The Edge of the Solar System

This week we leave the familiar planets behind and venture into the farthest reaches of our Solar System, into regions where the Sun’s influence begins to fade and the boundaries of our cosmic neighborhood grow uncertain.

We explore the Kuiper Belt, a vast disk of icy remnants left over from the formation of the planets, and travel even farther into the mysterious Oort Cloud, a distant, spherical halo of objects that may extend halfway to the nearest stars. Along the way, we uncover the discoveries that reshaped our understanding of the Solar System, from the first detection of Kuiper Belt objects to the controversial reclassification of Pluto after the discovery of Eris.

We also follow the journey of the Voyager spacecraft, now drifting through interstellar space yet still deep within the Sun’s extended domain, and examine the ongoing search for the elusive Planet Nine, a world that may exist only as a gravitational whisper in the darkness.

And then there are the visitors: interstellar objects like ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov, fragments from other star systems passing briefly through our own.

In this week’s night sky report, we look ahead to the April 1 Full Moon, known as the Pink Moon, and highlight what you can still observe under bright moonlight, including Jupiter, several star clusters, and a beautiful close pairing of the Moon and Regulus.

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