What is the Kuiper belt & how far away is it located?
It extends from about 30 AU to 55 AU. (1 AU := the average distance of the earth to the sun). It’s like the asteroid belt; it contains many small bodies, including some dwarf planets (such as Pluto)The Kuiper belt sometimes called the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately 55 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, although it is far larger — 20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies (remnants from the Solar System’s formation). It is home to at least three dwarf planets – Pluto, Haumea and Makemake. But while the asteroid belt is composed primarily of rock and metal, the Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (dubbed “ices”), such as methane, ammonia and water. Since the first was discovered in 1992, the number of known Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) has increased to over a thousand, and more t
