Re: Detecting the Oort cloud.

"Robert Clark" <rgregoryclark@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Assuming Oort cloud comets have about the same reflectivity as known
> comets, could the planned 100 meter telescopes resolve them at the 1
> light-year distance of the Oort cloud?

No comet has ever been observed beyond the orbit of Neptune.
The hypothetical Oort cloud is 1000 times farther away than the orbit of
Neptune.

> Could a 100 meter telescope detect an Oort comet as a point light
> source?

The magnitude of most Oort cloud comets would be in the 50s.
The largest telescope in the world, in its longest exposures, has not
seen beyond about magnitude 32.

> Since there is theorized to be a cloud of comets there could a 100
> meter telescope detect them as a cloud of objects if not individually?

If you took a spacecraft out to the distance of the Oort
cloud and searched around for years, you might never come across an Oort
cloud comet. The volume of space at that distance is just too great.
Consider: There are an estimated 200 billion stars in the Milky Way
galaxy, and 10 billion other comparable galaxies in the visible
universe. You could pack all those stars in all those galaxies inside
the Oort cloud without touching. -|Tom|-


Tom Van Flandern - Washington, DC - see our ad-free, spam-free web site
on replacement astronomy research at http://metaresearch.org


.

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