kuiper

Kuiper is a Dutch surname. Notable individuals bearing the name include Gerard Kuiper (1905–1973), a Dutch-American astronomer whose work helped shape the study of the outer Solar System and planetary atmospheres. The name is commonly associated with the Kuiper Belt in astronomical contexts.

The Kuiper Belt is a region of the Solar System beyond Neptune, extending roughly from 30 to 55 astronomical units from the Sun. It contains a vast population of small icy bodies and dwarf planets, including Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake. The belt is thought to be the source of many short-period comets. It was proposed by Gerard Kuiper in 1951 and named in his honor; observational confirmation came in the early 1990s, and since then thousands of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have been detected. The belt features diverse dynamical populations, such as classical KBOs with relatively stable orbits, resonant objects trapped in orbital resonances with Neptune, and the more dispersed scattered-disk objects. Studying the Kuiper Belt provides insight into the formation and evolutionary history of the Solar System and complements our understanding of more distant reservoirs of cometary material.