I was at the Veil Nebula West which is about 1.500ly west from the Bubble casually exploring when I found this strange anomaly in the sky. It looks like a constellation of stars but I couldn't find it in the Galaxy Map anywhere. It also isn't some intergalactic object as I can't see it on the map either.
That picture is aligned with the galactic plane, with the North America Nebula on the right between the elephant's Trunk and the Pelican Nebula.
I then jumped in to another system 39ly directly above my starting location to have a different point of view, to see if the shape has changed or if it's even still there so that I know if it's interstellar or really just local, and to roughly evaluate the distance.
After Jumping I made this picture aligned the same as before (just a slight abbreviation in angle)
So it's still there, meaning it in fact was not locally in that one system. But it's exactly the same shape, so it must be far away, but still in the galaxy cause there's no such thing visible in the skybox from the galaxy map.
This is really strange, cause if these are stars, they must be very, very bright as they are far away.
I then jumped an additional 158ly directly up like before and made this picture.
I can still see no difference at all. I compared the first picture and this one side by side and seemingly no pixel has changed. The first pic and this one is 197ly away from another.
The Vertically looking Nebula overlapping with the anomaly is the "NGC 7822 Nebula" and it's 2.000ly away. In the second picture the Nebula was not visible anywhere, so that means the nebula 'traveled' quite high up in my point of view when jumping these 158ly.
though with the anomaly, I didn't see a single pixel moving in these 197ly like I said, so the anomaly must be far more away than 2000ly.
I never saw anything like this before. If I would guess I'd say this must be at least 10.000ly away when comparing to the NGC 7822 Nebula. But the brightness of that thing is just crazy if actually this far away, I don't think these could possibly be individual stars, but I didn't saw any Nebula in that direction with that shape, this also really doesn't look like a Nebula. But it also can't be a galaxy/galaxies or any intergalactic object cause I would have seen it on the map, right?
I'm gonna definitely try and go there, if it's possible, I really hope it's not just a bug or any graphical issue.
I never noticed this in the bubble before but it's so bright that there must be other people noticing it too.
Is there anyone who can tell me more about this? I need answers!
Thanks for reading 🙂
Edit:
Alright Apparently It Actually is just stars in the NGC 7822 Nebula, but because the Nebula itself was somehow invisible in the first and second picture, I thought that this cluster was not from the Nebula but far more out than that.
But still, those stars are VERY bright!
