Cloud-Watching.

Imperial Cutter "Temeraire"
Omega Sector DM-M B7-16
5,561 light years from Sol

With the community goal completed, I decided that it was time to take a look around. I’ve stowed Brunel at the station and switched back to Temeraire – she’s been given a complete check-out and passed with flying colours despite my pushing her hard over the last week.

Unfortunately I had no time to do a long trip around the area taking in all the sights, so I took a look at the “Colours of Clouds” Exploration circuit and set my sights on seeing at least one location on the list.

I headed out to Omega Sector DM-M B7-16 to investigate the Lagrange Clouds… and I was not disappointed.

The Rubicundum Lagrange Cloud at Omega Sector DM-M B7-16

These places are spooky to say the least. Dark, strange places full of odd, spiky crystals… I saw no life there, but your eyes play tricks on your mind. More than once I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye… but when you look to see the source, all that’s in view are the crystal lattices, slowly turning and turning…

I also flew to the Roseum cloud in the same system – again, there were randomly-scattered crystals disappearing out into the mist… I ran some scans and tests on the crystals and even hit them with the pulse laser and chaff bursts, but they remained stubbornly inert to everything I could throw at them. Admittedly Temeraire’s scanner suite isn’t as cutting edge as some, but you’d think something would show up.

It’s hard to determine whether the crystals generate the cloud or whether they formed from the cloud by some form of precipitation. They should have clumped together over the eons by virtue of their individual micro-gravity fields, but there is no sign of this occurring. I have seen footage of these crystals with clouds newly forming around them, suggesting that the crystals came first and generated the cloud, but all I can get from the instruments is that they are biological in nature. It’s a real mystery.

Vast fields of inert crystals. They keep their mysteries close… I wonder how many eons they have floated there, slowly turning in their mist-shrouded domains?

Examining Bark mounds.

Eventually tiredness began to get the better of me, so I made for a landing spot on a small moon and after checking out the area in my SRV, I settled down for an overnight stay near some Bark mounds.