Mondo Knows Facts

The Oort Cloud is a distant spherical shell of comets

Trillions of icy objects orbit up to one hundred thousand AU from the Sun

Extending far beyond the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud is a theoretical spherical shell of icy objects surrounding the solar system at distances up to 100,000 Astronomical Units. Gravitational nudges from passing stars occasionally disrupt these icy bodies, sending long-period comets falling towards the inner solar system.

Comet Hale-Bopp from Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-83)
NASA ยท Public domain ยท source

Where this comes from

NASA Science

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

Go further

More facts like this

Tags: oort cloud, comets, solar system

The Oort Cloud is a distant spherical shell of comets: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Trillions of icy objects orbit up to one hundred thousand AU from the Sun. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a space fact?
Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.