Science Year 4

Pluto                                                                                                         Kuiper Belt

Pluto, a dwarf planet, is the largest known object in the Kuiper belt. When discovered in 1930, it was considered to be the ninth planet; this changed in 2006 with the adoption of a formal definition of planet. Pluto has a relatively eccentric orbit inclined 17 degrees to the ecliptic plane and ranging from 29.7 AU from the Sun at perihelion (within the orbit of Neptune) to 49.5 AU at aphelion. The Kuiper Belt, is a distant region of the Solar System beyond the orbit of Neptune. It consists of thousands of icy objects with diameters of at least 1000 km that were formed early in Solar System history.