Astronomers have finally discovered an asteroid that is keeping pace with Saturn in its orbit around the sun. Such objects are called Trojan asteroids, and three other giant planets are already known.
“Despite being the second heaviest planet in the solar system, Saturn was kind of a weirdo, if you can call it that, because there were no Trojans,” says Astronomy, University of London. Paul Wiegert says: Western Ontario in London, Canada. Like Saturn, The new asteroid will take about 30 years to orbit, but will be located 60 degrees ahead of the planet in its orbit.Wiegert et al. report in a research report submitted to arXiv.org on September 29.
Most of the solar system’s asteroids orbit the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But in 1906, German astronomer Max Wolff discovered the first Trojan tree orbiting the Sun 60 degrees in front of Jupiter and named it Achilles. Since then, astronomers have discovered thousands more Trojan asteroids. Some of them are 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter, while others are 60 degrees behind. NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is scheduled to visit eight of them between 2027 and 2033 (SN: 21/10/15).
Trojan asteroids also exist on Uranus and Neptune, as well as on Earth and Mars (SN: 2/1/22).
After Hawaii telescope images captured the new asteroid in 2019, Australian amateur astronomer Andrew Walker said that if it was orbiting the sun in the correct orbit, the object could be a Saturnian trojan. It was suggested that there is a sex.
“The key to getting a good orbit for something in our solar system is to observe it many times with different telescopes over long periods of time,” Wiegert said. So Man Tu Hui, an astronomer at China’s Macau University of Science and Technology, searched for past images of the asteroid and planned new observations. Measurements of the asteroid’s position from 2015 to 2024 confirmed its Trojan horse nature. Selected for 2019 UO14the asteroid is only about 13 kilometers in diameter, making it the same size as Deimos, the smaller of Mars’ two moons.
Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, an astronomer at the Complutense University of Madrid, said scientists have long predicted the existence of a Saturnian trojan but was not involved in the discovery. However, all Saturn Trojans should have unstable orbits because there are giant planets on either side of Saturn.
“The culprit appears to be Jupiter,” de la Fuente Marcos said. Jupiter’s great gravity gradually pulls on Saturn’s Trojan Jupiter, making its orbit around the Sun increasingly elliptical. The asteroid then wandered so close to Jupiter or Uranus that one of those giant planets pulled the small object out of Trojan orbit.
In fact, researchers estimate that the asteroid was a Trojan horse for only about 2,000 years and will continue to be a Trojan horse for only another 1,000 years. Prior to its association with the ringed planet, this asteroid was probably a centaur, an asteroid that moved around the sun between the orbits of giant planets.SN: 11/12/77).
This asteroid is probably not Saturn’s only Trojan horse. “I’m sure there are others, probably just a few, but this can’t be the only one,” Wiegert said.
