What is the Kuiper Belt?

What is the Kuiper Belt?

"The Kuiper Belt(KB) is a disk shaped population of comet nuclei extending from Neptune's orbit to perhaps thousands of astronomical units from the sun"(Kay360). The highly populated innermost part of the KB has an outer edge of approximately 50 AU from the sun.

The KB is similar to the asteroid belt found between the orbits of mars and Jupiter, but it is 20 times as wide and somewhere between 20-200 times more massive. The KB is a region from the outside of Neptune's orbit to the farthest point of Pluto's orbit.

Also in 1992 the first Kuiper Belt Object(KBO) was discovered.

The KB was named after Gernald Kuiper! Who proposed its existence in 1951!




Gerard Kuiper Image Citation



The KB is flat and disk like.




Kuiper Belt Image Citation

The Kuiper belt is made up of KB Objects also known as transneptunians objects explained in first blog.

I found a great picture that shows the KBO's and the layout of it all. It shows the layout of it all beginning at Sun, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto. What i find useful of this image is it shows the Heliosphere and the Interstellar Medium in a bigger picture. This allows us to see the relationship of the KB and the Oort Cloud. It also has a scale that goes across the picture horizontally that shows the distances in AU.




Kuiper Belt Layout Citation


Another interesting point that intrigued me was how the KB has a relationship to earth! We all may think that the KB is just some thing in the universe that has no relationship to us. But in fact it does! How so? "Scientist think that some of earth's water was contributed during the impacts of icy planetisimals early in the history of the solar system"(Kay387). Those icy planestisimals about half of them were flung outward from the KB and Oort Cloud! The other half was flung toward the sun. Some of those flung toward the sun were believed likely to hit earth!! So because much of the comet nuclei and asteroids are forms of water ice, it is said that some of earths water came from this early bombardment. I found that very amusing because it shows how the KB had some impact on the water we have on earth!

Some interesting facts of the Kuiper Belt!

1. The KB could contain hundreds of thousands of ice bodies that range in size from small chunks of ice to worldlets larger than 100 kilometers across.

2. Astronomers have tracked most short period comets from their origins in the KB. These comets with orbital periods of 200 years or less.

3. There could be more than a trillion comet nuclei in the main body of the KB.

4. The largest KBO's are Pluto, Quasor, Makemake, Haumea, Ixion, and Varuna, These are referred to as trans-neptunian objects.

5. The first mission to the KB and beyond will fly by Pluto in July 2015. Its called new horizons and will survey Pluto, Charon and the other moons before heading out to study other KBO's in the future.

Kay, Laura, Stacy Palen, Brad Smith, and George Blumenthal. The Solar System. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

21st Century Astronomy Stars and Galaxies. N.p.: W W Norton & Co, 2016. Print.

http://space-facts.com/kuiper-belt/

http://theplanets.org/kuiper-belt/