ASTR 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: International Astronomical Union, Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud
Document Summary
Asteroids are more concerning because their orbits are closer to earth. Some orbits cross earth"s orbits (near earth objects) Kuiper belt: a band of comets beyond the orbit of neptune. Only some will enter the inner solar system. Some have highly elliptical orbits (only these could possibly hit earth) Comets would spend more time far from the sun, by the kuiper belt, due to the conservation of angular momentum (kepler"s third law) Equal amounts of space will be swept out in equal amounts of time. Oort cloud: a roughly spherical distribution of comets spread nearly halfway from the sun to the nearest star. These structures represent the leftover debris from the solar nebula. When the sun formed, the energy it produced pushed out the light elements that make up the comets while heavier elements such as rocks and metals were pushed, but not as far. The kuiper belt and asteroid belt have exceptions of large objects (ceres, eris, etc. )
