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The Jupiter trojans, commonly called trojan asteroids or simply trojans, are a large group of asteroids that share the planet Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. Relative to Jupiter, each trojan librates around one of Jupiter's stable Lagrange points: either L 4, existing 60° ahead of the planet in its orbit, or L 5, 60° behind.
Astronomers estimate that the Jovian trojans are about as numerous as the asteroids of the asteroid belt. [6] Later on, objects were found orbiting near the Lagrangian points of Neptune, Mars, Earth, [7] Uranus, and Venus. Minor planets at the Lagrangian points of planets other than Jupiter may be called Lagrangian minor planets. [8]
An Earth trojan is an asteroid that orbits the Sun in the vicinity of the Earth–Sun Lagrange points L 4 (leading 60°) or L 5 (trailing 60°), thus having an orbit similar to Earth's. Only two Earth trojans have so far been discovered.
NASA has blasted a spacecraft, traveling at speeds up to 92,000 mph, to the most mysterious asteroids in our solar system.Called the Trojan asteroids, they are trapped in two swarms — one in ...
The Trojan asteroids, which borrow their name from Greek mythology, orbit the sun in two swarms — one that’s ahead of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and a second one that ...
Asteroids in the L 4 and L 5 Sun–Mars Lagrangian points are sometimes called Mars trojans, with a lower-case t, as "Trojan asteroid" was originally defined as a term for Lagrangian asteroids of Jupiter. They may also be called Mars Lagrangian asteroids.
Over 200 asteroids are known to be larger than 100 km, [63] and a survey in the infrared wavelengths has shown that the asteroid belt has between 700,000 and 1.7 million asteroids with a diameter of 1 km or more. [64] The number of asteroids in the main belt steadily increases with decreasing size.
Astronomers spotted a possible “sibling” planet that shares the orbit of another exoplanet in a system located 370 light-years away.