The Oort cloud /ˈɔrt/,[1] or the Öpik–Oort cloud[2] (named after Jan Oort), is a hypothesized spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun.[3] This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest starto the Sun. The Kuiper belt and the scattered disc, the other two reservoirs oftrans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth of the Oort cloud's distance. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographicalboundary of the Solar System and the region of the Sun's gravitational dominance.[4]
The Oort cloud is thought to comprise two separate regions: a spherical outer Oort cloud and a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud, or Hills cloud. Objects in the Oort cloud are largely composed of ices, such as water, ammonia, andmethane.
Astronomers believe that the matter composing the Oort cloud formed closer to the Sun and was scattered far out into space by the gravitational effects of the giant planets early in the Solar System's evolution.[3] However, citing theSouthwest Research Institute, NASA published a 2010 article that includes the following quotation:
We know that stars form in clusters. The Sun was born within a huge community of other stars that formed in the same gas cloud. In that birth cluster, the stars were close enough together to pull comets away from each other via gravity.[5]
It is therefore speculated that the Oort cloud is, at least partly, the product of an exchange of materials between the Sun and its sister stars as they formed and drifted apart.[5]
Although no confirmed direct observations of the Oort cloud have been made, astronomers believe that it is the source of all long-period and Halley-type[citation needed] comets entering theinner Solar System and many of the centaurs and Jupiter-family comets as well.[6] The outer Oort cloud is only loosely bound to the Solar System, and thus is easily affected by the gravitational pull both of passing stars and of the Milky Way itself. These forces occasionally dislodge comets from their orbits within the cloud and send them towards the inner Solar System.[3] Based on their orbits, most of the short-period comets may come from the scattered disc, but some may still have originated from the Oort cloud.[3][6] Although the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc have been observed and mapped, only four currently known trans-Neptunian objects—90377 Sedna, 2000 CR105, 2006 SQ372, and 2008 KV42—are considered possible members of the inner Oort cloud.