First off, Seraphim's first destination:
HD70573, or "Sky"/"Sora" as named by it's inhabitants, lies 174 lightyears away in the constellation Hydra. Despite lying a significant distance from the Neelaa homeworld, at least two nearby star systems have been claimed by the Neelaa. However, due to it's "frontier" status with both the Coalition and the Neelaa Union, no conflicts occurred over this area of space during the war. The system has six planets, five visible here.
HD70573a is a rocky terrestrial world not unlike Mercury, called "Daily" due to it's high orbital velocity of only 24 days. It is tidally locked and only useful as a base for solar-powered laser systems.
HD70573b, "Siskel and Ebert", is a double planet system, for simplicity's sake counted as one planet. Siskel is a "Super-Earth", approximately twice the radius of Earth and five times the mass, with a Venus-like surface. Ebert is roughly the size of Mars but twice the mass due to a larger core, and has a similar surface. Neither is a suitable place for human colonization nor for any other species in the Coalition, but might make for a good midrange base due to the abundance of sodium and other useful elements in the atmospheres of both planets.
HD70573c, "Big Sky", is an Earth-like world and the site of the colony. Due to the young age of it's star, the world is in the Cambrian era of it's geological history, with a high oxygen content generated by an abundance of simple planet life. Local animal life is restricted to invertebrates and fish/amphibian analogs. It's most striking feature is the early evolution of a grass-like plant, which has allowed for extensive grazing for cattle and other food animals. It's surface is approximately 54% land, the remainder water.
HD70573d, "Regis", is a high-sodium content gas giant six times bigger than Jupiter, with a massive array of moons, six of which are as large as Big Sky or even bigger. The gas giant lies just outside the Goldilocks zone, rendering many of it's moons icy worlds with large amounts of frozen water and CO2. The largest of these moons, twice the size of Big Sky, is known as "Kathy Lee".
HD70573e, "Junior", (not pictured) is a ammonia gas giant five times as big as Jupiter at the same distance from Neptune to Sol from Sky itself. It has nearly as many moons as Regis, but due to it's smaller size was dubbed "Junior" compared to Regis. It has a ring system akin to Saturn's and has a large number of captured comets among it's many moons.
Big Sky was settled in 2479. It's colonists left Earth in the year 2300 aboard a recently-developed safe bussard ramjet ship. It's colonists came primarily from the state of New York in the United States of America, and the Kanagawa region of Japan as part of a long term colonization effort for people with a lot of time on their hands or a desire to settle a world that was, for all intents and purposes, "Space Montana". The discovery of spacewarp drivers cut the trip down from almost two centuries to around 40 years, so we sent unmanned probes to at least investigate and see that the colony was doing well. It hasn't been until the advent of the Otherspace drive, however, that we were in a position to send a manned starship out to see how it was doing. The Seraphim's first assignment is therefore to assess the colony's status and provide them with an Otherspace transceiver array so they can catch up with the rest of the Coalition. These colonists are, to our knowledge, only familiar with the Aghasti and the Jii'Ka as far as aliens are concerned. There was at least one Jii'Ka aboard the colony ship when it launched, so we are to assess it's status too. AI has come a long way since their day so the crew must be careful about that as well.
Our sensor scans reveal three primary radio sources on the planet's surface:
The signals received from these points ID them as Barleston, Oda, and Bill's Farm. There is an unidentified signal noise coming from one of it's two small moons which will have to be investigated.
Next up, the Seraphim's tech sheet and each crewmember's gear.
HD70573, or "Sky"/"Sora" as named by it's inhabitants, lies 174 lightyears away in the constellation Hydra. Despite lying a significant distance from the Neelaa homeworld, at least two nearby star systems have been claimed by the Neelaa. However, due to it's "frontier" status with both the Coalition and the Neelaa Union, no conflicts occurred over this area of space during the war. The system has six planets, five visible here.
HD70573a is a rocky terrestrial world not unlike Mercury, called "Daily" due to it's high orbital velocity of only 24 days. It is tidally locked and only useful as a base for solar-powered laser systems.
HD70573b, "Siskel and Ebert", is a double planet system, for simplicity's sake counted as one planet. Siskel is a "Super-Earth", approximately twice the radius of Earth and five times the mass, with a Venus-like surface. Ebert is roughly the size of Mars but twice the mass due to a larger core, and has a similar surface. Neither is a suitable place for human colonization nor for any other species in the Coalition, but might make for a good midrange base due to the abundance of sodium and other useful elements in the atmospheres of both planets.
HD70573c, "Big Sky", is an Earth-like world and the site of the colony. Due to the young age of it's star, the world is in the Cambrian era of it's geological history, with a high oxygen content generated by an abundance of simple planet life. Local animal life is restricted to invertebrates and fish/amphibian analogs. It's most striking feature is the early evolution of a grass-like plant, which has allowed for extensive grazing for cattle and other food animals. It's surface is approximately 54% land, the remainder water.
HD70573d, "Regis", is a high-sodium content gas giant six times bigger than Jupiter, with a massive array of moons, six of which are as large as Big Sky or even bigger. The gas giant lies just outside the Goldilocks zone, rendering many of it's moons icy worlds with large amounts of frozen water and CO2. The largest of these moons, twice the size of Big Sky, is known as "Kathy Lee".
HD70573e, "Junior", (not pictured) is a ammonia gas giant five times as big as Jupiter at the same distance from Neptune to Sol from Sky itself. It has nearly as many moons as Regis, but due to it's smaller size was dubbed "Junior" compared to Regis. It has a ring system akin to Saturn's and has a large number of captured comets among it's many moons.
Big Sky was settled in 2479. It's colonists left Earth in the year 2300 aboard a recently-developed safe bussard ramjet ship. It's colonists came primarily from the state of New York in the United States of America, and the Kanagawa region of Japan as part of a long term colonization effort for people with a lot of time on their hands or a desire to settle a world that was, for all intents and purposes, "Space Montana". The discovery of spacewarp drivers cut the trip down from almost two centuries to around 40 years, so we sent unmanned probes to at least investigate and see that the colony was doing well. It hasn't been until the advent of the Otherspace drive, however, that we were in a position to send a manned starship out to see how it was doing. The Seraphim's first assignment is therefore to assess the colony's status and provide them with an Otherspace transceiver array so they can catch up with the rest of the Coalition. These colonists are, to our knowledge, only familiar with the Aghasti and the Jii'Ka as far as aliens are concerned. There was at least one Jii'Ka aboard the colony ship when it launched, so we are to assess it's status too. AI has come a long way since their day so the crew must be careful about that as well.
Our sensor scans reveal three primary radio sources on the planet's surface:
The signals received from these points ID them as Barleston, Oda, and Bill's Farm. There is an unidentified signal noise coming from one of it's two small moons which will have to be investigated.
Next up, the Seraphim's tech sheet and each crewmember's gear.