Back to Search
Start Over
A Uranian Trojan and the frequency of temporary giant-planet co-orbitals
- Source :
- Science (2013) Vol. 341 no. 6149 pp. 994-997
- Publication Year :
- 2013
-
Abstract
- Trojan objects share a planet's orbit, never straying far from the triangular Lagrangian points, 60 degrees ahead of (L4) or behind (L5) the planet. We report the detection of a Uranian Trojan; in our numerical integrations, 2011 QF99 oscillates around the Uranian L4 Lagrange point for >70 kyr and remains co-orbital for ~1 Myr before becoming a Centaur. We constructed a Centaur model, supplied from the transneptunian region, to estimate temporary co-orbital capture frequency and duration (to factor of two accuracy), finding that at any time 0.4% and 2.8% of the population will be Uranian and Neptunian co-orbitals, respectively. The co-orbital fraction (~2.4%) among Centaurs in the IAU Minor Planet Centre database is thus as expected under transneptunian supply.<br />Comment: 6 pages main text, 4 pages references, 3 pages of figures for main text. 16 pages of supplementary material including 4 figures
- Subjects :
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- arXiv
- Journal :
- Science (2013) Vol. 341 no. 6149 pp. 994-997
- Publication Type :
- Report
- Accession number :
- edsarx.1303.5774
- Document Type :
- Working Paper
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1238072