Kuiper Belt?

[Anjruu]

Hi. I was reading a book recently, and it mentioned the Kuiper Belt, a big cloud of asteroids around the solar system, similar to the asteroid belt, but farther out. I was wondering what the difference was between this Kuiper Belt, and the Oort Cloud. There was a description in the book (Worlds Without End by John S. Lewis) but it didn't really explain much to me.

[[Tycho?]]

http://www.google.com

 

http://www.wikipedia.com

[Stargazer]

The Kuiper Belt is a belt of cometary objects of various sizes, from small comets to Pluto or larger. As far as I can understand, the Kuiper Belt extends out to the Oort Cloud, which probably is spherical, unlike the Kuiper Belt which is mostly concentrated around the ecliptic plane.

[Sisyphus]

Aye. The Oort cloud is just whatever random junk is too far away from the sun to be part of the regular, elliptical orbits (of which the Kuiper belt is the farthest extent), but close enough that every once in a while something takes a few hundred million year-long dive. It probably has a radius about a thousand times that of the kuiper belt (or a billion times the volume ), or about a full lightyear.

[erin]

The oort cloud is much further out than the kuiper belt and is spherical, it has a large area and is where many long period comets come from. Whereas the kuiper belt is just an asteroid belt, beyond the orbit of neptune, which in on the same plane as the planets and contains pluto and many short period comets. (btw, im new here so just thought id share my knowledge n say hi everyone)

[Spyman]

Nice picture from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kuiper_oort.jpg

 

Artist's rendering of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.