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When it comes to the weird and wonderful things the universe has to offer, we tend to focus on things like dark matter and black holes that lie in the deepest darkest reaches of space.
However, you don’t need to go that far to find the wonders of the universe, as many of the strangest and most spectacular celestial objects are right here in our own solar system.
What’s more, we get a front row seat to all the action. Black holes are very exciting and all, but they’re (thankfully) a bit far away. The great thing about exploring a little closer to home is that we can actually fly probes past, take photographs of and even land on the cool stuff that catches our eye.
So, let’s take a celestial staycation and take a look and the weird and the wonderful in our own stellar backyard.
9. Pluto’s Nemesis
There’s been a lot of buzz about Pluto of late, which is pretty good going for a dwarf planet more than 4.6 billion miles away. What a lot of people don’t know is that Pluto has a twin, also lurking out there in the kuiper belt.
Orcus is another trans-neptunian object just like Pluto, it’s orbital size, period (year length) and inclination are almost identical to Pluto’s but opposite in almost every way, like a pair of siblings that are determined to be different from one another. When Pluto is at the perihelion (its closest point to the sun), contrary Orcus is at the aphelion (the furthest point) and vice versa and they both orbit the sun “at an angle” like this.
They also both have weirdly large moons relative to their size with Charon measuring roughly half Pluto’s size, and Vanth coming it at around a third of Orcus’.
Orcus, in Etruscan mythology, was a god of the underworld, much like Pluto in Roman mythology. He also happened to be the punisher of broken oaths, so perhaps Orcus is coming for us for demoting Pluto from its planet status.
8. The Sun’s Poles
As objects in the solar system go, the sun is the real MVP.
Usually, objects in our solar system orbit the sun on a roughly equatorial plane, but when the Ulysses space probe was launched back in 1990, it took a wildly different path. Using Jupiter’s gravity to slingshot it, Ulysses was flung out of the usual orbital plane in order to pass over the top of the sun’s poles. Nothing in the solar system will have seen the sun from this angle before, so it provided a unique perspective on our gracious, fiery host.
During its many observations, Ulysses turned up an unexpected result: The sun’s south pole appears to be significantly cooler than its north pole, by about 80,000 kelvin (79726.85 celsius).
Scientists are scratching their heads over this one. It doesn’t appear to be anything to do with the sun’s magnetic polarity, as this switches every 11 years or so, and Ulysses was keeping an eye out for 17. The usual reason why a celestial body would have differing temperatures would be related to its exposure to the sun but, well, this is the sun.
It could be some time before we crack this one, as Ulysses officially bit the dust in 2009, ceasing almost all communications with Earth.
7. Saturn’s Hexagon
As if Saturn wasn’t spectacular enough already, with its beautiful rings and incredible aurora, it’s also got a bizarre hexagonal storm raging at its north pole.
The phenomenon was first discovered by the Voyager probe back in the 1980s, and has since been snapped in stunning detail by Cassini. They say that there are no straight lines in nature, but it looks like there sure is some geometric precision.
Although the hexagon still isn’t fully understood, scientists have managed to recreate it in the lab, using some basic principles of fluid dynamics. This goes a long way to explain the forces at work behind Saturn’s geometric pole.
Because of the seemingly “unnatural” shape of Saturn’s polar storm, some of the conspiracy theories that have popped up around it are pretty breathtaking, ranging from everything from alien structures to illuminati symbolism. It’s amazing stuff if you fancy a chuckle.
Just in case you were wondering whether the hexagon was some kind of illuminati conspiracy, take a look at this one created in a lab.
6. Ceres’ Bright Spots
In 2015, the Dawn spacecraft discovered some weird bright spots, shining out from the surface of the dwarf planet, Ceres. The spots, which are four times brighter than the rest of the planet’s surface, baffled scientists.
Were these bright dots made of ice? Flames? The city lights of an intelligent alien race? Early speculation thought that it might be the result of outgassing, but study of hi-res images found that they were more likely to me highly reflective objects on the planet’s surface.
Unfortunately for the alien lovers out there, these are unlikely to be great space mirrors or extraterrestrial solar panels, and more likely to be boring old salt. Pretty salt, but salt nonetheless.
5. The “Galactic Ghoul”
Space travel is tricky, and a large proportion of our missions to the stars actually fail, including almost two thirds of Mars missions.
