Well, that's one close Gas Giant. Class III only 138.7 lightseconds from its parent F-class star.

Vanity shot time. Settled down on a nice airless rock with a ring system a few dozen Ly from its star. Seems like a good place to stop off for the night; just hoping the minor inconvenience of 1.8g won't affect anything.

End of the rapid fire round, sorry to push down the (most likely) more interesting logbooks. I'm actually in the Nebula now.

So I know Space is mostly dark and mostly filled with empty, empty... well... space; nothing had really prepared me for just how dark it would be inside a nebula, though. Most of the time I see snapshots from the inside, they're a vibrant blue or pink— or at least a nice backdrop of a cloudy wine red. My first jump into the core of the nebula, brought me into a straight up lonely abyss. Just me, this awfully bright star, and a few specks of white interspersed among a whole lot of black.

But, I'm skipping forward a bit: I gladly rammed myself cockpit first into the system of CL Pismis 16, my decent (enough) jump range bringing me from the Lysoorb catalogue right into the thick of things. First thing I noticed was that no one whatsoever was lying when they said Pismis Cluster stars are some of the brightest in the galaxy— even within Witch Space the star was shining like most stars would from 4000 lightseconds away.

Jump in, squint my eyes as I honk the horn's to see if anyone's home, continue to squint as I scan the star.

I take a look at Navigation and select the nearest object, eager to face away from the galactic light bulb bombarding my eyes with photons. Task done, I take a look at the Holo icon: looks a bit like a fuzzy soap bubble; haven't seen that before. My mind screams at me: "Wow, a black hole?"

So in a moment where the "Good Idea" fairy was smacking my head with a hammer, I decided that maybe I'll try smashing myself face first into one of the most powerful gravity wells in existence. It's time, I thought, to joust with a black hole— for science, of course.

Turns out, though... Black holes are damn tiny. Probably missed the event horizon by a lightsecond. After one game of chicken with the black hole I decided it wasn't my fate to get turned into a quantum noodle. Or maybe some great cosmic force prevents commanders from actually interacting with event horizons. Who knows?

So the trip there was long, winding, and kinda full of long bouts of boring M-class stars. Some pretty neat little sights to see, some galaxy-first discoveries that brought me a smile.

Not sure what I'd say the highlight of the jumps out to the nebula would be. Would it be the red planet I landed on that was less than 7 lightseconds from its star? How about an Earth-like world that I was the first person in the galaxy to have set eyes upon it? Or maybe the one time I ran into a single commander unexpectedly and he started spouting nonsense about a King Rory that rules all and sees all? Ah, well, I guess I'll roll a dice for the picture.

First logbook entry. First time sauntering out of the bubble. First time in a nebula.

Not sure what to say, really. To give some background: I decided I needed a bit of a change of pace from the usual trading and bounty hunting. Never tried exploring before besides grabbing a few furtive little scans for one Felicity Farseer. So, then, I think to myself: why not go to on a solo expedition out to a nebula I personally find relevant?

My Asp Explorer was decidedly not set up for exploring, don't even joke about the Imperial Courier with its 25 Ly jump range. So I outfitted a nice, cheap Diamondback Explorer, slapped on a name of a girl I liked for good luck, landed at Dawes Hub over in Achenar, and gave the Bubble one last "See you space cowboy" before I set off for NGC 6357.