Kuiper Belt

The Kuiper Belt is the region of the Solar System out beyond Neptune where the majority of our short-period comets are found. This is the region where we find the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris. The objects in this region besides being comets and dwarf planets are sometimes referred to as plutinos, KBOs (cubinos or Kuiper Belt Objects), or TNOs (Trans-Neptunian Objects). The belt is generally a torus centered on the Sun populated mostly by icy bodies as the heavier material generally settled in the interior part of the Solar System.

The comets that come from this region are called short-period comets as they have elliptical orbits with large eccentricities and periods of less than 200 years. They are disturbed in their orbits by large passing bodies, like Neptune that can send the object into in the inner solar system.

The Kuiper Belt is named after Gerard Kuiper as he proposed that there must be a disk that has icy remnants from the formation of the Solar System, much like there is a rocky disk in the inner Solar System containing leftovers from the birth of the Sun and planets, the Asteroid Belt. Disks found around other stars indicate that Kuiper Belt like features may be a consequence of planetary formation around stars.

The disk itself ranges from 30 AU to 100 AU in radius and contains at least several thousand objects, many of which are over 100 km in diamter.