My God, it's full of stars!

Question

An entry in Fortnightly Topic Challenge #32: Grid Deduction Hybrids

My dear friend, unknown to us, may have relocated again.  He sent me imagery and constellation maps indicating that a distant red spiraling galaxy was at his zenith, and nearly collinear with the largest local galactic cores.  Where was he?

(easier to print version):
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3

Hint

Edit 2019/04/20

I just now noticed the bounty Sensoray was kind enough to place on this puzzle.  All of the solvers in this series have contributed some beautifully annotated progress.  Phenomist and Thomas Blue's cooperation here has been inspiring.

My inexperience with enigmatic or hunt style extractions has led to all of them (except the Meta) being agonizingly close to completion save for final extraction, which has been the focus of some post-mortem reflection I will write out at some point in the future.  To nudge this one a little closer, here is a hint:

Thomas Blue · Answer

Transmission from the moon radio-station

After a long time in space I started to forget what N and E stand for on Earth. Well, now it's clear to me: East and North are directions. The first time I tried to get through those Space Grids, I mixed them up and also tried to take clues from the spectrum... Oops, let me get the spoiler glasses on. I might talk something dangerous.

Allright, so the third slide is a classical

Beautiful.

After that (if you didn't mix up the axis and spend an hour crying of helplessness) calibrating three radars on the second slide is relatively easy. I attach the image here:

Now I'm pretty stumped, because radar calibrating data is about the half of your friend's transmission, and I can see no connection to the star-maps (or that little hint with arrows). Basically, the data I gathered, condenced, would be:

There is one more thought on the main map, however, I don't know how to evolve it (also, what is the line across all the star-map? Is it a route of an ice-cream van? If so - is your friend an ice-cream merchant?)

Same day, search expedition for the "Dear Friend", open space

- Captain! Thanks to the Phenomist's great job we've got the space maps translated from the radar.

- That's right... just a bit closer. See? For the first time in forever that "dear friend" might have provided us with valid information.

- And what would that mean? Do you get where to look for him now?

- So where would we fly to  get him, captain?

SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY

phenomist · Answer

Armed with Thomas Blue's star-finding work, we may solve the 4 logic grids as follows:

The rules of the puzzle

Step by step solution:
Grid 1

Grid 2

Grid 3

Big grid

Here begins speculation

My God, it's full of stars!

2 Answers

Transmission from the moon radio-station

Same day, search expedition for the "Dear Friend", open space

The rules of the puzzle

Step by step solution:

Here begins speculation

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question