Exploring the icy world of the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt - an ESO Large Programme

The first object in the Edgeworth- Kuiper Belt was observed in 1930, when Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto at a distance of 43 AU (1AU = one astronomical unit, the mean distance between Earth and the Sun = 149.6 million km), i.e. beyond the orbit of Neptune. About 20 years later Edgeworth and Kuiper started to speculate about the existence of another asteroid belt at the edge of the planetary system. Another 30 years later this speculation became an hypothesis when Fernandez and Ip argued for the existence of an Ecliptic-oriented reservoir of icy bodies beyond Neptune as a source for short-period comets, the recruitment of which was difficult to explain by gravitational capturing of Oort Cloud comets through planets when approaching the inner solar system. The hypothesis became reality in 1992, when, during a search campaign for distant asteroids, Jewitt and Luu found 1992 QB1 (now numbered: 15760) at a distance of 41 AU from the Sun.