Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Comparison of the Oort cloud, Kuiper Belt and the Main Asteroid Belt. The asteroids of the inner Solar System and Jupiter : The main asteroid belt is located between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars .
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]
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 Kuiper belt lies between 30 and 55 AU from the Sun, while the farther scattered disc extends to over 100 AU, [47] and the distant Oort cloud begins at about 50,000 AU. [68] Originally, however, the Kuiper belt was much denser and closer to the Sun, with an outer edge at approximately 30 AU.
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]
There are about 4,000 known comets in our Solar System so far and most of them come from beyond Pluto, in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. One of such, called C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, will make ...
In 1950 Jan Oort suggested the presence of a cometary reservoir in the outer limits of the Solar System, the Oort cloud, [108] 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 ...
Another subclass of Kuiper belt objects is the so-called scattering objects (SO). These are non-resonant objects that come near enough to Neptune to have their orbits changed from time to time (such as causing changes in semi-major axis of at least 1.5 AU in 10 million years) and are thus undergoing gravitational scattering .