Out in the Kuiper Belt

Students learn how the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune was predicted by Kenneth Edgeworth and Gerard Kuiper and confirmed in 1992 by David Jewitt and Jane Luu, how Neptune's gravity organizes objects like Pluto and Orcus, and what New Horizons discovered at Arrokoth in 2019.

Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops9 stops

The full guide, with the 40-minute plan, discussion key points, exit ticket, activities, transcript and PDF, comes with a teacher license. Already licensed? Use Open the full guide.

What students will see and do

Students fly from Neptune to a solar system overview, to Pluto, back above the solar system, to Pluto again, then to Orcus, Quaoar, Arrokoth and Sedna. Aetherion pauses for discussion above the solar system (persistence in the five-year search that found the first new Kuiper Belt object), at Pluto (how the 3 to 2 resonance keeps Pluto and Neptune apart) and at Arrokoth (what its gentle merger suggests about how planets began).

Learning objectives

• Describe where the Kuiper Belt is and what its objects are made of.
• Explain how the 1992 discovery by Jewitt and Luu confirmed an idea proposed decades earlier.
• Explain how a 3 to 2 resonance with Neptune keeps Pluto and the plutinos from colliding with it.
• Identify what Arrokoth's shape tells scientists about the earliest building blocks of planets.

NGSS connections

Stops on this journey

1. The Last Planet
2. An Idea Before the Evidence
3. Pluto, Hiding in Plain Sight
4. Found at Last (discussion stop)
5. Pluto's Dance with Neptune (discussion stop)
6. Orcus, the Anti Pluto
7. Quaoar and Its Ring
8. Arrokoth, the Farthest Flyby (discussion stop)
9. Sedna, Beyond the Belt

Vocabulary

• Kuiper Belt
• Kuiper Belt object
• resonance
• plutino
• New Horizons
• contact binary
• occultation
• trans-Neptunian object