Dwarf planets, asteroids and the Kuiper Belt

Beyond Neptune the solar system keeps going, and it stops being flat. These worlds travel on orbits that are long, tilted and lopsided — Eris swings between 38 and 98 AU, Sedna far further still.

Seeing them mapped in three dimensions makes the point that a textbook diagram cannot: the outer solar system is not a tidy set of rings.

Dwarf planets, asteroids and the Kuiper Belt — all 33 objects

• 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko — The duck-shaped comet that ESA’s Rosetta orbited for two years, dropping the Philae lander onto its surface.
• Achlys — An elongated plutino locked in Neptune’s 2:3 resonance, accompanied by a small moon.
• Arrokoth — A pristine snowman from the dawn of the solar system: two icy lobes that drifted together gently 4.5 billion…
• Aya — A red-hued classical Kuiper Belt object, large enough that it may be nearly round.
• Bennu — A spinning-top rubble pile, mapped to centimeters by OSIRIS-REx before it grabbed a handful of the surface…
• Ceres — The largest object in the asteroid belt and the first asteroid ever discovered. Bright salt deposits glitter…
• Chiminigagua — A scattered-disc world flung onto a wide orbit, trailed by a faint little moon.
• DeeDee — “Distant Dwarf” — a faint, far-flung world so remote its light takes over twelve hours to reach us.
• Eris — The discovery that demoted Pluto. Slightly smaller but more massive than Pluto, this frozen world wrapped in…
• Eros — The first asteroid ever orbited and landed on. NEAR Shoemaker touched down on this peanut-shaped world in…
• Gǃkúnǁʼhòmdímà — A very red scattered-disc body named from Juǀʼhoan folklore, circled by its small dark moon.
• Goibniu — A mid-sized classical Kuiper Belt object on a gently inclined, near-circular orbit.
• Gonggong — One of the reddest large bodies known, slathered in tholins and possibly old water-ice frost.
• Halley — The comet that proved comets return. Recorded since 240 BC, painted into the Bayeux Tapestry, and waiting…
• 103P/Hartley 2 — A hyperactive little peanut of a comet: EPOXI flew past in 2010 and found it spitting golf-ball-sized…
• Haumea — The fastest-spinning large body in the solar system. Whirling once every four hours, it has been stretched…
• Itokawa — The sea-otter-shaped rubble pile that gave humanity its first asteroid sample, returned by Japan’s Hayabusa…
• Ixion — A reddish plutino that briefly held the title of largest known Kuiper Belt object after Pluto.
• Makemake — A reddish, methane-frosted world named for the creator god of the Rapa Nui. The second-brightest Kuiper Belt…
• Máni — A large, solitary Kuiper Belt world — among the biggest known to have no moon of its own.
• Orcus — Nicknamed the anti-Pluto: it shares Pluto’s exact 2:3 dance with Neptune but always sits on the opposite…
• 2005 QU182 — A bright, icy scattered-disc object on a wildly eccentric orbit that swings deep into the outer dark.
• Quaoar — A Kuiper Belt world circled by a ring so far out that the debris should have coalesced into a moon — but…
• Ritona — A reddish classical KBO out beyond Neptune, one of many siblings on quiet, near-circular paths.
• Rumina — A scattered-disc object on a long, stretched orbit reaching far beyond the classical Kuiper Belt.
• Salacia — A dim, dark world named for the Roman goddess of the sea. Its low reflectivity and density make it a…
• Sedna — One of the most distant known worlds, on an orbit so vast a single year lasts over eleven millennia.
• 9P/Tempel 1 — The first comet humanity ever punched: NASA’s Deep Impact slammed a copper slug into it on 4 July 2005 to…
• Uni — A Kuiper Belt riddle: it and its moon are so under-dense they appear to be mostly porous ice and rubble.
• Varda — A classical Kuiper Belt world named for a Tolkien deity, orbited by its moon Ilmarë.
• Varuna — A fast-spinning Kuiper Belt object whirling so quickly it has been stretched into an elongated ellipsoid.
• Vesta — The brightest asteroid in our sky and nearly a protoplanet: it has an iron core, a basaltic crust, and a…
• 81P/Wild 2 — The comet we brought home: Stardust flew through its coma in 2004, caught the dust in aerogel, and…

Back to the interactive 3D map of the universe · See the scale of the universe