The Mysterious Oort Cloud Surrounding Our Solar System

Astronomers have long wondered where comets came from. Where would something made of frozen gases, rock, and dust originate only to be observed and then reappear after a very long time or sometimes never to be seen again? It’s theorized that there is something on the outer reaches of our solar system where these galactic bodies are born, and it’s called the Oort Cloud.

The Oort Cloud is thought to be a giant spherical shell around the entire solar system. It is the most distant outer region of our solar system, lying far beyond the Kuiper Belt, a donut-shaped region containing icy bodies past the orbit of Neptune. It is also thought to have billions, and maybe trillions, of icy objects floating in it, with some the size of mountains. But even though it’s in our general neighborhood in the galaxy, many things about the Oort Cloud are unknown.

The Oort Cloud is believed to be the source of comets since the orbits of comets are so long. However, this is just a theory since no object has ever been observed in the Oort Cloud. One reason is that the distance to the Oort Cloud is enormous.

The orbit of Pluto is about 30 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun at its closest point and about 50 AU at its farthest point. One AU, by the way, is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun (around 92.9 million…