We, as humans, are used to the usual. In the daytime we expect to look up and see the sun, except if it is very cloudy of course, and at night we expect to see the moon and stars, if the moon is out. It is all very predictable. But we are beginning to learn that space and the objects that it contains are most unusual and what we may find is not so predictable. We may not have even begun to realize yet how unusual space is. As we progress with our explorations we find more and more unusual objects and planets.

For over 100 years astronomers knew of the existence of the asteroid named 87 Sylvia. They never thought much about it, after all it was just one of many thousands of these bodies. As our telescopes became more sophisticated and our probes began to go out into space we began to learn more and more about the mysteries out there. We even learned that some of the objects that we thought we knew everything about had secrets that they had kept from us. 87 Sylvia has two tiny satellites that orbit it. Considering the fact that it was discovered in 1866, astronomers were surprised at this finding. Not only was this surprising but we now have found 60 asteroids that have at least one companion orbiting them. It turns out that this discovery, which was first thought to be unique is not unusual at all. When we think of satellites orbiting an object we tend to think of the object that is being orbited as being bigger than the satellites going around it, but in several cases we have found asteroids of the same size orbiting other asteroids.

We all know that the heavens are full of stars. These stars belong to groups known as galaxies. We live in a galaxy known as the Milky Way Galaxy. When someone looks into space with a powerful telescope he or she will see many thousands of these galaxies, each of which is composed of tens of thousands to millions of stars. Although we expect to see galaxies in the heavens, sometimes we see more than that. An example of this is the Cartwheel Galaxy. It is actually two galaxies that are colliding. Two galaxies have collided head on. The ring feature you see in the photo was caused by a smaller galaxy crashing into a bigger one. It is the same effect that you get when you drop a rock into a lake and you see the circles that flow outward. It is believed that the Cartwheel Galaxy was very similar to our Milky Way Galaxy before the collision.

Cartwheel Galaxy
Photo Source: NASA

When Pluto was discovered it was thought that all the planets had been found. There is a new debate raging today among astronomers and that debate concerns whether Pluto is even a planet. Another world has been found that is further out than Pluto and about half it's size. It is Quaoar and it is covered with ice. This is the largest body found in our solar system in the last 75 years. It is located in a region known as the Kuiper Belt which many astronomers believe is at the edge of our solar system.

Quaoar
Photo Source: NASA

Some strange objects that we have found in space have an appetite. I am not saying that these objects are alive or anything like that, but I am saying that these objects are eating the matter of other objects. One of these objects is Centaurus X-3. It is sucking matter out of an object and is spinning ever faster and faster. This behavior is very strange indeed. Astronomers don't even understand the mechanics of this unusual action right now.

Centaurus X-3
Artist Conception
Image Source: NASA

It is said that you don't have to look into space to find strange objects, you can do that just by examining our nearest neighbor, the Moon. What could be so strange on the Moon? Well I am told that if you look at Latitude 10, Longitude 56, you will discover something truly unique. It is a cube. A dark cube that looks more like a black shadow of a cube because you can see absolutely no detail on it. Quite frankly there are many places on the internet that show enlarged NASA photos of the moon that seem to contain ruins or strange structures on the surface of our heavenly neighbor.

I am very curious to know what else we will find out there? It has long been believed that our sun might be the companion of a double star. Double stars are quite common. Could there be another star that is in sync with the sun? Maybe if there is, it even has planets orbiting it. It sort or reminds me of a movie that I once saw that was about another planet that was in our solar system but always on the opposite side of the Sun and thus invisible.

Might we find things that look like comets but are not made of water ice but some much more exotic material that we don't even know about yet? Better than that, could there be rifts in space, worm holes and time tunnels of different sorts out there just waiting for us to discover them? I guess this is some how the explorers of the early centuries felt when they took off for a long journey into the unknown. It is the expectation of the unknown that gets you excited.