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Oort Limit

Oort Limit

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There are two definitions of the Oort limit:
  • the outer boundary of the Oort cloud
    Oort cloud
    The Oort cloud , or the Öpik–Oort cloud , is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun...

    . The current estimate is about 100,000 astronomical units (15 trillion km, or 1.5 lightyears) from the Sun, which is approximately 1/3 of the distance to the nearest star (Alpha Centauri
    Alpha Centauri
    Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus...

    ).
  • the estimate of the local density of matter (mass per unit volume) in the Sun's vicinity.