How do you miss a planet? Pretty easily, to be fair, especially when the original discoverer didn’t wite down how it was found. This is the case with a gas giant that was first found by an Elite: Dangerous player known as Kelly Eldridge back in May 23rd, 2015, described by her then as “the strangest gas giant [she’s] seen so far.” The player reset her account, and with it the path to this unique planet was thought completely lost, until one group of explorers managed to rediscover the planet after seven years.
The so-called Kelly’s GGG (Green Gas Giant) was found in Shaulai DL-P d5-274, within the Perseus Arm of the galaxy. The post provides a detailed report on how the players found the planet, which was done through tracing clues CMDR Kelly previously left, then narrowing down search areas by discovering constellations and neutron stars. The post goes into extremely granular detail and even provides maps along the way.
As for how it felt to discover this planet? “I felt more excitement when I found the neutron stars and when I found the constellations than when I found the actual green gas giant, because I knew the difficulty factor of this search was in limiting the search area,” reads the post from CMDR Orange. “However, I did feel an eerie calm knowing I had been the only person in this system in the last seven years. I can only imagine what great explorers felt when they entered a restricted tomb, closed off for thousands of years.”
