I followed a northern direction into the Norma Expanse, travelling further North, then heading East, reaching the Norma Arm on a newly set northern course before heading NE into the Arcadian Stream. Relative to the Centre I finally reached a position approximately 6kly East of Sagittarius A Star entering the Empyrean Straits from South.

Steadily Heading straight North, also meant intersecting one of the western corners of the Arcadian Stream again: the border between the Acadian Stream and the Empyrean Straits form a kind of jigsaw pattern and I passed the imaginary sector lines on my course straight to the North multiple times.

Exploring one moon around a ringed Gas Giant at Foetch RJ-X c28-143

Once re-entering the Empyrean Straits for the second time I followed this direction (North) deep into the Empyrean Straits for some 5kly until a relative position East of the Centre.

The following images do represent a few of the sights I found on this journey.

The above image shows the ring of a Red Dwarf in EGNAIX IH-M d7-465: The huge ring around the purple star occurs very dark due to its materials and the light regime inside this system: What a difference to the rainbow-coloured rings I saw a day before. But as well the dark ring is representing another amazing view and is in contrast to another ring inside the very same system.

Also, I discovered numerous other interesting bodies, e.g. plenty of Water Worlds, which were occurring multiple times compared to the Ammonia worlds as shown above.

Discovering a Water World Aunairn EH-D d12-5152

The following image shows the exploration routes of the journey of Honest Tuck and Shadow Head from 2nd April to 10th April 3308.

Systems A and B stars, the M-class and the F-class stars described before, are orbiting each other in the remarkable short distance of 1 ls. This binary system as the gravitational centre of the whole system is orbited by the C star of the system, the third star, so we might speak of a binary instead of a trinary system – the massive F-class star is the dominating force inside this system anyway.

As well all other bodies of the system do revolve around the two centred stars; of course this is not fully correct, since all bodies of this system do force their gravitational influence on each other but the related effects of all other bodies to the two stars at the centre of this system are minute, so we might get away with describing the system as a binary star orbited by numerous other objects including a third M-class star plus two Brown Dwarfs of which one is a ringed Brown Dwarf as we saw at the location of the DSSA Rocksteady yesterday.

Referring to the system map we have to state that A, B, and C stars seem to be shown as a trinary system but as said before, this classification is an approximation of relative nature.

System Description of PLAA AIN NN-K d8-25 – Further Description: Planets, Moons and Brown Dwarfs

The three stars at the system centre are orbited by further bodies of the system, which are various planets and their moons and two Brown Dwarfs.

Since the system is classified as a trinary star system, all planets and further bodies are generically named and referred to as ABC # of body, so we do have bodies ABC 1 to ABC 11 with their possible moons. The system map shows as well that there is no body without any moons in this system.

ABC 7 and ABC 8 are classified as Terrestrial Water Worlds and do orbit each other themselves. Number seven shows a radius of 15.846km and is measured with approximately 45.5 Earth masses; this Terrestrial Water World may be at the upper limit of mass for such a type of planetary body.

ABC 10 is a dwarf star of type (class) Y and has a ring formed around it. A beautiful sight as the following image might show. In the background of the image we do see a section of one of the spiral galaxy’s arms.

ABC 11 is a T-Tauri star, a dwarf star of class T. As the Y-class star T-class stars do not give any fuel to our star ships in this game. This T-class star has one planetary body in orbit, ABC 11 A, which is a ringed class 5 Gas Giant.

As well we do find three class 4 Gas Giants in this system, which are ABC 1, ABC 3 and ABC 5; the following image shows an impression from inside the ring around ABC 5.

This systems in my point of view is as remarkable as beautiful. All its orbits do have a low eccentricity, so one could say all orbits of the planetary bodies are nearly perfectly circle-shaped and all orbits are centred in respect to the two stars A and B, which is true even for star C.

PLAA AIN NN-K d8-25

Inside this system I found some beautiful ring systems breaking the mostly white light of the main star presenting the whole spectrum of the visible light: rainbow colours.

To be able to see the rainbow-effect one had to bring the ring between the vantage point – that is the ship’s position – and the star emitting the light to be broken by the particles of the ring. The above image shows some Moiré Effects too, which is due to some interference of my camera system's resolution and the wavelengths.

There was a second point I saw upon dropping inside the system: The gravitational centre of this system is formed by a binary star. Both stars were orbiting from each other in a distance of less than 1ls; the next image shows the two central stars and gives some impression of how close they were to each other - be aware of there are two M-stars in the image; the closer one occurs inside the white light rays of the F-star.

The smaller, red star is an M-class star revolving around the dominating F-class star: Have a closer look to see the pair moving in their seemingly eternal dance around each other. The F-type star inherits 1277.1 times the solar mass and has a surface temperature of 7318K, which is close to the upper limit of the known surface temperatures of this type of star.

The smaller Red Dwarf or M-class star only has 0.3984 solar masses. Red Dwarfs are the most common stars in the Milky Way, sometimes they do orbit F-class stars as we see in this system.

