page_title: Kuiper belt
section_title: Scattered objects
hierarchical_section_title: Kuiper belt / Scattered objects
context_page_description: The Kuiper belt, occasionally called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger – 20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles, such as methane, ammonia and water. The Kuiper belt is home to three officially recognized dwarf planets: Pluto, Haumea and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region.
  The Kuiper belt was named after Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, though he did not predict its existence. In 1992, minor planet Albion was discovered, the first Kuiper belt object since Pluto and Charon. Since its discovery, the number of known KBOs has increased to thousands, and more than 100,000 KBOs over 100 km in diameter are thought to exist.
context_section_description: The scattered disc is a sparsely populated region, overlapping with the Kuiper belt but extending to beyond 100 AU. Scattered disc objects (SDOs) have very elliptical orbits, often also very inclined to the ecliptic. Most models of Solar System formation show both KBOs and SDOs first forming in a primordial belt, with later gravitational interactions, particularly with Neptune, sending the objects outward, some into stable orbits (the KBOs) and some into unstable orbits, the scattered disc. Due to its unstable nature, the scattered disc is suspected to be the point of origin of many of the Solar System's short-period comets. Their dynamic orbits occasionally force them into the inner Solar System, first becoming centaurs, and then short-period comets.
  According to the Minor Planet Center, which officially catalogues all trans-Neptunian objects, a KBO, strictly speaking, is any object that orbits exclusively within the defined Kuiper belt region regardless of origin or composition. Objects found outside the belt are classed as scattered objects. In some scientific circles the term "Kuiper belt object" has become synonymous with any icy minor planet native to the outer Solar System assumed to have been part of that initial class, even if its orbit during the bulk of Solar System history has been beyond the Kuiper belt (e.g. in the scattered-disc region). They often describe scattered disc objects as "scattered Kuiper belt objects". Eris, which is known to be more massive than Pluto, is often referred to as a KBO, but is technically an SDO. A consensus among astronomers as to the precise definition of the Kuiper belt has yet to be reached, and this issue remains unresolved.
  The centaurs, which are not normally considered part of the Kuiper belt, are also thought to be scattered objects, the only difference being that they were scattered inward, rather than outward. The Minor Planet Center groups the centaurs and the SDOs together as scattered objects.
caption: Comparison of the orbits of scattered disc objects (black), classical KBOs (blue), and 2:5 resonant objects (green). Orbits of other KBOs are gray. (Orbital axes have been aligned for comparison.)