oh the wonderful kessel, home of the teir 5's and some nice loot on a good day.
All ships in this sector are teir 5, and of course this is where the corvette lives as well.
Its not a PVP zone, it was back in the release days, but due to nasty nasty lil pilots hyper point camping to kill all the nice little pilots just trying to get their masters badge as they hypered in it was changed, a good change i may say kessel can be hard enough with npc gank squads without other players helping them out lol.
Getting to kessel depends on your faction, rebels go to the neutral deep space station in dant space, freelancers use the deep space station in dath space, and the imps use the deep space station in endor space i beleive.
you use the same stations to get to deep space as well, which is a pvp zone, but you can only get to once you have your master badge.
i find kessel is fine as a freelancer, only pirates agro you, imps and rebs can be picked off at your leisure if your careful, but as a faction pilot it can be a bit shall we say hectic unless your careful.
Hope this helps, good luck out there
and may the force be with you, well unless your and imperial pilot :P