Asteroid Belt

The Kuiper Belt is Like an Asteroid Belt Beyond Neptune
By Steve Challis - Ezinearticles

In 1950, the existence of a region of mostly icy objects was predicted by Gerard Kuiper. There have now been about 1300 objects discovered in this region. We can expect many more to be found. An estimate has been made that there are hundreds of thousands of object in this belt over 100 kilometres across and perhaps trillions of smaller ones.

As Mr. Kuiper predicted these objects seem to have a lot of ice in their composition as well as things like Methane and some rock. In fact except for their orbit, they are similar to comets.

Distance from the Sun

The Kuiper Belt is from 35 to 55 Astronomical units from the Sun. (The Astronomical Unit or AU is the distance of the Earth to the Sun.) The Objects of this region are sometimes referred to as Trans-Neptunian Objects.

Short Period Comets

Short period comets are the ones like Halley's Comet that come into the inner Solar System where we can see them and return in less than 200 years. The objects of the Kuiper Belt are generally in stable orbits, but if one their orbits is sufficiently disrupted they can head towards the Sun as short period comets.

Long Period Comets

These are comets with very long return times, so we would have to keep very good records for many centuries or millennia to identify them as the same comet. These are more likely to come from the Oort cloud than the Kuiper Belt.

Asteroid Belt