Our exploration trip is back this year: The Great Expedition 3304!
Depart from Bragurom Du, July 21st at 7pm UTC / 8pm London / 9pm Paris / 3pm Quebec
Max return to Bragurom Du, September the 8th at 9pm UTC / 10pm London / 11pm Paris / 5pm Quebec
Last time, we completed around 70 000 light years together from Tellus, direction the Orion-Cygnus minor spiral arm, Perseus arm before transitioning into the Orion Spur. Colonia, Saggitarius A* and a rapid tunnel home. For 3304, we will run counter-clockwise with new amazing destinations to discover!
Take your time, you have 2 months to complete this expedition.
If you haven't fully equipped your ship yet, Pellegrino Station - Bragurom Du, provides your with everything you need to prepare your ship, suits, safety tools and provisions.
Please tell us in the _#Communautéfr if you are taking part in this expedition, your preferred language (EN/FR) and if you want to play an active role as a Refueler and/or Repairer.
Are you ready for a Great adventure pilots? Incredible shots, fame, credits and objectives to complete await!
QZ Carinae (also called HD 93026) consists of three massive and highly luminous O-class stars, with a total of 121 solar masses. As seen from Sol, this system appears as one of the brightest stars in the Carina Nebula.
x Carinae (also V382 Carinae) is a yellow hypergiant in the constellation Carina. At 700 solar radii it is the 10th largest known star by radius and the brightest of the rare yellow hypergiant class when seen from Earth. The x Carinae system also contains two smaller stars and a single gas giant providing great views of the hypergiant at 3500 light-seconds.
Visitors should note that Universal Cartographics has both an "x Carinae" and a "X Carinae" (note capitals on the "X") in their database. Use the alternative reference of HD 96918 to avoid confusion.
Sitting at the southern edge of the Circinus Transit, these powerful and young triplets act as a navigational aid for travelers crossing the galactic arm as they remain visible from light years away.
First discovered in 1974, TrA X-1 was classified as an x-ray nova, a source of extremely bright and brief x-ray emission. At peak emission this nova produced almost as much x-rays emission as the Crab nebula. These sources were believed by early astronomers to be caused by matter falling into a black hole, and is confirmed by recent survey which found three separate black holes in a co-orbiting system.
A red giant star system situated at the edge of the outer galactic core and sitting 1,700 LYs above the galactic plane. Its vantage point gives visitors a breathtaking glimpse of the expansive galactic core regions below and stretching out across 10,000 LYs to the distant Far 3kpc Arm.
Shrogea MH-V e2-1763 (Black in Green (Tourist Installation))
Tranquility’s Stop maintains a tourist installation in orbit of the black hole within a planetary nebula found in Shrogea MH-V e2-1763. The installation was constructed in the vicinity of the preexisting 'Black and Green' Tourist Beacon and two satellites giving Engineer Data are also found adjacent to the facility.
20th century astronomers discovered a source of intense photons at 511 keV, which was known to be the result of positron-electron annihilation. After study determined that the source was equal to annihilation events of 10 billion tons per second of positron-electron pairs, it was dubbed The Great Annihilator. The only possible explanation was a large black hole.
Recent surveys found two black holes and a set of T-Tauri stars in orbit. The primary black hole has almost 200 solar masses and an unusually large radius of 550 kilometers. The secondary black hole has 66 solar masses and a radius around 200 kilometers. The system appears to be located in an unusually dense field of dust, obscuring most nearby stars.
The supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.
Since modern FSD technology made it possible to travel the extreme depths of space, Sag-A* has been visited by hundreds of explorers. Some come here as part of a speed race or challenge, others to gain the experience (and credits) of scanning the most massive stellar body in the galaxy. Some come because their wanderlust drives them ever further from the regions around Sol, and others come as part of one of the many community expeditions that have made their way through this system.
Sag-A* was first reached by CMDR Zulu Romeo in late November 3300 while he was doing a scouting mission for the First Great Expedition (FGE) towards the galactic core. At the time no one expected that it would be possible to reach the galactic core before massive FSD failure would be experienced, but Zulu proved the resilience of modern drive technology by continuing on and on.
A later notable event here at the center of the galaxy, was the record breaking meet-up during the Distant Worlds Expedition of 3302.
This system houses 6 T-Tauri stars, each with its own ring, providing a series of stunning views set against many bright stars in the central part of the Galactic Core. One of the smaller planets also has an interesting ring system, with its angle of inclination almost exactly perpendicular to its orbit, so that the rings are face-on to the central star.
This unusual feature is a class-V gas giant located just 76 light seconds from a hot O-type star. Instead of being blown apart by the intense solar winds, the gas giant emits a blindingly white glow. Explorers who venture too close to the object will find their instruments in total white out. The object's apparent surface temperature of 9456 kelvin should easily cause the object to fly apart, as it lacks the mass needed to form even the smallest of stars. This object is similar to The Mysterious Light ; both are currently unexplained by modern science.
