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The Kuiper belt is distinct from the hypothesized Oort cloud, which is believed to be a thousand times more distant and mostly spherical. The objects within the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc and any potential Hills cloud or Oort cloud objects, are collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). [21]
Kuiper belt large belt, 43 to 64.5 AU; Scattered disc small group, 21.5 to 215 AU; Sednoid (inner Oort cloud objects) small group of four or more, high elliptical orbits, 47.8 to 80 AU; Extreme trans-Neptunian objects 150 to 250 AU; Hills cloud a large hypothetical circumstellar disc
The Oort cloud (/ ɔːr t, ʊər t /), [1] sometimes called the Öpik–Oort cloud, [2] is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). [3] [note 1] [4] The concept of such a cloud was proposed in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, in whose ...
The existence of planets beyond Neptune, ranging from less than an Earth mass up to a brown dwarf has been often postulated [37] [38] for different theoretical reasons to explain several observed or speculated features of the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud.
The Kuiper belt, scattered disk, and Oort cloud are three conventional divisions of this volume of space. [1] [nb 1] As of April 2022, the catalog of minor planets contains 901 numbered TNOs. In addition, there are more than 3,000 unnumbered TNOs, which have been observed since 1993. [3] [4] [5]
Makemake (38.1–52.8 AU), although smaller than Pluto, is the largest known object in the classical Kuiper belt (that is, a Kuiper belt object not in a confirmed resonance with Neptune). Makemake is the brightest object in the Kuiper belt after Pluto. Discovered in 2005, it was officially named in 2009. [212]
In 1950 Jan Oort suggested the presence of a cometary reservoir in the outer limits of the Solar System, the Oort cloud, [109] and in 1951 Gerard Kuiper argued for an annular reservoir of comets between 40 and 100 astronomical units from the Sun having formed early in the Solar System's evolution, but he did not think that such a belt still ...
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