TL;DR at the bottom.

I grabbed a screenshot of the now famous Crescent moonish O in Frontiers trailer and measured it to be approximately 100px in Diameter (if not, I scaled it). Therefore the radius is 50px.

I then measured the distance from the furthest edge of the black crescents right side to the outer edge rim of the larger circle and deduced that the inner circle would be 75px in diameter.

My first thought was to figure out how much of the area the crescent takes up of the smaller circle, which is ~ 1590px of the larger ~ 4415px whole smaller circle. Math goes something like this:

(Big Circle Radius² – Non Crescent Radius²) * 3.14 = ~1590px for the crescent.

I then nearly disregarded the math… because well… 36% is quite a bit of crescent for this little circle, while mathematically correct… but then it dawned on me that the crescent could actually be of the bigger outer circle.

This outer circle comes in at a total px count of 7850px and the crescent portion is ~1590px giving us 20.25% Crescent

The Moon Phase calendar here: Moon Phase for August 13, 2021 – Moonrise, Moonset, Moon Age, Moon Distance (mooninfo.org) shows that on Thursday we will have 19% illumination and Friday we will have 29% illumination. I’m not sure where in the sky the moon is at during these calculations of illumination of the crescent…

Further digging the rabbit hole we could go into assuming that since these Moon Phase calculations are done in UTC, and Guildford is UTC +1. The 20.25% Crescent calculated above would put us at 21:00 UTC or 22:00 BST for a 8pm BST Time.

If we tack on a bit of history:

Beyond was announced on the 2nd of August 2019 to be released on the Wed. 14th of August 2019 (though the Beyond Launch Trailer was added to YouTube on August 8th, 2019 and my memory is foggy on when it actually launched), Wed October 28, 2020 we saw Next Generation launch trailer, Wed. September 23, 2020 for Origins trailer so you get the picture. All of these patches rolled out by end of day on those respective days.

Thanks to the following post for piquing my interest in calculating this out:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/comments/p1hpft/the_o_of_beyond_vs_the_o_of_frontiers/

tl;dr: I calculated the Crescent portion of the moon in the Frontiers teaser trailer, while I’m probably wrong, but knowing how Sean likes to play games with math and the like – the update could drop between Wednesday and Friday this week, but it also might not drop for several months because this is all speculation.

I played this game at launch. We all know how that went. Despite it being a pretty empty game at the time, I had fun with it. For about a week.

A few years later I checked in to see that new significant features had been added. Played a bit but got sidetracked by other games eventually.

Picked the game back up a couple weeks ago and I have no desire to put it down. This game goes so much deeper than I could have ever predicted. I know things started off rough, but I commend the Hello Games team for sticking with it and making it the game it was supposed to be.

A huge thanks to everyone on this forum too for helping guide me through everything I’ve missed (though indirectly, it’s still good to see such a helpful and welcoming community)

I think my only complaint is that I wish the game had more polish. But hey maybe that’ll be part of the next major update, who knows.

Below are a few popular questions that we’ve received from our past FAQ thread. As always we ask that everyone be respectful and we welcome everyone’s contribution so have fun!

Q- I’m keen to start a new passive money making pursuit. What are some good ideas or guides post-Waypoint?

A#1-Gold farm, then take that stack and sell it at a terminal (not traders) in systems that sell gold. Sell all your gold to the terminal and crash the economy. Then buy it all back at 80% off discount. You just got free money and keep all the gold. All this takes is an initial investment on a gold farm, then you carry all that gold with you and just sell/buy back when you get to another system that sells gold. With 50 stacks in my ship’s cargo hold, I can make somewhere around 150 million units in each system I do this in.

A#2-Start a Farm, Fusion Igniters or Statis Devices Farm which will increase your profits to 100- 200 mil fairly quickly and you can even send out multiple freighter missions which will help you get aronium, magno-gold, Enriched carbon and more which will increase the profits even more.

A#3-Quickest way I’ve found to make a TON of units: Harvesting Storm Crystals. Find a VERY hot planet that has frequent fire storms. DURING STORMS ONLY – you can see the bright white light from Storm Crystals if you fly around low enough. Fly to them, land, quickly harvest them, get back in your ship and fly to the next before you burn up.

Q-How do I get the Advanced Mining Laser? I don’t have the option to craft one, and the multi-tool upgrade vendor at the space station doesn’t have the blueprint for sale.

A-In order to get it, you have to look for the blueprints in crashed ships or abandoned facilities. You get it from the main story (awakenings) or you can buy it on the anomaly.

Q-What do I actually do in the game? I finished the tutorial, is there anything else beside gathering stuff, building a base and repeat?

A#1-It’s really whatever you want, there’s a base story, (assuming you haven’t completed it already), follow the quest log and you’ll figure it out, but things You’d want to do for end game? You can collect multiple multitools, ships, built a fleet for your freighter, etc.

Q-Is there a planet that is populated by many players, and they built their base close to each others like a city?

A- Yeah its the Galactic Hub Project, Its a place where many people have bases and each day the numbers grow. Please help yourself. There are many factions in NMS that do this, even NMS Pirates Hub.

Q-I’m still pretty early into the game, just making my way to the center of the galaxy, what should I be spending my credits on?

A-Go hang around a outlaw/pirate trading post. Cheapest S-class start at around 8-8.5 million without a trade-in. I recommend Vikeen pirate, as then you have two good and 1 remote chances at high-maneuverability S-class: fighter, solar, exotic.