Often the most special views found exploring are the ones that you are the first to see, but on some occasions places that are well known are spectacular enough to make up for the fact that they are well known. This system is definitely one of them, with two dancing pairs of some of the more rare and visually stunning stellar bodies out there: one pair consists of a black hole and a neutron star that orbit each other every 1.8 hours (known as the "Swing Couple"), with the cones of the neutron star and gravitational lensing of the black hole giving the impression of an elegant ballgown and a sleek black suit speckled with light. The second pair, the "Waltz Couple," with a much slower orbit of only four hours (which is still quite fast in stellar terms), are a bit further away. From a distance, they almost seem to merge together, but on approach they come into better focus; a slow, loving dance of swirling gowns that seem to melt into each other at the edges, lasting longer than any human could hope to witness it all. Then there's the "The Wallflower," a lone neutron star roughly 340 thousand light seconds from the rest... I like to think she's just happier in her own company.

Visiting an inhabited area for the first time in quite a while is an interesting experience. The black has become somewhat comforting, so when approaching to dock there was a strange tension between the familiar isolation and the familiarity of civilization. It certainly didn't help that I forgot what direction to face when docking on a fleet carrier...

I just came to the realization that I really am getting near to the galactic core, and the demarcation is stronger than I would have guessed. Behind me the stars are spread out, a handful of bright points scattered over the background of a dim galactic disc, but in front of me my view is filled with bright stars in a density I've never seen before. Looking to the side, I can see the gradient between them clearly. While I've seen plenty of wonderful sights since starting my journey, none of them have been such clear indicators of the progress I've made.

Sometimes, while exploring, you come across something that challenges what you thought you knew about something. In the case of the Class Y dwarf star in front of me, that is happening again. From orbit it is clearly giving off light, clearly looking like a star, if a fairly dim one, and with some pretty wide and interesting rings. From the surface of one of the nearby planets, however, the atmosphere diffusing the light of the system's main stars washes it out completely, turning the class Y into a deep-red gas giant that likely wouldn't be mistaken for a star. In fact, there's a gas giant in this very system that is both larger and hotter than this star, and yet it gives off no light. Is light what makes a star a star? And if so, can the class Y hanging over the horizon still be called a star when even my own ship's headlights outshine it? If not, what does that make me?

Gravity... It's easy enough to be familiar with it -- flying near planets, driving over them, walking on them, even our frame shift drives are influenced by gravity. Every planet's gravity is slightly different, and with experience you can start to get a feel of what different gravitational forces feel like. Any explorer will likely hit the ground a bit too hard at least once, or fly higher than expected when traveling in an SRV, or experience any number of other gravity-related troubles. Seeing the remains of two different stars -- one dark and consuming, the other burning more brightly than the former star ever could -- gravity takes on a whole new meaning. More than just the force that pulls you towards the ground, the true power that it has becomes blindingly apparent, in the form of a clear spacial distortion visible in the sky where you would expect a star (or stars) to be. Seeing the galactic disk warped around this point really drives home how much work is done by gravity, the forces between each star with its neighbors holding the galaxy together like a network of threads, all linking back to Sagittarius A* which it all orbits around.

I did not find this place myself, but I'm glad I didn't let that stop me from coming anyways. Here I've seen the most exotic life I've seen on my journey so far, with a shape that could almost be mistaken for a leafless tree if not for the criss-cross pattern of what I can only assume are conductive channels, and the pulsing, luminescent electricity that runs through it. Even through my protective suit, I could feel my hair stand on end as I approached it, and as I gingerly touched it I was met with a small flash and a jolt that was frankly less intense than I was expecting, although that was likely due to my suit. The light that they gave off matched that of the nova overhead... I think I'll head there next.

While not quite as visually breathtaking as some of my previous stops, the scale of these rings is still stunning. The larger of the two sets of rings is roughly 125 times the diameter of Earth, and slightly larger than the diameter of Sol! Dropping into one of these rings (a bit too hard, I definitely need more practice with doing that manually) and seeing the seemingly endless field of rock and dust once again serves to hammer home just how small humanity is, and even moreso how small I am.

I chose this area of space as a waypoint on my expedition for two reasons: it was on the way, and I like cats. Now that I'm sitting here, just outside of it, the name "Cat's Paw" seems as apt as naming a mountain "Pea Gravel." It easily fills my field of view with colors ranging from a pale pink to a deep blood-red, with patches of black which I must admit I wasn't expecting. The texture of the nebula is almost hypnotizing, at once looking like the surface of a rough sea and the cracked ground of a desert. Looking at the shape of it, it almost seems alive, with the eye picking out familiar features -- eyes, beaks, fins, spines -- all in numbers and configurations that are wholly unfamiliar. If this nebula really is but a "cat's paw" in the totality of the galaxy, then I have a lot more exploring to do and more excitement than ever to do it.

The moment I dropped into this system I knew it was well worth the praises that led me to it. The size of the comparatively cold and dim Class L stars next to the blinding blue-white of the white dwarf, holding over four times the mass despite being only one-twentieth the size... I've seen plenty of both, but seeing them so close together left me awestruck. I landed on one of the nearer atmospheric planets, and even as I write this I find my attention being pulled away by one of the most fascinating sunsets (or sunrises? It's hard to tell which way I'm rotating) that I've ever seen, with the jets of the white dwarf drawing a line between the larger stars. As wonderful as "The View" in HR 6164 is, I think I like this one just a bit more.

I had to temporarily put the expedition on hold to help transport refugees from systems that were being invaded by Thargoids, but now that hiatus is over so it's back into the black. I made it back to "The View" and have passed it, and just arrived at HR 6265, known for it's exotic biology and interesting stars, so I'll be spending some time here for the views and to brush up on my exobiology skills. Not much of note happened, save for my first (I think) undiscovered system scanned! While it's always nice to get your name on something, the system itself wasn't terribly interesting.