Sagittarius A* – 5th Jan 3303 (Day 26)

THARGOIDS!

There have been real confirmed reports of first contact with an unknown ship. As such, I’m skipping some of the sightseeing on my return to the bubble, and planning to make a beeline back as fast as possible. This will probably mean only scanning the primary star of a system at most, no more planetary scans, and also possibly attempting to use neutron stars to boost my journey back.

Anyway, other than that, waypoint 15 reached, waypoint 16 plotted towards Eyes of Riker still.

Sagittarius A* – 4th Jan 3303 (Day 25)

Nothing particularly interesting on the journey front, other than that I made a rather annoying mistake on the plotting of the last waypoint, which I have reached.

As can be seen from the above, I took one coordinate in the wrong direction, as such Waypoint 14 is going in the wrong direction to Eyes of Riker. Fortunately, I realised this mistake early before another waypoint was plotted, and no further waypoints are needed to make up for this mistake. The upper green line is the route I should have followed, and now a new waypoint has been plotted to account for this mistake, which is the new Waypoint 15.

Sagittarius A* – 3rd Jan 3303 (Day 24)

Today I decided to pay attention to the minerals on planets, and decided I would try and find some polonium, so I decided to try my luck inside a crater.

However, space madness got the better of me, and I noticed that there were signals on my wave scanner coming from the large, steep mound in the middle of the complex crater. So I decided to see how far my SRV could get up the side.

Turns out the SRV is pretty good on this planet, and it made it up rather far up some very steep slopes.

.. and so I made it right to the top.

At this point, I realised that being so high, I was at serious risk of tumbling down the side leading to almost certain death. Attempts to recall my ship lead to the autopilot picking the most sensible place for it to land in the vicinity – at the bottom of the hill.

With only one thing for it, I began the terrifying decent – with what looked like a solid wall in front of me, the tyre tracks made it obvious that I was staring down at the crater floor.

Rather shockingly, I actually made it down to the bottom in one piece, though it took me quite a while to make the decent.

… and after all that, I actually found some Polonium too!

Sagittarius A* – 1st Jan 3303 (Day 22)

Today I appear to have developed a minor fault in my canopy’s augmented reality display:

While this quickly resolved itself, I’m hoping that my ship is not also suffering the effects of space madness…

I’ve also added four new places to visit on my way back, which extends my trip by three waypoints too. The places I’ve added to visit are:

  • Eyes of Riker (Whambeia PO-Q e5-2321)
  • Gleeson’s Gem (Froarks GM-D d12-355)
  • Gibb’s Bridge (Syralia JT-V b7-0)
  • Blacklight (Schaikaei XJ-H d10-1)

However, I may or may not be able to reach Blacklight, as it does appear to be rather far above the galactic plane. The search for jumponium begins!

I’ve also passed Waypoint 13, so I’m getting pretty close to the Great Annihilator!

Sagittarius A* – 30th Dec 3302 (Day 20)

Last night I stopped one jump short of Six Rings, at Myriesly RY-S e3-5414, to savour the sights of this system for a new day.

On arrival, I was presented with a very pretty class B blue-white star, which takes the total number of stars in this system up to 7, albeit the other six being T Tauri protostars.

e3-5414 9

e3-5414 11

e3-5414 13

e3-5414 14

e3-5414 15, with 14 in the background

e3-5414 16

After that, I continued past Waypoint 11 and onwards to Sagittarius A*.

Sagittarius A* – 27th Dec 3302 (Day 17)

Two galaxies in the distance?

Note to self: don’t start moving towards a star before starting opening the system map – it’s not then possible to slow down or stop before… colliding… with said star until the system map has opened.

With Waypoint 7 reached and Waypoint 8 plotted, I spotted a nearby system worth a detour to – a system reporting itself as containing a Wolf-Rayet C star.

On arrival, I found that not only was this system holding a beautifully-purple WR-C, but it was also hiding a Class O star!