NASA's Hubble telescope finds smallest Kuiper Belt Object ever seen

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the smallest object ever seen in visible light in the Kuiper Belt, a vast ring of icy debris that is encircling the outer rim of the solar system just beyond Neptune, NASA said Wednesday.

The object found by Hubble is only 3,200 feet across and a whopping 4.2 billion miles away.

The smallest Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) seen previously in reflected light is roughly 30 miles across, or 50 times larger.

This is the first observational evidence for a population of comet-sized bodies in the Kuiper Belt that are being ground down through collisions. The Kuiper Belt is therefore collisionally evolving, meaning that the region's icy content has been modified over the past 4.5 billion years.

The object detected by Hubble is so faint -- at 35th magnitude -- it is 100 times dimmer than what the Hubble can see directly, according to NASA.