The Oort cloud, or the Öpik–Oort cloud (named after Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, 1900-1992), is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The Kuiper belt and the scattered disc, the other two reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth of the Oort cloud's distance. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographical boundary of the Solar System and the region of the Sun's gravitational dominance.
The Oort cloud is thought to comprise two separate regions: a spherical outer Oort cloud and a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud, or Hills cloud. Objects in the Oort cloud are largely composed of ices, such as water, ammonia, and methane.
Oort cloud in "We Install"[]
The oorts along with kuipers were around the edges of a typical solar system. It was a good idea to step over them if you were working on the power unit since they could "freeze your ankles off if you gave them half a chance".
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