Scientists accidentally detected a Trojan asteroid in Uranus while studying the planets icy regions.
Mike Alexandersen, lead author of the study from University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and his colleagues were studying the trans-Neptunian region of the outer solar system when they came across the Trojan asteroid they dubbed as 2011 QF99. The discovery is the first of its kind in Uranus.
The celestial object was estimated to measure about 60-km wide and is believed to be consisted of rock and ice, although the researchers admitted that they don’t have evidence yet. It shares the orbit of Uranus and is 19 times farther to the sun compared to Earth’s distance. Scientists have been monitoring the asteroid since 2011 to establish that it is really sharing Uranus’ orbit. Surprisingly, its distance to the planet remained stable at 10-170 degrees ahead which may have caused by the weak gravitational pull that slows down its speed.
The 2011 QF99 was captured on October 24, 2011 by the research teams of the University of British Columbia and the National Research Council of Canada using a Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Three images were captured taken one hour apart. The researchers would like to see how the object moves along with the changes in the stars and galaxies in the background.
Scientists believe that the Trojan asteroid has been sharing the orbit for hundreds of thousands of years. They also forecasted that within millions of years, the celestial object may escape from the planet’s orbit throwing out of the solar system.
"Uranus is not predicted to have many stable Trojans, or perhaps any," wrote Alexandersen and in the study."However, once we had enough observations to determine the orbit well, we proceeded to use computers to predict its future path."
Other planets that have Trojan orbits are Earth, Mars, Neptune, and Jupiter.
The study was published in the Aug. 29 issue of Science.
