerals, and when I came back I discovered that stuff had moved in the sky . This is pretty much the same view as the previous picture (not quite though) about an hour later. The planet is tidelocked to the M V star but on an eccentric and inclined orbit (with a 0.8 day orbital period). Things moved over a period of minutes (the M V also seemed to be setting but that could just be because of the orbital eccentricity – I didn’t hang around long enough to find out though).
Moving on… I found a neutron star at HR 7912. This was as close as I’d dare get to it, especially with my damaged hull.
Almost at my destination… Alpha Cygni, a.k.a. Deneb! I travelled 1248 ly from Khun to get here (about 30-40 jumps with my 34ly FSD), in ED it’s only 1412 ly from Sol which is on the short end of the distance estimations.
View from the surface of Alpha Cygni 2. I’m pretty sure that’s Veil Nebula East to the left of Deneb. I’m parked on the rim of a huge crater on a 1.15G world 7.76 AU from the star – but even though I’m at the equivalent of between Jupiter and Saturn’s orbit at Sol, the star’s diameter is still 4 degrees (about 8 times larger than Sol as seen from Earth)! The surface temperature is also supposedly 1347K, so I should be driving around on magma 🙂
Even out here far beyond the bubble, I find a crashed ship – a Condor fighter! I found a few cannisters of narcotics and a couple of occupied escape pods – what are drug runners doing all the way out here?! I left it all there anyway – no point weighing the ship down with tat, and if they’re drug runners then I’m good with them not being rescued 😛
I called it a night on the rim of an enormous impact basin. (the previous shots were taken from the opposite rim). I deliberately picked this as a landing spot, it was perfectly placed on the terminator so I knew I’d get some good landscapes from there! When I woke up this morning I checked in and Deneb had moved to a much higher position in the sky!
“Magnificent desolation” – I think I’m going to continue out to some of the nearby nebulae before heading back. Hopefully I won’t smack into any more mountains on the way 🙂
After a night-time departure from Deneb I headed on to the Sadr Nebula. This was taken from a system about 30 ly, the last stop before arriving at Sadr itself in the heart of the nebula. The distant Elephant’s Trunk nebula is top left, the Pelican and North American nebulae are bottom left, and the Sadr Nebula is on the right..
And this is what greeted me when I arrived. Sadr is the giant star Gamma Cygni, a supergiant 1832ly from Sol that is 225 times larger than the sun (this is the view from 952ls – 1.9 AU!)
Sadr receding…
Once away from the glare of Sadr, the sky is quite colourful 🙂
Moving on… from a system near the Pelican/NA nebulae. I could almost jump to it from here in the SRV. Now heading vaguely back to civilisation, to Maia in the Pleiades.
Heading back to Maia from Sadr! On the way, I found a cute little Gas Babby, a gas giant only three times larger than Earth! It had a moon with deep canyons and kilometre high ridges that I hovered over. (Syneufai JK-B B47-5 2A, if anyone’s interested in the exact location).
Further along at HD 206748 (an F supergiant) I found a ringed planet (2A) orbiting a ringed brown dwarf, orbiting the supergiant. This is the view of all three, from the ring system of 2A!
And this is the view from the surface of HD 206748 2 A, with the brown dwarf just peeking above the horizon.
Two jumps from Maia (about 65 ly), and the Pleiades nebula (the blue one) looks pretty awesome. to the left of it are the Magellanic clouds, and another nebula (the Witch Head?) to the lower right.
One jump to go, after a trip of about 2000 ly!
Coming in to land at Darnielle’s Progress, to get some much needed repairs and dump all my data at Universal Cartographics! I uploaded the data at least (1.45 million Cr, and 19 new systems discovery credits!), I had to get the hull repairs done at Obsidian Orbital overhead afterwards. The sky looks pretty here too!
Touchdown! I think I’ll head back to the bubble now – I’ve got some meta-alloys now for Felicity Farseer (one of the engineers) too!
