One Light Year from Earth

[psyche101]

Originally Posted by astroron

Would you care to offer a solution to the question I asked, what would you consider the extent of the Solar System?

I thought I did
One light year, or to the edge of the Oort Cloud about one quarter the way to Proxima
Centuri.

My opinion is that anything under the gravitational influence of the Sun is in our Solar System.

PS
There is no sign post saying this is the end of the Solar system

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.

[astroron (Ron)]

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.

All is Good
Every little bit of information helps
Cheers

[Dave2042 (Dave)]

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.

[psyche101]

Originally Posted by Dave2042

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.

That does sound like a real head scratcher, if two clusters are in alignment in their relative postion to our vantage point, and we are all heading in the same direction, it might take hundreds of thousands, I guess even millions of years before the expansion of space make the motion apparent enough to distinguish the two. Thanks for the brain food! I am going to look a bit deeper into this. Redshift of the individual members would be the way to determine this would be my first guess?

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

Basically at 1 light year, you are at the edge of the theoretical limit of the solar system, virtually on the edge of the Oort cloud. So you are pretty much in interstellar space.