Next stop: DSSA Rocksteady – one of the deep space fleet carriers located in system Prooe Hypue FH-U E3-2 in orbit around a ringed Red Dwarf star. This carrier is funded as its name indicates, rocksteady – around 31 Billion credits were placed in the carrier bank when I docked.

The plan for Honest Tuck is to move through the space covered by the galaxy sectors south to the Galactic Center reaching out towards the North-East until reaching a point at a y-coordinate (northern line) of Explorer’s Anchorache and Sagittarius A Star, the supermassive giant at the gravitational centre of the Milky Way.

Due to the fact this operation is an exploration one the course will be some meandering through the space between the bubble and the centre ending east of Explorer’s Anchorache. While my space ship, Honest Tuck, my oldest vessel, is following this course, I will issue jump orders for the carrier Shadow Head as long as the Tritium depot is sufficiently filled. Shadow Head is heading for Byua Aim HC-M d7-2196. It will not be able to reach this destination without refilling the Tritium depot.

Turned out the Shadow Head will come to a temporary position at Ellairb IQ-Y d203

• Eleumo
• Col 359 Sector PG-S b19-0
• Col 359 Sector YP-F d11-21
• Bleae Thua FI-Y b5
• M25 Sector JE-R a21-5
• Bleia Eohn DP-P c22-7
• Red Spider Sector HR-W d1-46
• Smojue GB-W c15-12
• Smojue XB-B c27-3
• Traikaae PC-T b17-11
• Traikaae FF-B b41-3
• Byua Euq KW-W c1-5
• Byua Euq JA-C b27-6 (position north of Omega Mining)
• Byua Euq QL-N b48-3
• Plaa Aescs YX-U d2-123"
• Plaa Aescs QK-N b34-15
• Plaa Aescs ST-Z d13-148
• Prielaei CK-R d4-188
• Prielaei BB-M c21-6
• Ellairb IQ-Y d203 (position of the Shadow Head, when Honest Tuck reached the DSSA Rocksteady)

Until I will have been returned to the Shadow Head it will sit in Ellairb IQ-Y d203. Only when I am docked I will be able to refill the Tritium depot from the carrier’s storage; it would make sense to change protocols and to enable the Tritium depot management to do these transfers when needed to enable the carrier to operate itself when I am not onboard as long as I issue jump orders.

Leaving Omega Mines and waving Good-Bye to this potato base (asteroid bases in their hollowed out blocks of rock remind people on a potato shape) I jumped through the last 12 systems for today’s journey. Arriving at the Shadow Head docking at 19:29hrs I found 287 Tons of Tritium left in her Tritium Depot so I issued orders to replenish that depot. We will progress further on this journey.

Distance to Shadow Head: 5177,10ly

Distance to Omega Mining: 5493,30ly

I am aiming for Byua EUQ BR-D c12-18 as a finishing point for this northern route, which is located South of Shadow head and East of the Omega Nebula. To reach this system I need to do 86 jumps plus 12 jumps to reach Omega Mining.

Remark: Turned out all passed systems were unknown and the first mapped system occurred six jumps out of Omega Sector VE-Q b5-15, which is the home system of Omega Mining.

It seems all areas south of the line from Omega Mining towards the Hawking’s Gap Settlements so far are scarcely visited or crossed by commanders. The few visited systems I saw during the last hours on the southern line of my route seemed to have been cross points of this line with the lines connecting Hawking’s Gap Settlements with places located inside the bubble. Seems as well this area is offering some opportunity to discover unknown worlds not too far from the bubble space.

I am curious to see Omega Mining again and to have a short stroll through the interior of this asteroid base. I was busy during the community goal at Omega Mining during Distant Worlds II expedition 3 years ago. I still keep the Mining Python I used them days inside the asteroid base; I might have the opportunity to give “Der Pott” some engineer upgrades but I will leave her there.

Only one or two systems had discovered bodies on the east-western route, today. All other systems on this northern bound route through the Hawking’s Gap and towards today’s North-Eastern turning point seem to be undiscovered at all.

Byoi EUR 00-Y d1-9; 13:37hrs: Today’s north-western turning point in south-western Hawking’s Gap is reached. This system is rich, containing 56 planetary and solar bodies in total (excluding asteroid belts). This system also contains a ringed Water Giant as well as a much smaller Water World.

10:55hrs: Outer Orion Spur was entered.

11:09hrs: WP 80 located in the Outer Orion Spur is reached, the next jump-point will be straight to the North, the first jump on the northern line of 39 jumps to the north-eastern turning point in Hawking’s Gap, which is Byoi EUR 00-Y d1-9.

11:24hrs: Byoi Thae MZ-F d11-9; this system does count 58 planetary and solar bodies (excluding the asteroid belts of course).

11:35hrs: Entering Hawking’s Gap at Byoi Thae UE-A c29-2, finding 3 Water Worlds.

12:08hrs: Dinner on the surface of an unknown moon.

Apart from one Water World I found some remarkable space phenomena: Rubeum Metal Crystals, coloured red and Prasinum Metal Crystals, which appear to have a green colour.