- Distance
- 30 – 55 AU
- Largest body
- Pluto (2,377 km)
- Dwarf planets
- Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake
- Known objects
- > 3,000
About Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper belt is like the asteroid belt but far larger and made mostly of frozen volatiles such as water, methane and ammonia. It holds several dwarf planets: Pluto, Eris (slightly smaller than Pluto but more massive), Haumea, Makemake and others, plus hundreds of thousands of smaller objects. Pluto, demoted from planet status in 2006, has five moons and a heart-shaped nitrogen-ice plain photographed by New Horizons in 2015. New Horizons went on to fly past the small Kuiper belt object Arrokoth in 2019, the most distant object ever explored up close.
- Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the Sun
- Source of comets with orbits under 200 years
- Named after astronomer Gerard Kuiper
In pictures
