Elite Dangerous simulates some of the most dazzling sights in the Milky Way. Rick Lane’s virtual tour guide explains where to see them
Elite Dangerous simulates a galaxy of 400 billion stars. The majority of these stars’ systems are procedurally generated by algorithms based on our scientific knowledge of how space works. But 160,000 of these systems are based on real stars that can be seen from Earth, be it in the night sky, or using powerful telescopes. What’s more, because of Elite’s scientific basis, you get a fairly accurate representation of how these stars look in terms of positioning, scale and hue. From barely luminescent brown dwarfs to planet-eating red giants, these stars are orbited by planets, which in turn are orbited by moons.
As such, Elite provides a fascinating opportunity to explore our own knowledge of space, and educate ourselves about what precisely exists beyond our solar system. Where’s our nearest pulsar? Just how big is a red giant? What would it be like to fly around a black hole?
In this article, we’ll answer those questions and more, covering what you need to take to the virtual skies yourself, and where you should go to see the most incredible sights our galaxy has to offer.
Getting started
Through a combination of clever instancing trickery and level-ofdetail phasing, Elite Dangerous represents the Milky Way on a scale of one to one. Travelling between stars is achieved through Hyperspace or ‘Frameshift’ jumps. Depending on which ship you use, the distance you can jump varies. The starting Sidewinder vessel can jump between eight and 15 light years in a single bound, while the Asp explorer spacecraft has the largest jumprange of roughly 36 light years.
That may sound like a long way, but the Milky Way is a whopping 120,000 light years in diameter. Factor in refuelling stops and the high possibility of being distracted during your journey by a pretty planet, and you’ll quickly discover that getting around in Elite Dangerous takes time. Using a Cobra Mark III with a jump range of just under 25 light years, at Custom PC we normally find travel between 200 and 300 light years an hour.
The other important factor to consider is price. Kitting out a decent exploration ship costs credits, which you’ll need to earn in-game by completing missions, fighting pirates, performing trade runs, and discovering stars and planets of your own. The price will vary depending on what you buy and where, but a Cobra Mark III with a powerful jump drive, a power supply that can cope with it and a fuel tank with sufficient capacity, will easily set you back half a million credits.
For the purposes of this article, we’ve taken these factors into account, categorising the various places of interest by their proximity to our solar system. Short-range exploration (within a 300 light-year radius of Sol) can be achieved in any ship with a jump range of greater than 10 LY, and should only require an evening or two. Medium range (300-1,000 light years) requires a vessel with at least a 20-25 LY jump range and a free weekend. For long-range exploration, (greater than 1,000 light years) you’ll need the best exploration ship money can buy, and plenty of time to dedicate to the game.
Regardless of which ship you use, you’ll definitely need a Fuel Scoop, which lets you skim hydrogen off the surface of a star to refuel your ship. This process is frankly a little dull, but it’s also free and prevents you from getting stuck in systems without a space station.
We also recommend investing in the best discovery scanner you can afford, so you can earn a few credits by scanning systems as you pass through them, and stop off if you see anything particularly interesting. Finally, because Elite is a simulator, there are substantial periods of time spent cruising, so prepare some music or a podcast to entertain you. Depending on your mood, we recommend the soundtracks to the recent sci-fi films Interstellar or Guardians of the Galaxy to spice up your space travel. Are we all set? Perfect. Let’s lock in the coordinates, and make the jump to light speed.
Short-range exploration
Cold stars, giant dwarfs and twin suns
Our galactic tour starts from Sol, to ensure you can find your way home. It’s worth looking around our solar system anyway, to witness Frontier’s vision of our backyard in the year 3300. Points of interest include a terraformed Mars, the snazzy Galileo station orbiting the Moon, the hulking Capital ship stationed just outside Earth’s atmosphere, and being able to fly among the rings of Saturn.
Once you’ve finished, it’s time to hit the Frameshift drive. A mere seven light years from Sol is one of the weirdest phenomena in our galaxy. The attractively named WISE 0855-0714 is the coldest-known star in the universe. This brown dwarf has a temperature of -13°C and, while it isn’t the most spectacular sight in Elite, it’s difficult to believe that this bluepurple sphere is in fact a star.
Then, 18 light years from our Sun is the Stein 2051 system, home to the nearest white dwarf star to our sun. Known as Stein 2051 b, it’s a little more visually impressive than WISE, its milky-white glow looking like that of an especially bright full moon. This system also contains a red dwarf star, which are fairly common throughout the galaxy. But if you haven’t seen one, Stein 2051 is a good place to cross both star classes off your list.
A little further out, 20 and 40 light years respectively, are Wolf 562 and Rho Cancri. These systems aren’t of interest so much for their stars as their planets. Wolf 562 is orbited by a 439°C ice planet, while Rho Cancri is home to a planet suspected to be made almost entirely of diamond. Unfortunately, Elite doesn’t recreate real planets quite as well as real stars, primarily because we know so little about exoplanets apart from their locations. Nevertheless, they’re so close to Sol that it’s worth visiting, if only to satisfy your curiosity.
Around 150 light years from Sol is another strange phenomenon. HIP 40977 A is an enormous S-class star, resembling a brown dwarf but around 200 times the size.
You can always tell a vast star in Elite Dangerous by how it appears when you first enter a system. Sunsize stars will rapidly grow in your cockpit window as you exit Frameshift, almost as though your screen is zooming in on it. Very large stars, on the other hand, don’t seem to grow at all, as they’re so huge that the distance travelled in your decelerating final approach makes very little difference to their appearance.
