Outer Space 🚀

The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud ✔️The Kuiper Belt is a large cluster of icy objects at the edge of our solar system ✔️Oort Cloud is a spherical formation containing comets and other objects. After the discovery of Pluto in 19Z0, scientists began to speculate that it was not the most distant object in the system. Co time, they noted the movements of other objects and in 1992 found a new site. The Kuiper Belt can hold hundreds of thousands of icy objects, whose size varies between small fragments up to 100 km wide. More than a trillion comets could be lurking in the main part of the Kuiper Belt.

Neptune is experiencing strange temperature fluctuations The temperature of Neptune's atmosphere is undergoing strange spikes, and it may take scientists decades to understand exactly what's happening on this distant planet. The ice giant's global temperature dropped about 8 degrees Celsius between 2003 and 2012. Then from 2018 to 2020, thermal imagery shows the planet's south pole became dramatically brighter, indicating a surge of 11 degrees Celsius.

An inscription on a pillar on the lunar surface A plaque with an engraved map of Earth's hemispheres and the words "here men from planet earth set foot on the moon july 1969, a.d." on one of the supports of the lunar module's landing stage that remains on the lunar surface: "HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A. D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND".

A third planet has been found at the nearest star to the Sun A team of astronomers has found evidence for another planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the solar system. The discovery was made using the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (VLT ESO) in Chile. If this discovery is confirmed, it would be the third planet recorded in this planetary system. *Proxima Centauri is the closest red dwarf star to the Sun, which is only a little over four light years away. The proposed planet has a mass of only about a quarter of the mass of the Earth.

Patterns of star islands Hubble is again delighting with beautiful photos: this time the telescope has captured a group of three galaxies in the Phoenix constellation, known collectively as NGC 7764A. The three galaxies are individually labeled NGC 7764A1, NGC 7764A2 and NGC 7764A3. If you get a little fancy, it might look like the two galaxies in the upper right corner resemble the USS Enterprise, the Constitution-class starship of Starfleet from Star Trek. NGC 7764A is located about 425 million light-years from Earth. What's really going on in the picture? We can only guess. It is possible that galaxies collided or interacted, resulting in tails of stars and gas.

A Falcon 9 rocket takes off from Launch Pad 39A to deliver private astronauts to the International Space Station (Mission Ax-1). Photo: SpaceX, April 2022

On April 9, a huge prominence was observed over the southern hemisphere of the Sun, with a total length of about 1 million km! There is no data yet on how many hours it lasted. The animation above is made for you from the latest images from the solar space observatory. Enjoy with us.

Magnetar Artistic Concept On December 27, 2004, a gamma ray burst from SGR 1806-20 arrived in the solar system. The burst was so powerful that it impacted Earth's atmosphere more than 50,000 light-years away. The magnetar emitted more energy in one tenth of a second than the Sun emits in 100,000 years. The outburst is considered the largest explosion in the galaxy since the supernova SN 1604, observed by Johannes Kepler in 1604.

The universe's most powerful magnets There are objects in the universe with extremely powerful magnetic fields. Even within a radius of 1000 kilometers around it, life would be impossible due to distortions of electron clouds of atoms under the influence of its magnetic field. This object is a magnetar - a neutron star, the first evidence of whose existence was obtained in 1998 by observing a powerful flash of gamma-ray and X-ray radiation. Today scientists know of 30 magnetars. The diameter of such a star is about 20 km and its mass is about 1.4 solar masses. They are formed from massive stars with a mass 10-25 times the mass of the Sun. The density of the inside of a magnetar is such that a tablespoon of its matter weighs more than 100 million tons.😱

The first space rat 🐭 In 1961, France launched Hector into space, where he spent 8 minutes before successfully returning unharmed☺️

Why is Pluto no longer considered a planet? Since 2006, Pluto was classified as "minor planets and asteroids”. Scientists were forced to revise the classification by the discovery of Ceres and Eris. They, like Pluto, have not yet cleared their orbit of extraneous celestial bodies. In addition, Pluto cannot be considered the most massive body in its neighborhood. Therefore, despite the presence of an atmosphere and its own satellite, it is still not considered the ninth planet.

The Lyrids are an annually active meteor shower formed by comet C/1861 G1 Thatcher Historical records show that mankind has been observing the Lyrids for over 2,500 years. ✔️The oldest mention of it comes from China: it says that "the stars fell like rain" on the night of March 16, 687 B.C. Earlier it was much more active than it is now. On April 20, 1803, a meteor storm blew over the east coast of the United States - the number of shooting stars was as high as 700 per hour!