AS101 Study Guide - Final Guide: Planets Beyond Neptune, Kuiper Belt, Clyde Tombaugh
Document Summary
Textbook, page 280), a doughnut-shaped region extending from roughly 30 au to 50 au. This region consists of billions of icy planetesimals left over from the formation of the solar system. Sizes of these objects vary from small bits of ice and rock to large spheres with rocky cores and icy lithospheres more than 500 km in diameter. The largest of these planetesimals are known as the dwarf planets. To date there are five official dwarf planets, four of which are found in the kuiper belt, The fifth official dwarf planet, ceres, lies in the asteroid belt between. To understand why pluto is no longer considered a planet, you will need to know more about the kuiper belt of small bodies. Since 1992 astronomers have discovered over a thousand icy bodies orbiting beyond neptune. There may be as many as 100 million objects in the kuiper belt larger than 1 km in diameter.