The 300 light-year radius around Sol is also home to two lovely contact binary systems. Contact binary systems are two stars located so closely together that they share a stellar envelope. As a result, they exchange matter between one another, which is the stellar equivalent of holding hands. The closest is W Ursae Majoris. Roughly 160 light years from Sol, it’s a contact binary system comprised of two brilliant yellow stars.
Medium-range exploration
Hypergiants, black holes, nebulas and pulsars
If you have a ship that can jump around 25 light years, and a fuel tank that only requires refilling every 7-10 jumps, you can witness examples of almost every type of stellar phenomena in a fantastic 2,000-lightyear grand tour of the galaxy.
Beginning at Sol, set a course for Betelgeuse, which is approximately 600 light years away. We say ‘set a course’ – one of Elite Dangerous’ more irksome idiosyncrasies is that it can only plot routes on the galactic map in increments of 100 light years. Even then, it takes a few minutes to calculate the route, and you’ll have to recalculate if you accidentally switch back to the game. Also, ensure that you have the navigation tab set to Fastest routes, and not Economical routes. Fuel consumption increases exponentially as you make bigger jumps, so you can negate this issue by making lots of little jumps. The downside, of course, is that it then takes ages to get anywhere.
You can either go straight to Betelgeuse or, if you’re travelling at a more leisurely pace, there’s plenty to see along the way. Stop off at the Bellatrix system, which is the right shoulder of the constellation Orion, if you want to see a particularly lovely example of a bright blue star. Meanwhile, the system 14 I Orionis contains an incredibly ostentatiouslooking ringed planet.
Eventually you’ll arrive at Betelgeuse, the left shoulder of Orion. Betelgeuse is one of the largest observable stars in the night sky, and by far the largest star within easy reach in Elite. It’s so big that initially you’ll struggle to comprehend the scale. To give you an idea of its size, if Betelgeuse was at the centre of our solar system, it would consume every planet as far out as Jupiter. It’s possible to get a sense of Betelgeuse’s size in Elite too. Try flying out to some of the orbiting planets (which are predictably all balls of superheated lava) and watch as the star simply refuses to shrink in your cockpit window. Even 500 million kilometres out, it’s like having a bright orange beach ball sitting on your dashboard.
Once you’ve marvelled at the mighty Betelgeuse, set a course for the Maia system in the Pleiades Nebula (also known as the Seven Sisters cluster). This journey will take you towards the bottom plane of the galaxy by approximately another 500 light years, but it’s absolutely worth the trip. The Pleiades Nebula provides a very different backdrop to the familiar black of space, and the Maia system is one of the most bizarre and complex systems we’ve encountered. Stars of half a dozen different types seem to be flung about in random directions, all within easy reach of one another. But the main reason to come to Maia is not for the cluster surrounding Maia A, but for Maia B, which is a black hole.
There’s a problem when it comes to visiting a black hole, which is that you can’t see it directly. Instead, you need to fly as close as possible to it before your ship’s emergency stop kicks in, and then adjust your course so that you’re flying around it. If your positioning is correct, you’ll see a curious lensing effect as the black hole’s gargantuan gravitational pull bends the light between you and it.
At this point you have a choice. If you like, you can travel around another 60 light years to PSR J0108-1431, which is the nearest pulsar to earth. Pulsars are incredibly dense collapsed stars (neutron stars). Around the size of a basketball, they spin rapidly and emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. In theory, they’re an even more stunning sight than black holes. In Elite Dangerous, however, they’re simply tiny dots of light that melt your ship before you can get close enough to observe them, which is rather disappointing if admirably realistic.
But the PSR J0108-1431 system is worth visiting anyway for two reasons. Firstly, like Maia, it plays host to a strange constellation of other stars. Also, it’s at the base of the galaxy, so you can experience a powerful contrast between the star-crammed galactic core on one side, and the inky blackness of deep space on the other.
Whether you visit the Pulsar or not, at this point it’s best to head back towards Sol. If you have time, stop off at 25 Ceti to see arguably the most remarkable binary systems in Elite, including a Sol-like star set against a similar-looking star around 30 times the size. Lastly, drop into Arietis Sector YE-R B4-1 B to see a rare T-Tauri star, a shimmering white sphere that’s still in the process of formation.
Long-range exploration
Colossal stars, old supernovae and the light of a million suns
You’ve now experienced a good sample of what lies beyond the gravitational pull of our Sun. But if you have the patience and desire to explore further, there are plenty more astonishing sights in the far reaches of space. The largest star in the galaxy, VY Canis Majoris, for example, is 1,700 light years from Sol. This red hypergiant makes Betelgeuse look like a baby. Be careful around it, though, as it’s possible to fall straight into the star when exiting Frameshift in the system. Meanwhile, X Carinae sits 6,700 light years out, and is an arguably even cooler star, being a yellow hypergiant – a rare formation that occurs before a star cools to the more familiar shade of red.
There are currently no visible supernova in Elite Dangerous, but the Eor Auscs sector, towards the galactic core, sits in a vast cloud of dust from a previous supernova. Going towards the galactic core puts you in the procedurally generated part of Elite’s galaxy, of which Eor Auscs is part.
But what’s authentically realised about the galactic core is its sheer number of stars. The environment changes completely, shifting from a star-pocked void to a dazzling light show as thousands of stars jostle together. Finally, if you can make it to the very centre of the galaxy, roughly 40,000 light years from Earth, you’ll be rewarded with a view of the supermassive black hole around which the entire Milky Way spins.
Of course, this brief introduction to Elite Dangerous’ galaxy represents only the tiniest fraction of Frontier’s game world, and indeed the Milky Way. Elite is constantly being updated too. At the time of writing, Frontier added several ‘Goldilocks zone’ exoplanets, the discovery of which was announced only at the beginning of 2015, so there will be plenty to explore in the future as well.