On my first day back after burning myself out surface prospecting (maxed all surface materials except for 3), I did some more surface mining and then got fed up and started moving towards the center again. Made my way to eagle nebula as my next checkpoint. Below is my approach to eagle nebula.

Found a few nice things along the way, 6 or 7 terriformable words, 2 being water, and the rest being high metal content. I also found another earth-like world and metallic crystals. My next stop is the Rohini system to pick up a better fuel scoop.

After deciding to stay behind to fill up on raw materials, I prospected A LOT. I quickly realized going from 0 materials to filled up on every material is going to take a long time but I was determined to go through with it. I had to do it at some point right? So why not now?

Around 80% of the way through though, my srv fell down a canyon and blew up. I only brought one with me since I was short of funds when I left, so I didn't have a backup. Luckily there was a station only 2 jumps away where I could restock, refuel, and repair. So I made my way there, did some more surface prospecting and got all the resources but 3 or 4 that the system didn't have.

It's time to move on. I don't feel like going back so I can only hope I'll run into the resources I didn't get to along the way before I need them. My current system is herschel 36, a very empty system with nothing but binary O-type stars. They're very pretty but they could do with some additional scenery, otherwise they just look lonely. The next leg is from here to the Trifid Nebula, specifically Trifid sector IN-I A10-4.

The journey on my way to my first milestone, the Lagoon Nebula was mostly filled with icy bodies. I did however, enter a system with two stars extremely close to one another, and found my first notable stellar anomaly. I also found a couple water worlds, ammonia worlds, terraformable planets, and even an earth-like. Most have been discovered before but some have never been mapped so I'm looking forward to seeing my name on something.

As I approached the nebula, I could see it growing bigger and bigger with each subsequent jump. I also started seeing really bright stars in clusters close to the nebula, which I assume are O, B, and A-type stars. I took some damage from approaching planets too quickly and entering a sun's exclusion zone while fuel scooping because for some reason my orbit lines turned off seemingly by itself. Luckily according to eddb, there's a station just past my jump range where I can repair, not that I need it at only 94% health (but I like seeing 100% and its close).

Merely two jumps away from the center of the lagoon nebula(Herschel 36), I found a system(Lagoon Sector GW-V b2-6) filled with nearly 20 landable planets, most of which have geological/biological signals and some of the highest percentage of high-grade materials I've seen (granted, I don't pay attention very often). No clue if it actually affects the chances of getting them on-planet or just filler text, but most other planets have 2.5% vanadium and these have 5%. I decide to stay and surface prospect to stock up on materials to avoid having a shortage when I really need them and who knows when I'll get such a materiel-rich system again. (it has every material)

Bit over-prepared with shield+repair limpets+AFMU (still 40ly jump w/o engineering) but it paid off since I practically dove headfirst into the first planet I tried to land on (0.9g). Managed to survive though and took the opportunity to get used to how it would be like in deep space by collecting materials and repairing what I could. Its probably for the best this happened 800ly away from sol instead of a couple thousand...