this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
277 points (98.9% liked)
BeWowed
698 readers
1 users here now
A friendly place for people to share exceptionals videos and images that will leave other users ~~speechless~~ wowed!
Community Rules:
- No hate, be respectful
- No spam
- No self-promotion
- No Illegal Content
- No Porn/Sexually Explicit Content
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It is likely to be neither. The last major or minor planet is not the edge of the solar system.
The size of the solar system is much larger than that.
One definition is the outer limit of the oort cloud. ( the furthest objects in orbit around the sun)
Pluto is, on average 39 AU (AU = sun to earth distance) from the sun.
The Oort cloud starts at ~20,000 AU and finishes at 200,000 AU.
Another is the Heliopause.
The heilopause is the volume of a bubble of space that is filled with the solar wind. At the heliopause the outward solar wind pressure is balanced with the pressure of the interstellar medium.
That is at about 120 AU.
If they used the heilopause: the circle is 4 times bigger than the orbit of Pluto.
If they used the Oort cloud, the circle is 500 times bigger than the orbit of Pluto.
You are right scientifically, but since this was probably made for the public, the orbits of the planets tend to be what is pictured as "the solar system". Anyway, given the scale presented, all these different boundaries still look like a dot so it doesn't matter.