Kuiper Belt Object Occults Star

This is an artist's impression of a small Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) occulting a star. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope recorded this brief event and allowed astronomers to determine that the KBO was only one-half of a mile across, setting a new record for the smallest object ever seen in the Kuiper Belt.

About the data

The science team includes: H. Schlichting (California Institute of Technology/University of Toronto), E. Ofek (California Institute of Technology/Einstein Fellow), M. Wenz (NASA/GSFC), R. Sari (California Institute of Technology/Hebrew University), A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel), M. Livio and E. Nelan (STScI), and S. Zucker (Tel Aviv University).