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What is the relationship of the Trojan asteroids to the planet Jupiter?
What is the relationship of the Trojan asteroids to the planet Jupiter? They follow Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun at an angle of 60° ahead of and behind Jupiter.
Why is the Jupiter Trojans consider the most significant asteroid?
There, the gravitational pull from the Sun and the planet are balanced by a trojan’s tendency to otherwise fly out of orbit. The Jupiter trojans form the most significant population of trojan asteroids. It is thought that they are as numerous as the asteroids in the asteroid belt.
How did the Trojan asteroids form?
The regions around the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of Jupiter are populated by two large swarms of asteroids called the Trojans. Their origin probably dates back to the formation of Jupiter: the Trojan precursors were planetesimals orbiting close to the growing planet.
Why are meteorites important to scientists?
But scientists spend their careers studying meteorites because they contain a record of our solar system’s history going back some 4.6 billion years. By studying meteorites, we can learn details about how our solar system evolved into the Sun and planets of today—and how meteorite impacts could affect our future.
Who discovered Trojan planets?
Trojan Planets. In 1772 the French mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange predicted the existence and location of two groups of asteroids located near the (L4 and L5) equilateral triangular stability points of a three-body system formed by the Sun, Jupiter, and the asteroids.
How does Jupiter protect the Earth?
Its gravity likely prevented the asteroids from combining into a planet. While Jupiter often protects Earth and the other inner planets by deflecting comets and asteroids, sometimes it sends objects on a collision course straight toward the inner planets.
What makes the Trojan asteroids unique?
Asteroids sharing an orbit with a planet, but which are located at the leading (L4) and trailing (L5) Lagrangian points, are known as Trojan asteroids. Such planetary perturbations may also be the reason why there have been so few Trojans found around other planets.
How do they discover asteroids?
Asteroids reflect sunlight just like the planets do, this means that with a suitable telescope we can see asteroids from the Earth. When we take pictures of asteroids from the Earth with a telescope we typically get images that look like the one below.
What is special about Trojan asteroids?
Asteroids sharing an orbit with a planet, but which are located at the leading (L4) and trailing (L5) Lagrangian points, are known as Trojan asteroids. Due to perturbations by the other planets, their distributions are elongated along the orbit.