Lupus Nebula

Celestial Information

• Distance from Sol: 7,100 ± 280 light-years
• Type of System: Nebula
• Color: Unknown
• Right Ascension: 15h 02m 50s
• Declination: -41° 56'

Important Events

• To be filled in later.

Jump Nodes

• Gamma Draconis
• Unknown Binary System (Knossos)

There is no canon reference to confirm that this is in fact the FS2 nebula, but Galemp claimed it as such¹ and the available information on the supernova that created the nebula² fits the evidence nicely.

Mission SM1-05 theorizes that the nebula is the remnant of a supernova (probably foreshadowing the endgame), and Admiral Bosch says the following:

"The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands if not billions of light years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns."³

Bosch's estimate was pretty good; the 1006 supernova was about as bright as five billion suns, so he was only off by a factor of 10. Furthermore, the best descriptions of the supernova come from China and Egypt.

We know that the Ancients built the portal that linked [Gamma Draconis] to the nebula, so we can conjecture that the Shivans caused the parent star to go supernova when they destroyed the Ancients' empire. This means that the supernova occurred around 8,000 years ago⁴, placing the date at 5,700 B.C., give or take a few hundred years. Given that the light observed in 1006 took 7,100 years to reach Earth, the Lupus supernova probably occurred around 6,100 B.C. The two dates match within the margin of error for these kinds of estimates.

References

• ¹ See this thread on the ~HLPBB.
• ² See this article, which includes more factual information than the one linked in GalacticEmperor's thread.
• ³ A full transcript of this cutscene is available here
• ⁴ From the vantage point of the Vasudan scientists in 2335.