Аннотация:A brief survey is given of the new class of celestial bodies in the solar system: the Kuiper belt. The authors propose a new method of discovery and investigation of the Kuiper belt objects. The photometric monitoring of a star field, where the Milky Way intersects the ecliptic, allows to detect unknown bodies by occultations of stars. Duration of a star eclipse for the 100-km body is about 20 s. In case of the clustering of such objects, the duration of brightness weakening or disappearing of the star will be about 4.5 days.