Asteroids detected in Neptune's Lagrangian L5 point

Started by Tsa'räni, August 13, 2010, 12:20:12 PM

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Tsa'räni

"...Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and Chad Trujillo* have discovered the first Trojan asteroid, 2008 LC18, in a difficult-to-detect stability region at Neptune, called the Lagrangian L5 point. They used the discovery to estimate the asteroid population there and find that it is similar to the asteroid population at Neptune's L4 point."

http://www.physorg.com/news200842540.html

I thought everyone might find this interesting as the Activist Survival Guide talks about moons in Polyphemus' L4 and L5 Lagrangian points.

Nyx

I would kind of expect L4 and L5 to be very similar. But what I think is interesting is that it seems these points are always at a 60° angle. Well, at least for Neptune, Polyphemus and Earth (also, the moon if you take earth as the centre there, not the sun). That's interesting because I'd expect the varying sizes of the planets and distances from their suns to cause bigger variation.

Anyways, always nice to see new discoveries about our solar system ^^