Histon Encyclopedia
Oort Cloud
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The Oort Cloud is a vast sperical cloud of small and icy bodies orbiting the Sun at distrances ranging from about 0.3 light-year to one light-year or more that is probably the source of most long-period comets.
 
Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort (1900-1992), noticed in 1950 that no comets have an orbit which would show an interstellar origin. He proposed that the Sun is surrounded by billions of these objects.  This objects are only detectable, occasionally, if the enter the inner solar system.  Primordial bodies dating from the formation of our solar system is what the Oort Cloud is believed to contain.  Whether the Oort Cloud merges, in its inner region, into the disk-shaped Kuiper belt is unknown.

Written by Alex K.