Astronomers in 2005 announced the encounter of a body in the Kuiper Belt understood to be greater in size than Pluto, although later interpretations exposed it was somewhat smaller. The body encountered was acknowledged as Eris, and orbits the sun roughly around once every 580 years, moving nearly one hundred times further from the sun than Earth does. In 2006 after the discovery of Eris, it showed several astronomers the difficulty of labeling Pluto a full-scale planet, and Pluto, Eris, and the biggest asteroid Ceres were now reclassified as dwarf planets.

Due to their insignificant size and withdrawn location, Kuiper Belt Objects are very difficult to notice from Earth.  With the infrared measurements of NASA’s space-based telescopes, Spitzer, it has aided in figuring out sizes for the major objects.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has learned the slightest entity ever seen in noticeable light in the Kuiper Belt, an immense ring of icy remains that surround the outer perimeter of the solar system.  The picture below shows the concept of an artist’s idea of the term “the needle-in-a-haystack” this body that was discovered by Hubble is merely 3,200 feet across and 4.2 billion miles away.

 

http://www.space.com/16144-kuiper-belt-objects.html

 

Neptune’s gravitational effect does not really affect the Kuiper Belt, so the articles at hand can continue unchanging in their orbits. The regions substances are involved in what are identified as Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs).  Trans-Neptunian Objects orbit further from the Sun than Neptune. Even though a lot of comets are believed to have derived from the Oort Cloud, various do originate from the Kuiper Belt.  Sedna is another object in the Kuiper Belt which is about three fourths the size of Pluto and was exposed in 2004. It takes about 10,500 years to make a lone orbit because it so far away from the sun. 

Considerable amounts of gas, dust and rocks came together to develop the sun and planets, when the solar system was made. The majority of the remaining debris was brushed into the sun or out of the solar system.  Objects farther out stayed safe from gravitational pulls of planets like Jupiter, and so succeeded to stay unharmed as they gradually orbited the sun. The Kuiper Belt and its neighbor, the further withdrawn and circular Oort Cloud, hold the excess remains from the start of the solar system and can deliver respected perceptions into its birth.

http://www.universetoday.com/32515/

http://www.space.com/16144-kuiper-belt-objects.html

 

Did you know that Pluto is believed to be the biggest known object in the Kuiper Belt and is also a dwarf planet?  Although Pluto is known to be the biggest object in the Kuiper Belt, there are also many other objects of the Kuiper Belt with extensive size.   Two objects that are considerably closer in size to Pluto are Makemake and Haumea unlike Quaroar that is more than half the size of Pluto.   There are a significant amount of objects in the Kuiper Belt that also have satellites.  

 While no spacecraft has ever studied the Kuiper Belt up close as of now, New Horizons will explore it once it studies Pluto in 2015.  Even though scientists are waiting for the information delivered by New Horizons, they continue to study the data they currently and try to verify theories about the space. 

The Kuiper Belt can be separated into reduced divisions. The classical Kuiper Belt is the more densely inhabited sector of the Kuiper Belt.  The classical Kuiper Belt is found between 42 and 48 au from the Sun. The space is unaffected by Neptune’s gravitational effect for the most part and because of this the objects there can continue to be unchanging in their orbits.

http://www.universetoday.com/32515/

http://www.space.com/16144-kuiper-belt-objects.html

 

 

Kuiper Belt

The Kuiper Belt is an area of space that is much smaller than Earth's moon and surrounds our sun. The Kuiper Belt got its name from Gerard Kuiper the astronomer who projected its presence in the 1950s.  It is shaped like an ellipse and resembles a doughnut-shaped ring, ranging just past the orbit of Neptune from about 30 to 55 AU.  Short-period comets (which take less than 200 years to orbit the Sun) initiate in the Belt. There could probably be many icy bodies bigger than 100 km (62 miles) and an expected trillion or more comets inside the Belt.  There are dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt and they have skinny atmospheres that breakdown when their orbit brings them out farthest away from the sun.  Some dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt have miniature moons.  The are no known rings around worlds in this region of space.

New Horizons is the name of the first mission to the Kuiper Belt.  As far as we know this area of space is not proficient enough to support life.

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs