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Origin of comets

Comets are observed to come to the solar system from all directions, therefore the place where the comets come from is thought to be a giant sphere surrounding the solar system. This sphere is called the Oort cloud after Jan Oort who suggested its existence in 1950. Location of Oort cloud is as far away as 100,000 AU. (An AU is the distance from the earth to the sun and is equivalent to about 100,000,000 miles.)

Within the cloud, comets are typically tens of millions of kilometers apart. They are weakly bound to the sun, and passing stars and other forces can readily change their orbits, sending them into the inner solar system or out to interstellar space. The total mass of comets in the Oort cloud is estimated to be 40 times that of Earth.

Some comets come from a closer region called the Kuiper Belt, which is located past the orbit of Pluto. Kuiper Belt objects are the source of the Jupiter family, a group of comets whose orbits take them between Jupiter and the sun in a short period of time (3-10 years). Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which became trapped in a gravity well and plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1993, may have been a member of the Jupiter family of comets.

posted by: kyawoo at 01:03 | link | comments |
comets

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