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Kuiper Belt:
The Kuiper (pronounced Ki-Per) Belt is often called our Solar System's 'final frontier.' This disk-shaped region of icy debris is about 12 to 15 billion kilometers (7.5 billion to 9.3 billion miles) from our Sun. Its existence confirmed only a decade ago, the Kuiper Belt and its collection of icy objects - KBOs - are an emerging area of research in planetary science.
One exciting discovery to come out of the Kuiper Belt is "Quaoar" (Kwa-whar), officially known as 2002 LM60, a frozen world orbiting our sun about a billion miles beyond the orbit of Pluto. The tiny world's diameter is 1,300 km (800 miles) - about half the size of Pluto. It is the largest of the more than 500 Kuiper Belt Objects discovered in the last decade. Quaoar/2002 LM60 orbits our Sun in a near circle, more so than any of the other planets or bodies in our solar system.
Then, in July 2005, a team of scientists announced the discovery of a body that appears to be as large as, or possibly even larger than Pluto. The object, provisionally designated 2003 UB313, orbits the Sun about every 560 years, its distance varying from about 38 to 98 AU. Initial analysis indicates that the surface is covered with methane ice, similar to Pluto. In September 2005, the team found that 2003 UB313 even has a small moon, thought to be made of water ice.
The discovery of large objects in this frozen outer realm may eventually affect the planetary status of Pluto. This is the nature of planetary astronomy, to reconsider past conclusions in the light of new discoveries and change our theories or definitions to respond to those discoveries. No spacecraft has ever traveled to the Kuiper Belt, but NASA's New Horizons mission, planned to arrive at Pluto in 2015, might be able to penetrate farther into the Kuiper Belt to study one of these mysterious objects.
OY-KBO
Airbus A.319-132
c/n 2850
@ LHR during 08.2006
'S.A.S.' in 'retro Viking Boat' livery
(scanned from my negatives)