Kuiper belt

American  

[kahy-per belt] / ˈkaɪ pər ˌbɛlt /

noun

Astronomy.

1. a disk-shaped region on the edge of the solar system that contains masses of ice and icy rock, believed to be the source of comets with orbital periods of less than 200 years.

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Kuiper belt British  

/ ˈkaɪpə /

noun

1. a region of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune, some 30–1000 astronomical units from the sun, containing up to one thousand million icy planetesimals or comet nuclei See also Oort

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Kuiper belt Scientific  

/ kī′pər /

1. A disk-shaped region in the outer solar system lying beyond the orbit of Neptune and extending to a distance of about 50 astronomical units, containing thousands of small, icy celestial bodies. It is believed to be a reservoir for short-period comets (comets that make one complete orbit of the Sun in less than 200 years). The Kuiper belt is named after American astronomer Gerard Kuiper (1905–1973), who first predicted its existence.

2. ◆ The bodies populating this region are known as Kuiper belt objects, and unlike the bodies in the Oort cloud they are believed to have originated in situ. There are an estimated 70,000 such objects having diameters of more than 100 km (62 mi). The dwarf planet Pluto and its moons are also found in this region.

3. Compare Oort cloud

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Etymology

Origin of Kuiper belt

First recorded in 1985–90; named after G. P. Kuiper, who proposed its existence

Compare meaning

How does kuiper-belt compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• Oort cloud vs. Kuiper belt

Example Sentences

Most of these leftover objects in the present day are known as trans-Neptunian objects and orbit in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune.

From New York Times

He spotted Eris in the Kuiper belt – a region of icy objects beyond Neptune.

From BBC

During the following day, we calculated that the Hubble Deep Field could notice a city like Tokyo on objects in the Kuiper belt at 30–50 times the Earth-sun separation.

From Scientific American

In this case, the images were of distant Kuiper belt objects.

From New York Times

NASA’s New Horizons probe wowed the world in 2015 with unprecedented pictures of Pluto, and, more recently, with the first close-up images of an object in the Kuiper belt of asteroids.

From Nature