1. Asteroid Belt Kuiper Belt Oort cloud

3. Asteroid Belt Discovered in 1801.
Piazza found Ceres. Olbers found Pallas. Previously predicted by Franz Xaver VonZach.

4. Asteroid Belt
The region of space between Mars and Jupiter; about 2.8AU
Hundreds of thousands of asteroids known. Probably millions.

5. Asteroid Belt 3 types of asteroid: Carbonaceous, Silicate, Metallic
Even the largest object in the belt, Ceres, is too dim to see without aid

6. Asteroid Belt
Remnants of a planet-formation process that failed

8. Kuiper Belt Discovered in 1992
Named for Dutch Astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who had PREDICTED its existence in 1951.

9. Kuiper Belt Region beyond Neptune; 30 to over 50AU
At least small, icy, slow-moving, objects

10. Kuiper Belt
Very faint objects because small, far and reflect light from Sun
A million times fainter than faintest we can see with naked-eye

11. Kuiper Belt
History of solar system

13. Oort Cloud Hypothetical spherical cloud. No direct observations.
Proposed by Ernst Opik (1932), Jan Henrik Oort (1950)

14. Oort Cloud 50 000AU; defines gravitational boundary of solar system
Source of long-period Comets

15. Oort Cloud Objects composed of ices (water, methane, and ammonia)
2 regions: outer sphere, inner disc

16. Oort Cloud Comets can not have formed on their current orbit
Must be held in an outer reservoir

17. Sources
Universe: The Definitive Visual Guide