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In astronomy, a trojan is a small celestial body (mostly asteroids) that shares the orbit of a larger body, remaining in a stable orbit approximately 60° ahead of or behind the main body near one of its Lagrangian points L 4 and L 5. Trojans can share the orbits of planets or of large moons. Trojans are one type of co-orbital object.
An Earth-based search for L 5 objects was conducted in 1994, covering 0.35 square degrees of sky, under poor observing conditions. [5] That search failed to detect any objects: "The limiting sensitivity of this search was magnitude ~22.8, corresponding to C-type asteroids ~350 m in diameter, or S-type asteroids ~175 m in diameter." [5]
WISE, a space telescope launched into Earth orbit in December 2009, imaged 2010 TK 7 in October 2010 while carrying out a program to scan the entire sky from January 2010 to February 2011. Spotting an asteroid sharing Earth 's orbit is normally difficult from the ground, because their potential locations are generally in the daytime sky. [ 8 ]
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 ...
Asteroids in the leading (L 4) orbit are named after Greek heroes (the "Greek node or camp" or "Achilles group"), and those at the trailing (L 5) orbit are named after the heroes of Troy (the "Trojan node or camp"). [2] The asteroids 617 Patroclus and 624 Hektor were named before the Greece/Troy rule was devised, resulting in a "Greek spy ...
Astronomers spotted a possible “sibling” planet that shares the orbit of another exoplanet in a system located 370 light-years away.
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.
On January 4, NASA announced two new space missions to explore the solar system: Lucy and Psyche. This space mission could save Earth from killer asteroids — but NASA keeps hitting the snooze button