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Neptune Trojan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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As of March 2007, there are five[1] known Trojan asteroids of Neptune which have the same orbital period as the planet.[2] They lie in the elongated, curved region around the L4 Lagrangian point 60° ahead of Neptune. These are 2001 QR322, 2004 UP10, 2005 TN53, 2005 TO74 and 2006 RJ103.
The discovery of 2005 TN53 on a high inclination (>25°) orbit is significant as it suggests a ‘thick’ cloud of Trojans. It is believed that large (radius ≈ 100 km) Neptune Trojans could outnumber Jupiter Trojans by an order of magnitude [3] [4].
- ^ 2005 TN74, listed earlier as a Neptune Trojan, proved to be a scattered disk object.
- ^ List Of Neptune Trojans (March 8, 2007) at cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/.
- ^ E. I. Chiang and Y. Lithwick Neptune Trojans as a Testbed for Planet Formation, The Astrophysical Journal, 628, pp. 520–532 Preprint
- ^ space.com popular article (Jan 2007)
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