Artist Rendering of 3200ft Wide Kuiper Belt Object PHOTO SOURCE: NASA
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the smallest object ever seen in visible light in the Kuiper Belt, a vast ring of icy debris that is encircling the outer rim of the solar system just beyond Neptune.
This artist’s concept of the needle-in-a-haystack object found by Hubble is only 3,200 feet across and a whopping 4.2 billion miles away. The smallest Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) seen previously in reflected light is roughly 30 miles across, or 50 times larger.
SOURCE: Hubble Finds Smallest Kuiper Belt Object
Hubble Fact: The Hubble Space Telescope was named after Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) who discovered the expansion of the universe and formulated what is now known as Hubble’s Law. SOURCE: Hubble Site
The Kuiper belt is a region of space beyond the planet Neptune, populated by millions of asteroids left over from the formation of our solar system.
