Mapping the sky in Elite Dangerous

Mapping the sky in Elite Dangerous - Black Bird Flying over White Clouds

While exploring one system, I happened to notice there was an interesting arrangement of bright objects off in the distance. They were too far off to be in-system, but they were bright enough that I imagined they had to be nearby.

Unfortunately, I never could quite nail down exactly what I was looking at - let alone how I might be able to get closer to it. Correlating the first-person POV to the Galaxy Map's perspective, especially when looking for anything smaller than a nebula, seems to be nigh-impossible. Even if I can get myself properly aligned, there's so many other things that might be between myself and my target - with all being displayed at disproportionate size/intensity in the map - that there's very little chance I'll be able to properly identify what I've seen.

I even noticed the same arrangement of objects while in several other systems along my journey that night. Still, nothing really helped to narrow down what it was. Though my route appeared at times to be taking me in the general direction of this "constellation", I never really felt like I was getting significantly closer.

Is there any particular method that can be used to identify far-off stars or other objects beyond the local system, which are seen from the cockpit? Is there perhaps a mod available that allows me to point to something from the cockpit view and say "What's that?" or "Show that to me in the Galaxy Map."?

Note: One thing that I know could help is the Navigation panel. You can select neighboring systems from that menu, and see if what you're looking at happens to be one of them. However, I am looking for something that will also work for systems that are further away - like more than 100 Ly.



Best Answer

You most likely did find a star or planet in the same system, but your scanners aren't powerful enough to pick it up.

The next time you are at a starport, pick up an upgraded Discovery Scanner to enable you to scan a larger area of the system for explorations.

If you spotted a nebula or a star in a different system than your own, there is no way to set it as your target without going to the galaxy map and finding it manually.




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How do I map a system in Elite Dangerous?

Accessing the map of the current system can be accomplished by navigating to the ship's left side panel and selecting "System Map" at the bottom left of the "Navigation" tab.

Can you go to the Milky Way in Elite Dangerous?

Milky Way GalaxyElite Dangerous allows players to travel to almost every visible star seen from normal space. The constellations change with parallax as you explore the galaxy, and the night sky viewed from Earth is, of course, accurate.

How much has Elite Dangerous explored 2021?

It's going to be a long time before the Milky Way is fully explored. Elite Dangerous' version of our Milky Way Galaxy is pretty damn accurate, which is to say that it's incomprehensibly massive.

How long does it take to cross the map in Elite Dangerous?

At the current rate of exploration, Elite's playerbase is visiting 17,585 new systems every day. That's 732 per hour, or 12 per minute. At that rate it will take players 150,895 years to map the entire galaxy.



Elite Dangerous - How To Map Planets / Surface Scanner - Bonus Efficiency - 2 to 9 Probe Planets




More answers regarding mapping the sky in Elite Dangerous

Answer 2

This is a great question. I wonder the same myself. One thing that can help (but isn't great) is that you can select an object in the galaxy map and see if it's roughly in the right direction. If it's not too far you should typically be able to nail it down after a few iterations. Unfortunately I don't think there's a way in-game to find out which star is the star you're looking at on the sky.

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