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The Kuiper belt (/ ˈ k aɪ p ər / KY-pər) [1] is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. [2] It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive.
486958 Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU 69; formerly nicknamed Ultima Thule [a]) is a trans-Neptunian object located in the Kuiper belt.Arrokoth became the farthest and most primitive object in the Solar System visited by a spacecraft when the NASA space probe New Horizons conducted a flyby on 1 January 2019.
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune.It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun.
The asteroid and comet belts orbit the Sun from the inner rocky planets into outer parts of the Solar System, interstellar space. [16] [17] [18] An astronomical unit, or AU, is the distance from Earth to the Sun, which is approximately 150 billion meters (93 million miles). [19]
There are about 4,000 known comets in our Solar System so far and most of them come from beyond Pluto, in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. One of such, called C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, will make ...
15810 Arawn (provisional designation 1994 JR 1) is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO) from the inner regions of the Kuiper belt, approximately 133 kilometres (83 mi) in diameter. It belongs to the plutinos, the most populous class of resonant TNOs.
Since the year 2000, a number of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) with diameters of between 500 and 1500 km (more than half that of Pluto) have been discovered. 50000 Quaoar, a classical KBO discovered in 2002, is over 1000 km across. Makemake and Haumea, both announced on 29 July 2005, are larger still.
A classical Kuiper belt object, also called a cubewano (/ ˌ k juː b iː ˈ w ʌ n oʊ / "QB1-o"), [a] is a low-eccentricity Kuiper belt object (KBO) that orbits beyond Neptune and is not controlled by an orbital resonance with Neptune. Cubewanos have orbits with semi-major axes in the 40–50 AU range and, unlike Pluto, do not cross Neptune's ...