View source for Spatial Anomalies of the Shackleton Expanse

The Shackleton Expanse is a vast volume of space located in the Orion-Cygnus Arm of the Milky Way, and as such, contains tens of millions of star systems and billions of worlds. Located on the far anti-spinward side of the
Romulan Empire, the Expanse has had limited exploration by both the Empire and the Federation due to dangerous gravimetric shear, navigational hazards, and distorted space-time. With the development of more robust warp systems, along with other technologies, exploration of the Shackleton Expanse has quickly become a higher priority for Starfleet. This overview details some of the spatial and astronomical features noted within the Expanse.

=Shackleton Pinwheel=
Located on the far side of the Expanse, the Shackleton
Pinwheel is a phenomenon that has yet to be studied in
detail due to its distance from the station. The Pinwheel
itself can be seen by the naked eye from a dozen lightyears
away. It resembles its name, a multi-armed spiral of
red and orange ionized hydrogen and helium, stretching
nearly a light-year in diameter before the gases cool
and dim. At the center of this Pinwheel are two red
giant stars circling close enough to each other that their
photospheres nearly merge as the gasses are ripped away
by the gravitational forces of the other and flung outward
to form the spiral arms surrounding them. The two central
stars have had their interiors churned up, allowing fresh
hydrogen to enter their core regions and giving these stars
a longer life span, but also causing nova events that can
be seen lighting up the surrounding pinwheel for years
afterward from its light echo as well as further ionization. Orbiting these two stars in eccentric and highly inclined
orbits are five gas giants ranging in mass from five to twenty
times that of Jupiter in the Sol system, each with numerous
moons that have yet to be surveyed. Currently, Starfleet
believes these planets to be the remains of the planetary
system that once circled these stars when they were on
the main sequence. Now they gather ejected stellar gases
and cut paths through the ejecta, giving the arms of the
Shackleton Pinwheel intricate grooves and whorls.

=The Endurance Divide=
The Endurance Divide is a massive complex of interstellar
dust, cold gases, and brown dwarf stars. Located along the
Federation border with the Expanse, the Divide wraps around
the spinward edges of the Expanse like a blanket, preventing
accurate sensor scans and increasing the amount of power
needed for warp systems to maintain a stable subspace
bubble. Ranging between one and three light years thick,
current theories suggest that the Divide is the remnant gas
and debris from the supernovas that formed the Washboard
Triplets. While passing through the Divide and into the
Expanse proper, Starfleet recommends vessels to drop to low
warp speeds to reduce wear on the subspace coils and to
maintain a detailed sensor sweep for dangerous obstacles or
large conglomerations of dust and gas that may tax the ability
of the primary deflector array to protect the vessel from harm.
Inside the Divide, the skies are dimmed by the high
concentrations of dust, and often the brightest stars are the
nearby brown dwarf star systems that are accompanied by
few icy dark worlds. While devoid of Class-M worlds, the
Divides’ strange environment is host to a complex ecosystem
of space-borne lifeforms ranging from single-celled
chemosynthetic organisms feasting on ammonia ices, to the
five-hundred meter wide wingspan of the nimrod schooner, an
asexually reproducing animal resembling a cross between a
solar sail vessel and a Terran woodlouse.

=The Washboard=
The entire volume of the Shackleton Expanse has strange
gravimetric distortions and ripples in space-time that can
be a danger to vessels traveling at warp speeds. The overall
phenomenon is known as “The Washboard.” Near the
edges of the Expanse, vessels at warp have their warp field
compressed and expanded as space-time distorts around
the vessel, making the crew feel as though the ship was
accelerating and decelerating, or swaying from side to side.
This effect is so pronounced that warp systems from the 23rd
century and earlier were prevented from operating in all but
the furthest reaches of the Expanse, damage often occurring
to the warp systems of the vessels. This restricted most
exploration of the area until the 2360s. Even with modern
warp systems capable of adapting to the subspace and gravimetric distortions, this effect can still be felt at high warp
velocities, and becomes stronger the closer a vessel comes
to the Washboard Triplets, the cause of this effect.
One of the first Federation starships to enter the Shackleton
Expanse was U.S.S. Umbra, a Miranda-class vessel, in 2308.
With the scale and danger of the Washboard then unknown,
Umbra did not slow its warp velocity when it detected a
Class-M world. Logs show that as the vessel turned toward
the system, it began cutting against the gravimetric shear and
suffered immediate catastrophic damage to its warp nacelles.
The vessel dropped out of warp half a light-year from the
planet, with most of its power systems burnt out. After drifting
under low impulse power for 1.5 standard years, the survivors
of Umbra made planetfall on the world they called Finally,
unwillingly becoming the first Federation colonists in the
Expanse. Finally is used as a waypoint and for shore leave,
the decedents of Umbra having built a small Starfleet outpost
on the shores of Lake Here’s Fine.

