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.

How many Trojans does Jupiter have?

More than 9,800 Jupiter trojans have been found as of May 2021. By convention, they are each named from Greek mythology after a figure of the Trojan War, hence the name “trojan”.

How many planets have Trojan asteroids?

Although Trojan asteroids have been discovered for Mars (4 to date, 1 at L4 and 3 at L5) and Neptune (8 Trojans, 6 at L4 and 2 at L5) and even Earth (1 Trojan at L4), the term ‘Trojan asteroid’ generally refers to the asteroids accompanying Jupiter.

Are there Trojans that orbit with other planets?

In the Solar System, most known trojans share the orbit of Jupiter. In other planetary orbits only nine Mars trojans, 28 Neptune trojans, two Uranus trojans, and two Earth trojans, have been found to date. A temporary Venus trojan is also known.

Why do the Trojan asteroids not collide with Jupiter?

Trojans: These asteroids share an orbit with a larger planet, but do not collide with it because they gather around two special places in the orbit (called the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points). There, the gravitational pull from the Sun and the planet are balanced by a trojan’s tendency to otherwise fly out of orbit.

Why are there more asteroids found between Mars and Jupiter?

Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Early on, the birth of Jupiter prevented any planetary bodies from forming in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, causing the small objects that were there to collide with each other and fragment into the asteroids seen today.

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.

Why is the Jupiter Trojans consider the most significant asteroid?

Why are there more Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s L4 point than its L5 point?

Jupiter’s leading and trailing Lagrangian points are stable over the age of the solar system. The planet’s gravitational pull accelerates or decelerates the asteroids, causing them to librate — or oscillate — around the L4 and L5 points. This shepherds the Trojans into two elongated regions around those points.

What are the Jupiter trojans?

The Jupiter Trojans are two large groups of asteroids that share the Jupiter’s orbit – one called the ‘Greeks’ (that move ahead of it in its orbit) and the ‘Trojans’ (the group that follows Jupiter).

What are the two Lagrangian points of Jupiter’s trojans?

Relative to Jupiter, each Trojan librates around one of Jupiter’s two stable Lagrange points: L4, lying 60° ahead of the planet in its orbit, and L5, 60° behind. Jupiter trojans are distributed in two elongated, curved regions around these Lagrangian points with an average semi-major axis of about 5.2 AU.

What would happen if you tried to land on Jupiter?

The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Jupiter, it wouldn’t be able to fly through unscathed either. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet crush, melt, and vaporize spacecraft trying to fly into the planet.

What is the average period of a Jupiter trojan’s orbit?

Jupiter trojans generally follow paths called tadpole orbits around the Lagrangian points; the average period of their libration is about 150 years. The amplitude of the libration (along the Jovian orbit) varies from 0.6° to 88°, with the average being about 33°.