Related papers: A hypothesis for the color bimodality of Jupiter T…
The Jupiter Trojans are a significant population of minor bodies in the middle Solar System that have garnered substantial interest in recent years. Several spectroscopic studies of these objects have revealed notable bimodalities with…
The Trojan asteroids of Jupiter and Neptune are likely to have been captured from original heliocentric orbits in the dynamically excited ("hot") population of the Kuiper belt. However, it has long been known that the optical color…
An important testable prediction of dynamical instability models for the early evolution of the Solar System is that Jupiter Trojans share a source population with the Kuiper belt. Concrete evidence of this prediction remains elusive, as…
Jupiter Trojans are are characterized by dark photometric colors, high inclinations and an asymmetry in number of bodies between the two swarms. Different models have been proposed to explain the high inclination of the Trojans and to…
Current models of Solar System evolution posit that the asteroid populations in resonance with Jupiter are comprised of objects scattered inward from the outer Solar System during a period of dynamical instability. In this paper, we present…
The origin of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids has long been a mystery. Dynamically, the population, which is considerably smaller than the main asteroid belt, librates around Jupiter's stable L4 and L5 Lagrange points, 60 deg ahead and behind…
The Trojan asteroids provide a unique perspective on the history of Solar System. As a large population of small bodies, they record important gravitational interactions and dynamical evolution of the Solar System. In the past decade,…
To date, reflectance spectra of Jupiter Trojan asteroids have revealed no distinctive absorption features. For this reason, the surface composition of these objects remains a subject of speculation. Spectra have revealed, however, that the…
We conducted a two-night photometric survey of small Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) near opposition using the wide-field Hyper Suprime-Cam instrument on the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope. The survey covered about 90 deg^2 of sky, with each field…
We present the first ultraviolet spectra of Jupiter Trojans. These observations were carried out using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope and cover the wavelength range 200-550 nm at low resolution. The…
We conducted a two-band imaging survey observation using the Subaru Telescope and its wide-field camera, Suprime-Cam, to study the visible colors and size distribution of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids. The survey covered an area around…
Ever since the very first photometric studies of Centaurs and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) their visible color distribution has been controversial. That controversy gave rise to a prolific debate on the origin of the surface colors of these…
Trojan asteroids orbit in the Lagrange points of the system Sun-planet-asteroid. Their dynamical stability make their physical properties important proxies for the early evolution of our solar system. To study their origin, we want to…
The leading theory for the origin of Jupiter Trojans (JTs) assumes that JTs were captured to their orbits near the Lagrangian points of Jupiter during the early reconfiguration of the giant planets. The natural source region for the…
In the current model of early Solar System evolution, the stable members of the Jovian and Neptunian Trojan populations were captured into resonance from the leftover reservoir of planetesimals during the outward migration of the giant…
Jupiter Trojans appear to be a key population of small bodies to study and test the models of the Solar System formation and evolution. Because understanding the evolution of Trojans can bring strong and unique constraints on the origins of…
Dynamically excited objects within the Kuiper belt show a bimodal distribution in their surface colors, and these differing surface colors may be a tracer of where these objects formed. In this work we explore radial color distributions in…
The Trojan asteroids remain quite poorly understood, yet their physical properties provide unique perspective on chemical and dynamical processes that shaped the Solar System. The current study was undertaken to investigate surface…
By examining the absolute magnitude (H) distributions (hereafter HD) of the cold and hot populations in the Kuiper belt and of the Trojans of Jupiter, we find evidence that the Trojans have been captured from the outer part of the…
We propose a chemical and dynamical process to explain the surface colors of the Kuiper belt. In our hypothesis, the initial bulk compositions of the bodies themselves can be quite diverse -- as is seen in comets -- but the early surface…