Sure, human space exploration is still in its infancy, but could there be something else at play? The Galactic Ghoul or the Mars Curse is how some people refer to the high failure rate of our missions to Mars, conjuring up images of some great martian beast, subsisting on a diet of space probes and rocket fuel.
So, is there really something messing with our space probes? Probably not, and almost certainly not a great galactic ghoul. There’s an outside chance that there is some kind of unaccounted for interference out there that might be messing with our instruments. However, a much better explanation is that space travel is hard. Seeing as we send a large amount of technology to Mars, it being our closest neighbour, the failure rate is going to be proportionally higher.
Now, if a giant space demon suddenly comes swooping out of the sky, I’ll be the first to eat my words but, until then, leave the ghouls and curses to J K Rowling.
4. Enceladus’ Giant Geysers
We’re back in Saturn’s neighbourhood here, with one if its moons, Enceladus.
Those bright plumes pictured above are made up of tons and tons of material being fired from beneath the moon’s surface and off into space. Some of this falls back to the surface as snow, but a lot of it escapes and supplies much of the material that goes into making Saturn’s rings. It looks like Enceladus is creating a nice little ring all its own.
It’s not entirely certain what is causing Enceladus to expel its innards into space, but many scientists think that it could be evidence of an ocean of liquid water, locked beneath the icy surface.
The moon has been found to give off a lot more heat than we initially thought it would. This is exciting as a warm, liquid, saltwater ocean beneath the surface of the ice moon might be an excellent candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life. There probably aren’t any great, alien sea monsters down there (think more “plankton” than “cthulhu”), but we can dream.
3. Io The Space Egg
Io, one of the inner moons of Jupiter, is the most volcanically active place in the solar system. It churns out 100 times more lava than the Earth from over 400 active volcanoes, despite being a teeny 1/12th of the size.
Io’s violent nature is caused by the effects of the other Jovian moons, Europa and Ganymede. As the orbits of these three moons interact, they exert tidal forces on Io, essentially squashing and stretching it, causing a large amount of its mantle to melt and fire through the surface as lava.
The heat produced by this activity is so intense that is was picked up by the New Horizons probe as it passed by in 2007. The probe snapped the above image, showing a volcanic eruption, spewing matter far above the moon’s surface.
You wouldn’t want to stand on the surface, and not just because of the volcanoes. The high levels of hydrogen sulfide on the moon will mean that it gives of a powerful odour of rotten eggs. This combined with its pockmarked surface and sickly yellow colour definitely makes it the ugly duckling of the solar system.
2. Titan. Just Titan.
There’s a lot of focus on Mars as a potential Earth 2.0, what with it being the closest to our planet and all, but we might be better off looking slightly further afield.
Titan is weird for all kinds of reasons. It’s a moon, but it’s bigger than Mercury; it has lakes and oceans, but made up of hydrocarbons such as ethane and methane; and it has an atmosphere that is remarkably similar to Earth’s.
Our nearest neighbours, Mar and Venus, both have atmospheres 100 times thinner and 100 times thicker than the Earth’s respectively, but Titan’s is just 1.5 times thicker than ours. What’s more, it’s mostly nitrogen – about 90%, compared to 80% here at home.
Instead of a water cycle, huge amounts of organic compounds rain down on Titan, forming great lakes teeming with “tholins” which, according to Carl Sagan, are a precursor to carbon-based lifeforms like us.
Even more excitingly, scientists think that they have detected waves in those lakes, and huge electrical storms sparking across the moon’s surface. Combine this moving, shaking and shocking together, and you have conditions very similar to those which we think created life on Earth.
Forget Martians, Titans are where it’s at.
1. Full Solar Eclipses
One of the most bizarre features of our solar system can actually be seen from the Earth. In fact, this phenomenon is so bizarre that the Earth is the only place it can be seen from.
Our home planet is occasionally treated to the spectacle known as the full solar eclipse. This happens when the moon moves between the sun and the Earth, entirely blocking it from view. By an astounding coincidence, the sun happens to be 400 times wider than the moon, but also 400 times further away, making them appear the same size in the Earth’s sky.
Despite the fact that this happens at least twice a year on Earth, as far as we know, it is totally unique and doesn’t occur anywhere else in the solar system, with its 181 moons, 173 of which orbit the “proper” planets.
Is this merely pure coincidence? Probably, but it’s still spectacular.
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