I set out yesterday following the published guide to get to the Cancri Cluster.

The first stop was Star Anise, where the very first Thargoid interdiction took place on 5-Jan-3303.

Next was Maia, which contains Obsidian Orbital. Then Burnell's Pulsar and finally Hades Edge where I stopped for the night.

The Distant Stars expedition was originally during the Horizons era of Elite Dangerous. Now in the Odyssey era, the planet surface generation has changed, in my opinion for the better. However, that has resulted in the original "Basecamp 1" crater no longer existing. What I found at the original location (planet 2, -7.14/158.33) was flat plain. It was also in darkness at the time, being on the opposite side from the main S-class star. The best place for a photo was from orbit.

Now the "Cancri Climb" started. From there I was able to reach Outotch DD-Q d6-0 without needing any jump boosts. Times sure have changed!

From there it was a neutron supercharge to Outotch WG-S d5-0, then another neutron supercharge from Outotch SA-U d4-0 to AH Cancri.

Basecamp 2 was held somewhere on AH Cancri AB 3 c, but I couldn't find any coordinates recorded. It wouldn't have mattered anyway due to the Horizons/Odyssey differences.

One more jump to Elysium and I had arrived in the Cancri Cluster!

I had arranged for my fleet carrier "Cosmic Forge" to meet me here. It's my ticket home! I'll be moving it to Elysium's Rest and explore the cluster on my way to it.

I've been spending some time upgrading my fleet to pre-engineered SCO FSDs. That's now basically done.

Also, I have a new acquisition - a Mandalay!

The Mandalay has a number of class 1 slots and it will be my first exploration ship with an Advanced Docking Computer. I'm hoping it's going to make it easier to land in those gnarly mountainous areas where fungoida like to hang out.

What to do for a shakedown cruise? Distant Stars?

Distant Stars was a one-way exploration trip to the M67 star cluster held in January 2017/3303. It was one-way because at the time the only way up was a neutron-boosted jump to a non-neutron system.

Today fleet carriers are a thing, so I'll be retracing the original exploration route in my Mandalay, but park my fleet carrier within the cluster so I can get home.

Well, at least that was the plan.

I'd previously been able to sightsee the destruction of the Titan Oya in Cephei Sector BV-Y b4 (I'd missed the destruction of the Titan Leigong due to it exploding at 4AM local time).

The Thargoid Titan Hadad near the ringed body HIP 30377 B 8 was scheduled to explode about 10:40AM my local time (Sunday 26 May 2024). I'd heard that there was a moon (HIP 30377 B 8 a) from which you might be able to view the explosion, so I jumped into my rescue Orca and set off.

I have not yet bothered to get an SCO for any of my ships, so the the 38,000Ls trip across the solar system took a while as I was getting interdicted almost continuously. However, my Orca has a top speed of over 500m/s so getting away was no problem.

I arrived with minutes to spare, so I got out to enjoy the view from the top of my Orca.

After a couple of minutes I heard the faint cries of the Titan failing. Then the game music got "exciting" and I noticed my shield being hit - a random Thargoid must have turned up! I jumped off my ship and raced to board - no shields, no life support and less than 30% hull remaining! I took off and raced away. Multiple "frame shift anomalies" started popping up all around me. My Orca is not an AX ship, just a lightly shielded and armoured but fast rescue ship. I was going to leave, either in my ship or an escape pod.

I got away safely, but missed the explosion.

I recently watched a YouTube describing AFK bounty hunting, so I decided to give it a go. First step was to make a fully engineered T10:

Next was to hire a crew member and have them fly a SLF:

It all works quite well. I can set up my main account like this, while I play my alt account way out in the black. After a full set of 20 bounty hunting missions, I earn plenty of credits (more than enough to fund my fleet carrier) and I always pick the mission rewards that have materials.

Actually, to begin with I was very much NOT AFK, as I could see all sorts of useful debris being dropped by the ships I was exploding. I reconfigured my T10 to add collector limpets, and after a few more outings many of my material bins were full. That required flying the ship to get in range of the materials, so not AFK.

Now I need to visit the materials traders to make room for more.

Over the weekend I'd heard that there was going to be a planetary collision of two moons close to the "Bubble" - only ~700Ly away.

So leaving it rather late I set out in my fleet carrier. After two jumps I arrived in Synuefe ZL-O b51-0 and was a bit surprised to see no fleet carriers.

I checked the system name and found that I'd got it wrong! It should have been Synuefai ZL-O b51-0! It was in almost the opposite direction.

After another three jumps I arrived much later than I intended and the collision was already well underway.

I flew down to moon "a" and first landed a long way in front of the collision.

I then decided to try landing much closer to where the moons were merging. On my first attempt I dropped out of the glide and approached the surface - the altimeter still read over 3km even though the ground looked right beneath me. I pushed lower and went straight through the surface! I kept going until the altimeter read 0, but the game just stopped me at an invisible barrier.

I flew back up through the surface and super-cruised further away until I was able to land on the surface. After a few minutes the motion of moon "b" became much more obvious.

A few minutes later I grabbed this, just a few seconds before the surface of moon "b" swept over my ship.

I'd decided to take a trip out into the black looking for high-radius landable worlds to drive on.

This one is Pru Euq NT-Z d13-22 1.

It is sadly a "rocky ice world". The ice makes it tricky to drive on, especially when high-radius dictates it will also be a high-grav world. In this case, 3.6G. Even a slight slope can be unclimbable in the SRV, making driving a risky proposition in case you get stuck down what might look like a shallow valley.

I arrived at the final ATEG waypoint, WP15, a few days ago. I had planned to join a meetup, but timezone differences meant I missed it.

I decided to go to the meetup location anyway. It was on Thaikeau MC-C d18 ABC 4 e at a 6km high mountain located at 47.99/44.63.

I was a good drive up, taking about 15-20 minutes. I also found three samples of the final biological species I had been struggling to find elsewhere on the planet.

The view from the top was nice and included the 'parent' gas giant.

Tomorrow night I will start my return trip to the 'Bubble'.

On arrival at WP9 I discovered that my carrier was in close orbit around the entry star (Dehue WV-M d7-27 A - a class A blue-white star) - well within fuel scooping range!

It is in close binary orbit with Dehue WV-M d7-27 B - a class G white-yellow star. That pair in turn are in orbit with a second pair of class A and G stars ("C" and "D"). There are a couple of class Y brown dwarves in the system too.

One of those had a moon of a moon of a planet that had not been mapped in EDSM (Dehue WV-M d7-27 ABCD 3 d a). I have a personal policy of filling in data gaps identified by the Canonn EDSM plugin. When I got close to the moon I found that it had large areas of deep canyons, in this case spanning a crater.

Of course, I had to get out in the SRV and go for a bit of a drive!

On leaving the GGG I made for WP7. On entry to the system I found about five other carriers in orbit around a ringed Earth-Like World (Ploadao OI-T d3-21 5), so I decided to join them!

Some IRL travel forced me to spend a little extra time in game at the GGG, but today was the day to move on. I popped over to the inner-most moon of the GGG and grabbed a photo before I left.

It's a long way back to the Bubble...