ELITE: Where Eagles Dare

Eagle Nebula (Hubble)

Alright time for some more ELITE.  Previous installments here (1) and here (2) and here (3)  After messing around with a new ship, the Adder, I realized it can go about 30LY per jump, and with a fuel scoop can go ANYWHERE.  So I asked my brother, being the astrophysicist, where I should go.  He suggested the Eagle Nebula.  As soon as I googled the above pic I knew I had to go.   Then I looked at the Galaxy Map, and realized it was 7000 LY from where I was parked in Mizar (big dipper star)   7000LY divided by ~30LY per jump.....




wiki info on  Eagle Nebula

My bro explained that he doubted whether or not the game would have images such as the above as something you would see out your window.. one that the above image is a tiny part of the overall Nebula, and two, that that pic has had a long time exposure and many filters (notice all the stars are red above?  =filters) which affects colours.  Who cares, in ELITE you get some money from selling the exploration data, and I had never ventured more than 30 LY from human space.. plus I wanted to figure out fuel scooping.. where you ride a fine line between frying your ship near a sun while scooping in Hydrogen.  If I could make it there and back again, it should be worth millions.. <Dr Evil Pinky>

Picture Dump:

Halfway there, and there is theLagoon Nebula, Herschel 36 visible from 1000LY!!!  Look at how wide the Milky Way is from here, I am slightly 'above' the spiral galaxy arms.   The gap between the arms meant few stars to jump to, but no huge double-backs were needed.







2000LY out, Eagle Nebula can be seen, dust/stars kinda masking it a bit.




500LY out.  Glitched grouping of stars in the middle?





250LY out.   I read that Nebulas sometimes spawn more stars, so this cluster of stars makes sense.  They aren't in front, they are shining through the dark dust.

100LY out.   You can really see the colours from here in distinct coloured areas.  Lets hit the blue first.




Closeup of the Bluezone.   At top of screen is star cluster.





Proto-star Cluster.  No hydrogen in ANY of these stars, some of which were about 0.5 LY from each other.  I had to jump out, refuel, and jump back in.  Tank holds about 150 LY or ~6 jumps.  The light from these stars was ruining the pictures.  Yes, light pollution is in the game..



Top-down of Nebula. from here the black dust is hiding those proto-stars, so I will go inside from this angle here.





View from inside the blue zone.  Bright blue wisps.. no idea if those are the structures that are seen in the long exposure shots from Hubble.. but this is roughly the right angle from Earth.



Inside Orange zone.  The cloud effect is really cool in here.  No black sky in any direction.



180 degrees from the previous picture, from the center of the Nebula, and you can see the proto-star cluster through the dust.




Lonely Planet.  First planet I saw, figured I'd want a pic of this weird metallic surface world with a Nebula looming in the 'night' sky.

And that's that.  In a way I was disappointed to not see the super Hubble looking pictures, like in the new EVE expansion, the nebulas there look cool.  But in the end, this game has tried for realism, and from what I understand, unless my windshield has a telescopic zoom lens, it would be doubtful to see the Hubble pic out my window.   I took some heat damage on the way in, once from a solar flare up which surprised me from my usual refueling routine.  Hope I make it back.