Star passages through the Oort cloud

Stars passing through the Oort cloud eject comets to interstellar space and initiate showers of comets into the planetary region. Monte Carlo simulations of such passages are performed on a representative distribution of cometary orbits. Ejected comets generally lie along a narrow tunnel “drilled” by the star through the cloud. However, shower comets come from the entire cloud, and do not give a strong signature of the star's passage, except in the inverse semimajor axis distribution for the shower comets. The planetary system is likely not experiencing a cometary shower at this time.