==The Washboard Triplets==
The cause of the majority of strange subspace distortions and
gravimetric waves that have made exploration of the Shackleton
Expanse fraught with danger are the Washboard Triplets. This
strange system consists of three massive white dwarf stars
that orbit around each other in a complex dance. Few probes
to the Triplets have been launched due to the extreme spacetime
distortions caused by frame dragging within 10 light-days,
but certain data has made the Triplets a high priority for the
Federation Science Council. Scans show that each of the white
dwarf stars are exactly the same mass, down to the error range
housed within the probes’ sensors. While this similarity in mass
would be sufficient to interest the Council, these same scans
show that each of the white dwarfs mass enough to overwhelm
the ability for electron degeneracy pressure to prevent the
collapse of the dwarf into a neutron star. In the volume
surrounding the Triplets, there is a high density of gaseous
tritanium, particulate dilithium, and complex carbon chains. All
of this evidence points to one of the many ancient civilizations of
the Galaxy engineering this system, for reasons unknown. Starfleet currently recommends any expedition starships to
maintain at least a five light-year distance from the Triplets.
Plans are underway for a detailed survey of the system and
the construction of a monitoring buoy for gravimetric and
subspace waves, along with the planned construction of a
heavily-modified Intrepid-class vessel capable of an even
wider angle of pitch for its warp nacelles.

=The Ember Sector=
Found approximately 50 light-years coreward and trailing
from the Triplets, the Ember Sector is a fascinating volume
of space. Inside its loose borders are approximately 150
small, high metallicity, red main sequence stars ranging
in temperature and mass from M7 to M3. Spectrographic
analysis of the stars, and brief geological surveys of six
planetary systems, show that all of the stars began their
lives approximately 3.5 billion years ago and must have
formed from a single nebulae, as the metal concentrations
in the stars are all very similar. Additionally, these stars all
have trajectories that have kept them closely entangled with
each other.

With the limited probe surveys done in the Ember
Sector, Starfleet has seen an astonishing half of systems
containing at least one Class L, M, or O world. The
statistical likelihood of this occurring is remote at best, and
Starfleet plans to assign multiple exploratory starships to
make astronomical, geological, and biological surveys of
the entire Ember Sector within the next 10 years. While
the cool red stars give the impression that they are not
dangerous, many of the stars in the Ember Sector flare on
a semi-regular basis. Crews assigned to away teams on
future missions will have to undergo radiation triage training
and practice survival techniques in planetary environments
containing ionizing radiation.

=T'Kal Nursery=
Named after the Vulcan astrographer who performed the
first long range survey of the region, the T’Kal Nursery is
the largest stellar nursery in the Shackleton Expanse. The
Nursery spans a volume approximately eight light-years in
diameter and contains upward of 200 young stars. Only
the outer regions of the nebula have been properly surveyed
at this time, but Starfleet plans to assign at least one vessel
to chart the protostars shrouded by the thick clouds of
ionized gas.

Like most nebulae, the Nursery consists of a homogenous
mix of gases and dust, and, along the rimward regions of
this body, the differences in composition primarily are of
double ionized oxygen that results in a brightly glowing
green cloud interrupted by streamers of red gases made up
of lower simple ionized oxygen and hydrogen. This whole
area is ionized due to the presence of a bright blue main
sequence star that has blown away the curtain of gases
around it with its powerful solar winds.

=Gossamer Rings of Pi-Latka=
Long-range scans of this orange main sequence star
showed strange spectral lines suggesting a dense Oort
cloud, a shell of icy bodies found around most star systems.
What was discovered was far from a typical Oort cloud as
the star had rings of icy particles stretching from the ice
line, where temperatures around a star allow ice to exist,
out to a distance of 15 AU. The system is named Pi-Latka
after a winged deity representing beauty from the Andorian
P’Ea faith during Andoria’s Iron Age.

Inside these rings are small minor worlds ranging from a
few kilometers to several hundred kilometers in diameter,
acting like shepherd moons of ringed gas giants. Surveys
completed of the outermost shepherd world, Ramble, have
discovered an ecosystem of single and small multi-cellular
life forms living in the ice. Dating radioactive elements on
Ramble and some of the outer rings has suggested that
the rings are between 200 and 500 thousand years old.
There have been many theories put forward to explain the
catastrophe that must have occurred in the Pi-Latka system,
but none so far have been proven as more likely than
others. Starfleet’s Corps of Engineers is currently designing
a heavily shielded observational outpost to be built on
Ramble for use by civilian and Starfleet scientists wishing to
delve into the secrets of this system’s Gossamer Rings.