It's vast and mysterious, cold and dark. It's a place we've only just begun to explore, but it holds important clues to the origins of our solar system. In advance of NASA's New Horizons encounter with a denizen of this vast region of our solar system, here are 10 things to know about the Kuiper Belt. The main part of the Kuiper Belt begins at Neptune's orbit. Credit: NASA 1. It's a HUGE region of space beyond Neptune. The Kuiper Belt is one of the largest structures in our solar system — others being the Oort Cloud, the heliosphere and the magnetosphere of Jupiter. Its overall shape is like a puffed-up disk, or donut. Its inner edge begins at the orbit of Neptune, at about 30 AU from the Sun. (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from Earth to the Sun.) The inner, main region of the Kuiper belt ends to around 50 AU from the Sun. Overlapping the outer edge of the main part of the Kuiper Belt is a second region called the scattered disk, which continues ou...
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