The second leg of the Great Colonia Expedition was from Amundsen Terminal in the Lagoon Nebula to Eagle’s Landing in the Eagle Nebula, spanning from the 9th Feb to 13th Feb 3303! On the way I stopped off at the Omega Nebula and the Traikaae AA-A nebula high above the Galactic Plane, and gradually realised that I was in this for the long haul!
Lagoon Nebula to Eagle Nebula Gallery
Leaving Amundsen to get out to 5000ly for engineering. Trifid Nebula is conveniently far enough!
Traikaae PX-L D7-199 2 A. A small gas giant and its moon.
I could take a mini-Neutron Highway almost all the way to the Nebula! This is the view from Trifid Sector CQ-Y C28-8 8A, the moon of a waterworld visible to the top right of the nebula (this was one of three waterworlds around the companion star of this system!).
Having reached 5000 ly from the start, I decided to head on to the Traikaae AA-A nebula above the galactic plane. This is a rest stop on the moon of the first planet of Traikaae MD-J D9-16.
this very blue water world is the fifth planet in Traikaae DH-L D8-8.
A very nice panorama showing the Traikaae AA-A Nebula and a double satellite of a gas giant in Traikaae XF-N D7-11 (A2A). Taken from a metre above the top of a tall mountain!
nearly at the nebula, in Traikaae AD-F C13-0.
oddly enough from this angle the Traikaae AA-A Nebula looks a bit like a little terrier 🙂
right outside the nebula in Traikaae LT-P D6-0.
rest stop in the heart of the Traikaae AA-A Nebula, on an ice moon orbiting a 2ME 12,485 km Gas Midget around Traikaae NJ-L B26-0 1A.
High above the Traikaae AA-A nebula, with the Lagoon Nebula further away in the background. I’m about 1000 ly above the galactic plane, going to see how high up I can get before I can go no further!
End of the Line – This is as high above the galactic plane as I could get (and I had to use a few FBD boosts to get there!). I am 1608 ly above the galactic plane, the system is Aedgorn WE-Q D5-1, a G star orbited by several worlds including this Waterworld. Below is the Milky Way, a seas of stars that is our home galaxy. Above is intergalactic darkness, where there are barely any stars (there were some stars higher up on the map, but they were beyond reach of my FSD drive even with the boosts that I had).
the Traikaae AA-A and Lagoon Nebulae look rather small from here. Traikaae is 722 ly away, and Lagoon is 1,735 ly from here. Eagle Nebula is 2865 ly though… could be worth going to the refuelling station there?
Finally I can find a dark spot to land! The darkside of this world in Aedgorn YZ-P D5-0 faces away from the milky way (mostly) so there’s very little except residual gas in the sky lighting up the ground. Landing was interesting!
A white dwarf at Aedgorn KX-L D7-1 that I found on the way down from the End of the Line. Got myself a boost from it at least – to a layer of netron stars and white dwarfs around 1200 ly above the plane.
this was one of the neutron stars in that patch I found – Traikaae GT-O D7-3. It had huge jets and was rotating insanely fast! And also had two M V stars in tow and a bunch of planets.
the pulsar from a safer distance, with one of its companions.
some planets orbited the pair – this is the first one, a 7 ME lava world at 1 AU.
at Traikaae KX-T C19-0 1A, the milky way was above the horizon (the sun wasn’t) and on its own it turned night into day here! Also, it orbited a vaguely Jupiter-like gas giant!.
I found an MS Star (Traikaae PV-K D9-4)! This is a very rare giant star that’s between the main sequence and a carbon star. No planet in the system unfortunately, though there was a distant K V companion star. 31 solar radii, this view is from 168 ls away.
MS star again.
A much slower neutron star at Traikaae TB-J D10-10. The jets are thinner when they rotate slowly!
I called it a night in a dark ice canyon on an icy moon of a gas giant in Traikaae HX-B B45-O 2B. 888 ly above the galactic plane here, on the way to another neutron star.
The canyon had some pretty steep drops in it!
Looking back at the moon with the ice canyons.
Tourist Beacon blurb for Black Treasure.
Black Treasure from a much safer 2500 km away. The Omega nebula is visible beyond it, along with a huge clump of B stars associated with it. (again they should technically be *in* the nebula, but the parallax measurements must be off a little).
This large ice world orbits the black hole at a distance of 14 AU and only has a temperature of 20K. It is lit only by the light from the nebula around it (it effectively has no day side!).
The Omega Nebula (and the big slab of 2MASS B stars next to it) from about 100 ly away. It looks rather similar to the Trifid Nebula here…
parked on the first planet of the Omega DL-Y D5-1 system, just outside the Omega Nebula.
Fortunately I didn’t arrive between these two stars, but it was a possibility! (Omega Sector EL-Y D158).
Another millisecond pulsar with two nearby companions! Byeia Eurk GQ-P D5-60. I tried to get the star lined up behind the cone but it was moving too quickly!
I found a ringed world with 1% Polonium! This is one of *six* ringed landable planets in the Byeia Eurk UY-S E3-32 system – this one orbits a B Star, the other five orbit the barycentre of its A and F V binary companions. And I found two poloniums in one metallic meteorite, enough for 6 premium boosts! 🙂
Even this far out I found a crashed nav beacon. I guess I’m on the Colonia Highway so maybe it was an exploratory probe.
still in the Byeia Eurk UY-S E3-32 system, this is one of the ringed landable worlds orbiting the A/F V companion binary.
the last two planets in the companion system was a double system of Class IV gas giants in very close orbits. (the purple is 2.6 and red is 4.5 MJ)
finally made it to the Eagle Nebula! But there’s a weird clump of stars behind or in front of it?!
about 33 ly from the front of the Eagle Nebula and there is definitely a big clump of stars there… and a waterworld too! (Eagle Sector FB-X C1-42).
the clump turned out to be a huge mass of F5 V stars in front of the nebula. Definitely some parallax measuring weirdness going on there, they’re all in regular lines! They’re all the from an OJV2009 dataset.
the OBV 2009 cluster is 10 ly thick and about 3 ly wide and high, and probably contains over 100 F V stars!
