Quote:
Originally Posted by psyche101
That sounds more than fair enough! The Oort could does seem to define the gravitational reaches of our system, I was interested to see if people find Pluto, The Hills Cloud, or the Oort could the limit. Personally I would agree with you. It is just that if the OP was asking where one light year in our solar system might be, that the complexities of the Oort could might be something that person has yet to discover, and be amazed by. As such, the reference may have been lost 
Maybe a sign is a good idea because we cannot see those little dark comets all the way out there - maybe one of these?
http://images.wikia.com/hitchhikers/...erse_cover.jpg
Cheers. |
This reminds me of my Honours thesis long ago, which was on cluster galaxies. I ran into essentially this problem only much worse.
The definition of a cluster member is that it is gravitationally bound to the cluster - simple enough in theory. However, looking at a particular galaxy 'near' a cluster and deciding whether it is a member is very difficult. There was an agreed measure, but it was obviously a wild approximation. I don't know if anyone's improved on this since.