Trojan asteroids of Jupiter
In this video you will learn about the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter. The orbits and trajectories of the ten largest ones will be shown. Watch the video with subtitles turned on in Russian.
Trojan asteroids move in the vicinity of Jupiter's orbit, but are not its satellites. They revolve in their orbits around the Sun, but the gas giant exerts a significant influence on them. These asteroids are named after the heroes of the Trojan War. Some of them are located in front of the gas giant, the other part is behind it.
The first group of asteroids (those in front of Jupiter) is called the “Greeks”, there are more than 4 thousand asteroids in it. This video presents five asteroids of this group: Hector, Agamemnon, Achilles, Diomedes and Odysseus. They are located at the Lagrange point L4 Sun-Jupiter system. This point is in the orbit of Jupiter, 60 degrees ahead of it. Sun, Jupiter and Lagrange point L4 are located at the vertices of an equilateral triangle. They decided to name the asteroids of this group after the Greek heroes of the Trojan War. Hector is an exception to this rule, as it was discovered before such a tradition had developed.
The second group of asteroids (those behind Jupiter) are called “Trojans” and contain more than 2 thousand asteroids. The animation shows five members of this group: Patroclus, Mentor, Paris, Deiphobus and Aeneas. They are located at the Lagrange point L5. This point is also in the orbit of Jupiter, but 60 degrees behind it. Thus, the Sun, Jupiter and the Lagrange point L5 are also located at the vertices of an equilateral triangle. They decided to name the asteroids of this group after the defenders of Troy. Here the exception is Patroclus, since he (as well as Hector) was discovered before this tradition developed.
The orbits of the presented Trojan asteroids are close to circular, but have very different orientations in space. Each of the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter (and there are more than 6 thousand of them known) has approximately the same size of the semi-major axis of the orbit. And it is close to the size of the semimajor axis of Jupiter's orbit. This means that they all orbit the Sun in about the same time as Jupiter. The peculiarity of the Lagrange points of a system of two large bodies is that a third body with a low mass can be located in them quite stably. Relative to these points, the Trojan asteroids move along very bizarre trajectories, and the amplitude of their vibrations is measured in hundreds of millions of kilometers. Trajectories of the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter relative to the Lagrange points L4 and L5 are clearly shown in this video.
The animation also shows what the trajectories of the Trojan asteroids look like relative to Jupiter. Over a long period of time, they either approach Jupiter in a spiral or move away from it.
Modeling and visualization were performed by the author of this publication using proprietary software. The calculations took into account the mutual influence of the Sun, all the planets of the Solar System, the Moon and ten asteroids on each other. Relativistic effects were also taken into account in the calculations.
