Posted on 08/29/2013 12:04:12 PM PDT by Dysart
Object: A 60-kilometre-wide asteroid Location: 3 billion kilometres ahead of Uranus, in the planet's L4 Lagrange point
Uranus has a forbidden friend. The first asteroid to share the planet's orbit has been found, despite claims that Jupiter's mighty gravity should steal such companions away.
The finding hints that more of these asteroids, called Trojans, lurk around unexpected worlds. Since Trojans don't always stay in place, finding new ones improves our picture of how space rocks migrate around the solar system. It also means there may be super-sized Trojans sharing orbits with massive exoplanets.
Mike Alexandersen of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and colleagues discovered the 60-kilometre-wide Trojan, named 2011 QF99, from an observatory in Hawaii. It lives in a Lagrange point, where the gravitational tugs from the sun and Uranus balance out.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
STOP IT!!! OMG ROFL ROFL MY RIBS!!! You folks are so crazy ROFL
In some cases trojan asteroid bases may make for great paces in humanity’s goal for settlements in various spaces...
That head line!
One of three discovery images of 2011 QF99 taken from CFHT on 2011 October 24 (2011 QF99 is inside the green circle). This is the first of three images of the same patch of sky, taken one hour apart, that were then compared to find moving light-sources. Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/#ixzz2dOGOZn4F
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