A Uranian Trojan and the frequency of temporary giant-planet co-orbitals
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1303.5774,
title = {A Uranian Trojan and the frequency of temporary giant-planet co-orbitals},
author = {Mike Alexandersen and Brett Gladman and Sarah Greenstreet and JJ Kavelaars and Jean-Marc Petit and Stephen Gwyn},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.5774},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
6 pages main text, 4 pages references, 3 pages of figures for main text. 16 pages of supplementary material including 4 figures