My little retreat in New Eden comes to an end, I must return to Mehatoor. I came out of concern about the Equilibrium of Mankind's obvious interest in the gate, but found no trace of them.
I did find a single trace of Takmahl, but a single artifact is not enough proof that there was ever an expedition.
I did do some triangulations of the Gate again. A previous attempt from within New Eden only revealed that the Gate is more than 6000 AU away from the star.
But now that the Gate has become visible from Promised Land, the neighboring system, a better determination is possible. Our ship's sensors now seem able to pick up its image there, but not in Central Point or Canard, the next nearest systems. Only thing visible in Canard is White Sky pirates picking on lost Gate tourists.
This is how it looks like from Promised Land (near the New Eden Gate, also visible in the screenshot):
The New Eden star is also indicated in the picture. Using the tactical display, it's possible to determine the angle between New Eden and the Gate as seen from Promised Land (about 15 degrees). Similarly, the angle between Promised Land and the Gate can be measured from New Eden. Given the distance of slightly over one light year between New Eden and Promised Land, it is then straightforward to get the distance between New Eden and the Gate.
Result: about a quarter of a light year. Much less than the servant sisters lead us to believe.
A caveat. I've noticed that our display distorts space, especially in the direction orthogonal to the plane of the tactical display. This could affect the measurement, but I don't think it would be to a point that we'd get to the three light years suggested by the Sisters. I'll be sharing my findings with the Kor-Azor science outpost recently installed in New Eden.
