Uranus trojans explained
A Uranus trojan is an asteroid that shares an orbit with Uranus and the Sun. Predicted in simulations earlier, two trojans have been discovered in Uranus’s Lagrangian point (leading Uranus).
was the first body to be classified as such a trojan in 2013, while in 2017 became the second.[1]
Several theories have come to be on how such trojans could orbit Uranus. Gravitational scattering is the most popular, stating that such asteroids (or comets) could have been gravitationally pulled by the other planets, leading them on a perfect trajectory towards Uranus, or somewhere where Uranus’s gravitational pull is neutral.
List of Uranus trojans[2] !Designation!Cloud!Semimajor axis
(AU)!Perihelion
(AU)!Eccentricity!Inclination
(°)!(H)! Diameter
(M) | L4 | 19.167 | 15.765 | 0.177 | 10.796 | 9.6 | 60 |
| L4 | 19.113 | 13.762 | 0.279 | 25.524 | 8.79 | 77 | |
Sources
- Dvorak . R. . Bazsó . á. . Zhou . L.-Y. . Where are the Uranus Trojans? . Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy . 107 . 1-2 . 2010 . 0923-2958 . 10.1007/s10569-010-9261-y . 51–62 . 0911.2366 .
- Zhou . Lei . Zhou . Li-Yong . Dvorak . Rudolf . Li . Jian . Systematic survey of the dynamics of Uranus Trojans . Astronomy & Astrophysics . 633 . 2020 . 0004-6361 . 10.1051/0004-6361/201936332 . A153 . 1912.10273 .
Notes and References
- de la Fuente Marcos . Raúl. de la Fuente Marcos . Carlos. Asteroid 2014 YX49: a large transient Trojan of Uranus. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 21 May 2017. 467 . 2. 1701.05541. 10.1093/mnras/stx197 . 1561–1568. 2017MNRAS.467.1561D.
- Web site: Small-Body Database Lookup . 2024-03-28 . ssd.jpl.nasa.gov.
