Monday, November 18, 2013

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.
 
 

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