Nice chart. It’s easy to forget just how far the Oort cloud extends. Sparsely filled with (mostly)small cold stuff, even now we know of relatively few members of this “cloud”. The closer-in Kuiper Belt is easier to study.
Originally shared by Friends of NASA
Welcome to the Sun’s Neighborhood! | NASA
This diagram illustrates the locations of the star systems closest to our Sun. The year when the distance to each system was determined is listed after the system’s name.
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, found two of the four closest systems: the binary brown dwarf WISE 1049-5319 and the brown dwarf WISE J085510.83-071442.5. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope helped pin down the location of the latter object.
The closest system to the sun is a trio of stars that consists of Alpha Centauri, a close companion to it and Proxima Centauri.
Credit: NASA/Penn State University
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#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #SolarSystem #Stars #Cosmos #Universe #WISE #Infrared #Telescope #JPL #Caltech #Pasadena #California #USA #UnitedStates #Diagram #Infographic
The chart should have included the planets. It doesn’t showcase the scale. Only astronomers and college students studying astrophysics can appreciate this one.
John Bailey one light year is about 63,000 AU so all of the planets would fit inside that yellow disk that symbolizes the Sun. In fact, in that 1200×900 pixel chart, 1 LY is about 80 pixels, so the orbital radius of Neptune at 30 AU would be about 0.04 pixels. Earth’s orbit would be 0.001 pixels.
Chris Dolan I realize that, but to the layman it likely would not be apparent
Cool
Hmm