Colonia (Jaques Station / Colonia (System) / Animula Spires / The Mosta-Murdoch Raceway)
Jaques is a barman, a property owner and a cyborg. Back in the year 3200, Jaques had been running the same bar in the same starport for an inhumanly long period of time. His tale was recounted in the “Stories of Life on the Frontier” booklet included with 1993’s Frontier: Elite II, wherein we learn Jaques owns half the starport and plans on taking it on a voyage across the galaxy just as soon as he buys the rest.
"I guess it will take me about another fifty years to buy up the rest of this place and another ten to fit it out with enough drive engines. I think I'll do what Augustus Brenquith did and fly off into the unknown and explore new systems. But I like people as well, so in sixty or so years time there will be an invitation going out: anyone who wants to come along can join me on a long trip.”
A large 48 stellar mass black hole roughly 100ly from Jaques Station.
Visually quite impressive as you can see the whole 'ball of stars' effect even on hyperspace entry distance and impressively spectacular if you fly right up to the exclusion zone with the galactic center behind it.
Fate and destiny. The Fortune Teller Nebula shows a different face depending on how it is approached. Approaching from the Core, the Nebula is a dark and pendulous red. From the other side, the nebula displays hues of blue and purple.
Like the tent of a fortune teller, this nebula is dark but colourful. It is brighter on the inside, with shades of blue, red and orange decorating the night sky of its many worlds.
A remote Wolf-Rayet star in the Fallows, first spotted by an old Earth astronomer. At over 1,300 LYs above the plane, it is reachable only by engineer-modified ships using FSD boost.
Rho Cassiopeiae is a rare yellow hypergiant. With a size of 450 solar radii it is also among the most luminous yellow stars known. It is a long-term semiregular variable, with large drops in luminosity observed in 1893, 1946, and 2001.
The system also contains a binary class-B star and a few smaller bodies (including one landable world). Because of it's location deep in the Formidine Rift and well below the galactic plane, a long range ship and several FSD injections are required to visit.
A system that only contains three black holes. First discovered by CMDR Ripster. Two of the black holes are less than 0.01 AU from each other and have an orbital period of 0.1 D. The third black hole is fairly close by as well with an orbital period of 4.4 D. The central black hole has the mass of 29 solar masses. The three angels of death are named Abaddon, also called Apollyon, which is the destroying angel in Book of Revelation in the New Testament, Azrael, also known as Malak al-Maut from Islam, and Mot, angel of death from the Hebraic Book of Habakkuk.
Situated around 200 LYs above the mysterious Dynasty outposts of the Formidine Rift, this interesting system is thought to have been first discovered and tagged by CMDR Salomé (aka Lady Khahina) sometime in 3302 while she was (presumably) out in the rift looking for clues into the Exodus conspiracy.
The system contains many worlds but interestingly Salomé only scanned the two Ammonia worlds within the system - what was she looking for?
In early 3303, a CoR patrol passed through the system during the Dynasty base search and subsequently scanned some of the worlds Salomé had left untouched. Since then, several Rifters have visited the system and each claimed a world of their own.
Salomé was killed trying to expose the Exodus Conspiracy on 29th April 3303, so it is believed that this system and the worlds she scanned could be some of her final exploration-related discoveries.
Two prominent nebula in the Cassiopeia constellation, approx. 7,800 LYs from Sol and situated on the far fringe of the Perseus arm and right on the very near edge of the Formidine Rift. Approaching from the opposite side, these two nebula act as a beacon of light and colour to intrepid explorers returning from across the Rift.
They are very well surveyed and the Soul Nebula contains a radio source named W5, although its exact location remains unclear as of 3303. The Soul Nebula is also named IC 1848 and the Heart Nebula is named IC 1805 (which may be confusing due to the IC 1805 Cluster). All objects are thought to be part of a giant molecular cloud within what is called the Cassiopeia Superbubble.
Part of the IC 1805 cluster, this system is swarming with stellar objects. The high-mass O-type is in a nested binary pair with no less than three different black holes ranging from 9.4 to 31.3 solar masses. What really makes this system stand out are the five K-class stars and nine M-class stars, including one with a rare ring system. From the surface of one of the landable planets these stars will appear to flitter and fly across the sky during their orbits, giving the appearance of a field of fireflies.
Maia (Obsidian Orbital (and other settlements in the Pleiades))
In the fall of 3301 the Explorers Association succesfully completed its campaign to establish Obsidian Orbital as the first permanent outpost in the Pleiades cluster. Unfortunately the Pleiades never became the peacefull haven for explorers and pioneers envisioned at the time. The Ant Hill Mob, a criminal faction, soon bullied the original crew of the station into submission and began using the newly constructed station for their shady affairs. With the discovery of Barnacles and Meta-alloys, the Pleiades also got the attention of the galactic superpowers as well as several ressearch enterprises. These days a multitude of groups and individuals struggle for dominance in the cluster, and this has lead to the establishment of a surprisingly large number of deep space outposts in the Pleiades.
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