Oort Cloud

Galaxy Portal

The Oort Cloud, also known as the Opik-Oort Cloud,^[3] is a resource-rich region of the Sol System^[5] which contains dwarf planets, orphaned moons^[2] and long-period comets.^[3]

History

The Oort Cloud only receives weak light from Sol's sun and was once home to Xenos creatures^[2], until the region was cleansed by the First Legion, during the early days of the Great Crusade^[1]. This occurred while the First's brother Space Marine Legions were still being formed and the creatures they slew were never named or categorized by the Imperium.^[2]

During the Horus Heresy, Rogal Dorn heavily fortified the Oort Cloud by deploying a massive forge-station dubbed the Arca Silentus which endlessly produced automated attack satellites. However, this was corrupted by a Scrap Code emitter on Mars by Lukas Chrom, forcing a Custodes boarding party to destroy the station.^[4] During the Siege of Terra, parts of the Oort Cloud were enveloped by the massive Warp energy that began to spread across the Sol System as the conflict neared its end.^[3]

Ten millennia later, the Imperium harvested the Oort Cloud for its raw ores, gases and water in order to support the initial launch of the Indomitus Crusade's fleets.^[5]

Trivia

The following information is not to be regarded as officially sanctioned and/ or is not written from an in-universe point of view. A detailed explanation of the term "Trivia" as used in the Lexicanum can be found here.

• The real-world Oort cloud of our solar system is theorized to be a collection of various icy planetesimals and billions of comets. It was named in honour of Dutch astronomer Jan Oort who proposed its existence in 1950. It is proposed that it consists of two parts, an inner disc aligning with the solar elliptical (aka the Hills cloud), and an outer layer encompassing the entire solar system in a sphere. This outer layer essentially marks the furthest possible boundary to draw between our solar system and interstellar space.
• In the Flight of the Eisenstein (Novel) Chapter 15, the "ragged edges of the Oort Cloud" might have been confused with that of the Kuiper Belt, as the scene describes voidships emerging from the Warp Gate in orbit of Pluto and heading towards Terra.^[6]

See also

• Kuiper Belt

Sources

• 1: The Horus Heresy Book Nine, pgs. 81-100
• 2: The Lion: Son of the Forest (Novel), Chapter 4
• 3: The End and the Death: Volume III (Novel), Chapter 1
• 4: Campaigns of the Age of Darkness: The Martian Civil War, pg. 64
• 5: Avenging Son (Novel), Chapter 18
• 6: Flight of the Eisenstein (Novel), Chapter 15

External links

• Oort Cloud on Wikipedia