You have your skills up, you have your ship fitted….its time to undock and lets scan!

Load your probe launcher with a Deep Space probe and fire it. At this point you can choose to cloak. Open up your Scanner Menu, make sure the System Scanner Tab is up and check the Scan radius of the probe – make sure it is set to maximum. Right click to set it if it is not 256 AU. Hit Analyze and wait for the results. (far left icon near the top)

In the results window, you may see a few cosmic signatures that tell you what they are and have a 100% signal strength. These are usually deadspace areas or sleeper spots which you can go have fun with but they are not the true hidden spots we are after. We are looking for a Cosmic Signature that has no type listed and has low signal strength. You may wind up with several of these.

If we did find one with no type listed, its time to load the core scanner probes into the launcher and launch 4 or them. You will have to uncloak to load and to fire the probes. I usually make myself move forward as I launch them because you cant re-cloak when the probes are right next to you. This way you can cloak a few seconds after the last probe is launched. Dont forget to stop.

Go to your map now and hit Toggle Map if you see the universe map. You should see a representation of the planets in the system and their orbits, and you will see your probes which will look like cubes with arrows coming off each face and a transparent sphere surrounding them. The arrows are used to grab and slide the probes around in 2 directions at a time. You can also grab a cube face and move it around on a plane in any direction.

As you click on the results of your scans of the cosmic signatures (CS), you will see varying sized red spheres inside your deepspace probe bubble. This gives you an idea of where the CS is located. It does not mean the CS is in the center of the red bubble. If it was in the center, the red bubble would be very small. The CS you are hunting could be way up and to the left of the sphere…what we need to do now is find it.

Take your 4 core probes you launched and surround the red bubble on 4 sides. If the red bubble is huge, make sure you have your probes set to their maximum distance of 32 AU. Try to enclose the red bubble inside the core probe bubbles so that no red part is outside of the blue zones and hit scan. If you can’t do this, try to get as much enclosed and scan anyway.

What you are hoping to see is either a red ring, or red dots. If you found a red ring, that means 2 of your probes are close to the CS. If you have a red dot, then 3 or 4 of them are detecting the CS. You can now turn off your Deep Space probe. Leave it out though because you may want to hunt down the other CS’s you detected at the start.

Next – move your probes so they surround the red circle or dots on four sides. Scan again. Hopefully your red ring now shows dots or your red dots are still there. If they are, Lower the scan radius of each of the 4 probes down one level. You can do this by clicking the outside of the scan sphere and dragging it inward or by changing the scan radius of each probe in the scanner window. Move each probe closer to the red dot you are trying to scan down. I usually poke the red dot with the point of each of the cubes arrows. Scan again. Keep reducing the size of the scan radius and adjusting your probes in and out, up and down to be as close to the dot as possible. Usually, you will have the scan radius down to 1 AU or 0.5 AU before the dot turns green.

Your ultimate goal is to get the red dot to turn yellow, then green. When it turns green, you can then bookmark the location and go visit it. While it is yellow, it will start to tell you what type of site you have found….a wormhole, or one of the 4 types of exploration sites.

Cosmic Signature Types

Ladar – Gas Cloud Harvesting
Gravametric – Mining
Magnetometric – Salvage and Archeology
Radar – Hacking

If it is a wormhole, mark it and warp to it. Don’t forget to hit the Recall Probes button! You will have to turn the Deep Space Probe back on to get it to return.

Skills Needed to Probe

1) Science to level 3 which you need for Astrometrics and Astrometeric Rangefinding
2) Astrometrics to level 4 which allows one additional probe in space per level and also needed to learn Acquisition and Pinpointing. You need level 5 to operate Deep Space Probes.
3) Astrometric Acquisition to at least level 3 – 10% reduction in scan probe scan time per level.
4) Astrometric Pinpointing to at least level 3 – Greater accuracy in hunting down targets found through scanning. Reduces maximum scan deviation by 10% per level.
5) Astrometric Rangefinding to at least level 4 – 10% increase to scan probe strength per level. (slowest to raise)

Raising the last 3 to level 5 will help speed up your tracking down of Cosmic Signatures inside the wormhole.

Other Skills to Consider

Jury Rigging 1 to add the optional scan rigs
Hacking
Archeology
Salvaging
Mining
Covert Ops
Gas Cloud Harvesting

Equipment

Core Scanner Probes – Minimum 4 – Max scan range 32 AU
Deepspace Scanner Probes – 1 – Max scan range 256 AU
I would keep more in the cargo hold just in case – Probes will disappear after being in space for an Hour.
Expanded Probe Launcher or Core Probe Launcher – Core Probe Launchers will not launch a Deep Space Probe…so I would use an expanded one.

Optional Equipment

Sisters Core Scan Probe Launcher & Sisters Expanded Scan Probe Launcher give a 5% increase in scan strength
Sisters Core Scanner Probe have a 10% increase to base scan strength
Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I Rig (adds 10% strength to probes)
Gravity Capacitor Upgrade II Rig (adds 15% strength to probes)
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Codebreaker
Analyzer
Salvager
Gas Cloud Harvester
There are a few implants that boost strength, scan time, and reduce deviation
Shield booster to refresh your shield when warping thru wormholes. They do a little damage to you sometimes.

Ships

For starters – you can use a simple Frigate. The following give a bonus to scan strength: Heron, Imicus, Magnate, Probe

If you are serious about scanning then you will want to invest in a Covert Ops Frigate which gives a little more bonus to scan strength: Anathema, Buzzard, Cheetah, Helios.

You will need the appropriate skill to fly them. Being able to scan while hidden and warp to the areas to scope them out without revealing yourself is REALLY nice. Remember, most of the time you are in 0.0 space and not able to defend yourself well in a scanning ship all alone.