Planets to the edge of the Oort Cloud

The Oort Cloud is named for Jan Oort, the Dutch astronomer
who predicted its existence in the 1950s.

Oort Cloud

• outside Neptune’s orbit is the Kuiper Belt.
• beyond the fringes of the Kuiper belt is the Oort Cloud.
• unlike the orbits of the planets and the Kuiper Belt, which are pretty flat like a disk.
• it’s a giant spherical shell surrounding the sun, planets, and Kuiper Belt Objects.
• he Oort cloud comprises two regions;

  1) There is a spherical outer Oort cloud, and a disc shaped inner cloud called the Hills cloud.
  2) Objects in the Oort Cloud are mostly composed of water ice, ammonia and methane.

• formation – the leading idea for the formation of the Oort Cloud says that these icy objects were not always so far from the Sun – after the planets formed 4.6 billion years ago, the region in which they formed still contained lots of leftover chunks called planetesimals.

Planetesimals

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Planets to the edge of the Oort Cloud

• Mercury
• Venus
• Earth
• Mars
• Asteroids Belt
• Jupiter
• Jupiter’s Galilean moons
  –  Io
  –  Europa
  –  Ganymede
  –  Callisto
• Saturn
• Saturn’s Ring
• Uranus
• Neptune
• Pluto
• Planetoids
• Comets
• Oort Cloud

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