What is in the Kuiper Belt?

In short, the Kuiper belt is a disc- shaped region beyond Neptune filled with innumerable icy bodies. These ices are made of frozen volatile material, or gases such as methane, ammonia, and nitrogen.  These objects are presumed to be remnants of the formation of the solar system all that time ago (4.6  billion years). They never formed planets, but dwarf planets such as Pluto, Haumea, and MakeMake.

Dave Jewitt and Jane luu were the first the identify and catalog and object further than Pluto. From then on, there was a procession and progression through the 1990's of astronomical technology that lead to many discoveries. The Hubble space craft captured a "double System" inside the Kuiper belt. Where smaller icy bodies orbit a bright object all while orbiting the sun. 

Predicting the size of the objects is difficult because of the distance of the belt itself. Most calculated diameters are assumptions from how reflective an objects surface is. Large objects like, Pluto and its moon Eris, have known sizes because of infrared observation technology (Spitzer Space Telescope). Many of the objects are named after God's and Goddesses, much like many things in the solar system.  

Dunford, Bill, and Philips Davis. "Solar System Exploration." Solar System Exploration. NASA, n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
"Kuiper Belt Facts - Interesting Facts about the Kuiper Belt." Space Facts RSS. N.p., 10 Sept. 2014. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.

Kuiper Belt Origins

What came first, the Kuiper Belt or the Oort cloud? Both were mere proposals by astronomers of the mid 20th century before the Kuiper belts direct discovery in 1992. It gets its name by the author of its proposal. In 1951, Gerard P. Kuiper developed a strong case for Kenneth E. Edgeworth's speculation of small bodies distribution throughout the solar system. working from Edgeworth's analysis of the mass distribution of spacial bodies in the creation of the solar system, Kuiper demonstrated that large residual amounts of icy, inactive comet nuclei must lie beyond Neptune. He also supported his proposal by explaining short period comets (those whose orbit the sun in less than 200 years). He explained that these comets that orbit the sun in the same direction as all the planets require a closer more flattened source than comets whose periods last longer than 20 years. It is interesting to note that Pluto was discovered 62 years before the first detection of the Kuiper belt. Because of the discovery of the Kuiper belt, Pluto, as of 2006, is considered a dwarf planet because of its location and size in the belt.





"Kuiper belt". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 24 Nov. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/place/Kuiper-belt>.