Gastins Star

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'Gastins Star.


Overview

Gastins Star is not visible from earth, being obscured by Tau Ceti. Discovered 403 years ago from one of the first ZMI Deepshot vessels the ZMSF Harmony it was first viewed on the Harmonies return to normal space after 3 months in early phase drive. The first navigator Heny Gastin who later that day tragically met his end when one of the ships internal volatile tanks ruptured flooding his and 2 other compartments with liquid nitrogen. First officially logged it 12 seconds after emergence with the Harmony's standard passive optic array by Navigator Gastin it is in his honour that gastins star is named. Similar to the Sun in mass and spectral type however, Gastins Star is a "metal-deficient" star some 221 light years away and therefore was deemed unlikely to have rocky planets or useful ore bodies around it.

Company Involvement

It was not until 211 years ago that the exploratory vessel ZMSF Yonder discovered that Gastins Star has more than ten times the amount of cometary and asteroid material orbiting it than the Sol. This result seemed to put a damper on the possibility of complex life in this system, as the two planets found there by the Yonders planetary passive optic detection big array would suffer from large impact events roughly ten times more frequently than Earth. On the bright side liquid water was detected on both the 1st and 2nd planet. A STL probe was launched by the Yonder on its closest approach to Gastins star (38.2 ly). On arrival the probe discovered that the closest planet to the primary now known as Gedra was a hostile sterile cratered landscape however not only did Gastins World the second planet from the primary have life but an abundance of it in advanced forms. Gastins World life forms were found to be unique with a by comparison with terrestrial evolution an amazing rate of adaptation and mutation. Though for the most part non compatible for the purposes of simple agriculture 's Gastins World's life forms were seemingly recovering from one in a long series in mass extinction events (the impact of which still left a large portion of the southern continent a barren wasteland) this left a unique opportunity to gain as much data as possible. The biology proved a unique lure to the company with a cornucopia of possible applications in nearly every area of synthetic production.

Colonisation

A full colony program was planned but due to resource limitations was not actually up for construction for the better part of a century. The colony was planned around the large long term biological harvesting and research operation. The colony fleet was built and 130 years ago the ZMI colonisation effort began headed by the ZMSF Archer. The ZMSF Archer claimed Gastins Star for the company. One of the notable heavy components of the fleet was the massive modular platforms used to harvest and secure any objects deemed to be a hazard to the colony. These platforms would be destroyed in the brutal insurgency 23 years later and at present several close observation and power generation platforms directly orbit within Gastin's star's corona powering an array of high energy lasers used to divert the path of any object from the systems seemingly never ending quantity.


Gastins system wide population is 83 million, fallen from over 120 million during the insurgency, the majority live on Gastins World but over 8 million live in outlying orbitals and research colonies with a further 18 million living on the surface of Gedra. The primary export is advanced biological extracts based on harvested xenoforms. Gastins star is ruled directly by The Gestalt since the insurgency though a return to power of the elected Gastin System council is proceeding slowly.

Observation data

Epoch J2000
Constellation Cetus
Right ascension 01h 44m 04.1s
Declination -15° 56' 14"
Apparent magnitude (V) 3.49

Characteristics

Spectral type G8 Vp
B-V color index 0.72
U-B color index 0.21
Variable type None

Astrometry

Radial velocity (Rv) -17 km/s
Proper motion (μ) RA: -1.722"/yr
Dec.: 0.854"/yr
Parallax (π) 0.27439" ± 0.00076"
Distance 221.88 ly
Absolute magnitude (MV) 5.68

Details

Mass 0.81 M☉
Radius 0.77 R☉
Luminosity 0.59 L☉
Temperature 5,380 K
Metallicity 41%
Rotation period 31 days
Age 1.0 × 1010 years