Where are the Kuiper Belt, the Asteroid Belt, and the Oort Cloud, and what is located in each?
The Kuiper Belt is located about 40 – 200 AU, The Asteroid belt is located at about 2.8 AU, and the Oort Cloud is located at about 20,000 – 50,000 AU. The Asteroid belt has (not surprisingly) asteroids, while both the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud have comets, the Kuiper belt being the source for short period comets and the Oort Cloud being the source for long period comets. 11) Draw the layers of the sun. 12) Describe the astrometric method of searching for extrasolar planets (planets orbiting other stars.) Any two objects orbit their common center of mass, or barycenter. This is the point in space where the objects would balance if they were stuck on a very long stick. In the case of a planet and a star, this point is within the star, but NOT at the center of the star. If we measure the position of a star with a planet very carefully over a period of time, we would find that the star “wobbles” a little as the planet orbits. The bigger the planet is compared to the star, the more the sta
