What is the Oort Cloud?
The Oort Cloud is a theoretical spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that is believed to surround the Sun at a distance of up to around 100,000 AU (2 ly). This places it in interstellar space, beyond the Sun’s Heliosphere where it defines the cosmological boundary between the Solar System and the region of the Sun’s gravitational dominance.
Like the Kuiper Belt and the Scattered Disc, the Oort Cloud is a reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, though it is over a thousands times more distant from our Sun as these other two. The idea of a cloud of icy infinitesimals was first proposed in 1932 by Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik, who postulated that long-period comets originated in an orbiting cloud at the outermost edge of the Solar System.
Thanks for the interesting reading :)
Reference:
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs&Display=OverviewLong
Article:
http://www.universetoday.com/32522/oort-cloud/
Image: The layout of the solar system, including the Oort Cloud, on a logarithmic scale.
Credit: NASA
#space #nasa #oortcloud #solarsystem
Wonderful article. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteTo supplement it a little. The "Oort Cloud" is named after "Jan Oort", a Dutch astronomer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Oort
ReplyDeleteOne thing i didn't know (till reading that wiki page) is that Jan Oort died not THAT long ago. 1992. Well within my lifetime (oke, i was 7, but still). Usually when you read about things like this it's discovered (or hypothesized) very early 20th century or earlier.
Thanks for the extra info Mark :)
ReplyDeleteThe beauty of logarithmic scales.
ReplyDelete"icy infinitesimals" reads like auto-corrected "icy planetesimals".
ReplyDelete