We typically think of the Oort cloud as scattered ice balls floating far from the sun, yet still tied to it gravitationally. Occasionally, some wayward gravitational perturbation will knock one of ...

Far beyond the planets, past even the most distant dwarf worlds, lies a vast shell of icy debris that marks the true outer edge of the solar system. Known as the Oort Cloud, this hypothesized swarm of ...

It almost sounds like a riddle. We know where comets come from, even though we've never seen their home. Some comets come back into the inner solar system again and again every few decades. But some ...

Astronomers announced the discovery of two unusual objects in comet-like orbits that originate in the Oort cloud but with almost no activity—giving scientists a first look at their surfaces. These ...

A team of Leiden astronomers has managed to calculate the first 100 million years of the history of the Oort cloud in its entirety. Until now, only parts of the history had been studied separately.

A cloud of some trillion or more icy bodies is said to surround our solar system, orbiting the sun. In 1950, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort proposed that some comets we see closer to Earth have flung into ...

Far off at the most distant edge of the solar system is the Oort cloud, a shroud of ice and dust largely unchanged since the very beginning of the solar system. Looking at the Oort cloud is like ...

Learn about the Oort cloud, a vast area beyond the inner solar system that is believed to contain icy objects arranged in a spiral shape. At the edge of our solar system, a host of large, icy bodies ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope turned to the famed ringed world of Saturn for its first near-infrared observations of the ...