Visiting the Oort Cloud

We as humans have yet to visit The Oort Cloud. We haven't yet had the chance to observe any of these icy bodies up close so there is a lot of mystery surrounding the Oort Cloud. The logistics of actually sending a probe out there to explore are probably not feasible at this time. It would take a lot of fuel to actually make it and would need a great deal of funding to bankroll such a mission.

However there is some hope that we can learn a little bit about the Oort Cloud in conjunction with the New Horizons mission that launched in 2006 to visit the Kuiper belt by 2026. Hopefully there will be some clues we can gather from observing the Kuiper Belt up close and personal.

Our galaxy holds many wonders and even though we might not visit the Oort Cloud in our lifetime there is still a chance we can learn more about it. Technology is progressing at a very high rate and even though a visit to the Oort Cloud might not happen we still have a shot at discovering new evidence we can use to fully understand how the Oort Cloud was formed and the mysteries surrounding it.

Work Cited

"Solar System Exploration: Missions: New Horizons."Solar System Exploration: NASA. N.p.. Web. 12 Apr 2014. <https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?Sort=Target&Target=KBOs&MCode=PKB>.

Hadhazy, Adam. "Greatest Mysteries of The Oort Cloud." Live Science. N.p.. Web. 12 Apr 2014. <http://www.livescience.com/33515-oort-cloud-mysteries-universe-cosmos.html>.

Dinerman, Taylor. "Hitching a Ride to the Oort Cloud."The Space Review. N.p.. Web. 13 Apr 2014. <http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1189/1>.

How the Oort Cloud was Formed

The Oort cloud is gravitationally bound to our Solar System and follows it's orbit around the Milky Way. So the question is how was The Oort Cloud formed?

Believe it or not there are many theories floating around about this subject and no solution that is clear cut. Some believe that the Oort Cloud was formed around the same time as the giant planets were being formed as well as using the same process. This theory was made popular by Viktor S. Safronov in 1972 in his Accretionary theory and supported also by A.G.W. Cameron with his model of the Protostar Nebula. This suggests that the Oort cloud has been around 4.6 billion years.

Protostar Nebula

Another theory that has become popular recently is that the Oort Cloud is much younger then our Solar System and that instead of being formed by a disk of dust around the Sun during the formation of the planets rather the Oort Cloud could possibly have been formed by Giant Molecular Clouds.

So with these two different opinions there is no clear cut consensus of which theory is correct, as of now anyways.

Work Cited

Delsemme, Armand. "Comets." Britannica. N.p.. Web. 5 Apr 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/127524/comet/54352/Formation-of-the-Oort-cloud>.

 Harold F. Levison, Luke Dones, Martin J. Duncan (2001). "The Origin of Halley-Type Comets: Probing the Inner Oort Cloud. Astronomical Journal

Oort Cloud Structure

First thing about the Oort Cloud is that it really isn't a cloud! It's a large mass of comets with orbits that are around a thousand years and it essentially forms a shell around our Solar System. These comets are icy bodies and there are believed to be about 2 trillion of these that make up the Oort Cloud. These comets are usually made up of ammonia, methane, and water.

The space that the Oort Cloud takes up is anywhere from 5,000 Astronomical Units to 100,000 Astronomical Units. So picture the distance from the Earth to the Sun and multiply that by those numbers. It is a hard distance to grasp conceptually when working with such vast distances.


These icy bodies when they interact with passing stars, molecule clouds, or tidal interactions sometimes have their orbits affected which causes these comets to fall within the inner Solar System as long period comets.

Work Cited

"Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud: Read More." Solar System Exploration. NASA. Web. 3 Apr 2014. <http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs&Display=OverviewLong>.

Redd, Noah. "Oort Cloud: The Outer Solar System's Icy Shell." Space.com. N.p., 02 Jul 2012. Web. 1 Apr 2014. <http://www.space.com/16401-oort-cloud-the-outer-solar-system-s-icy-shell.html>.,

Who discovered the Oort Cloud?

The Oort Cloud will be the main topic of these series of blog posts and for the first blog today I will be talking a little bit about the man responsible for discovering the Oort Cloud, who is Jan Hendrik Oort.

Born April 28th, 1900, in Franeker, Netherlands Jan Hendrik Oort turned out to be one of the top astronomers of the 20th Century.  He was an astronomer for the Leiden Observatory from 1924-1970 and also served as director for a time. In 1927 he had an instrumental part in proving that Bertil Lindblad's theory that the Milky Way rotates around it's own plane around the center of the Galaxy, due in most part from his own observations and refined thw theory into what it is today. In 1932 he was the first person to uncover evidence on dark matter as well.

One of his most important and fascinating discoveries was his proposal that certain comets came from a large cloud of small icy bodies that orbit the Sun about 1 light year away. This cloud is a spherical cloud that encircles our whole Solar System. When passing stars interact with this cloud it alters some comets orbits so that they spiral towards the Sun or are sent out of our Solar System deep into Space.

Jan Hendrik Oort died in 1992 and is recognized for what he was a great astronomer as well as an innovator in radio astronomy.

Work Cited

Redd, Noah. "Oort Cloud: The Outer Solar System's Icy Shell." Space.com. N.p., 02 Jul 2012. Web. 1 Apr 2014. <http://www.space.com/16401-oort-cloud-the-outer-solar-system-s-icy-shell.html>.

Editor's of Britannica, . "Jan Hendrik Oort." Britannican.pag. Web. 1 Apr 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/429497/Jan-Hendrik-Oort>.

N.d. Photograph. n.p. Web. 1 Apr 2014. <http://www.astro.virginia.edu/class/whittle/astr553/Topic01/t1_Oort.jpg>.