Summary:

A planetary nebula with spaceborne life inside a Lagrange cloud.

Description:

A planetary nebula found deep in the galactic core, with some unique history of its own. It was first discovered by CMDR Marx in 3301, and named it the Hengist nebula after the late Emperor Hengist Duval, who was assassinated a few days after.

Soon after the discoverer brought the data back, he spoke with a friend of his about this discovery, and after describing the nebula and the planets therein, his friend asked: "But it's over 26,000 ly away. Do you think anyone else will ever visit this place?" The reply was "Well, probably not. Nobody will come this far to visit this." (This was before the introduction of engineered Frame Shift Drives and neutron star boosting, during a time when exploration ship jump ranges tended to be around 30-35 ly.)

However, years later, that prediction turned out to be false: in 3305, the Distant Worlds 2 expedition included this nebula as a minor waypoint, and several hundred explorers visited here as part of their journeys. The reason for the renewed interest was that scouts for the expedition found that a Lagrange storm cloud had formed in the system. These are to date one of the most rare phenomena, and this one houses L01-Type Anomalies (this is the only known system where they are found), and metallic crystals.

Later on, explorers have reported that the storms from the cloud had dissipated and the cloud became calm. While there were some scattered reports of lightning, the majority of Commanders who have visited in recent times haven't seen any, so current visitors should expect to see a regular Lagrange cloud here.

As an added curiosity, a terraformable water world orbits the secondary class G star, with a somewhat uncommon characteristic: while it could have been classified as an Earth-like planet, the presence of large amounts of water vapour has heated its atmosphere to a temperature that's well above what's considered breathable.

Image credits: CMDR Marx, GMP