Earth has a Trojan asteroid

[mmcirvin]

Some planets have Trojan asteroids: objects that orbit around the L4 or L5 points, which form an equilateral triangle with the planet and the Sun, ahead or behind it in its orbit. They exist for Jupiter, Neptune and Mars. And, as it turns out, Earth. I feel like we just hit the big time.

Comments

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

The thing I thought was most fascinating about the Trojan planets asteroids is that they have a movement-- there's some orbital mechanism that allows them to travel from L4 to L5, and back again, the long way. I remember similar fascination when I learned about shepherd moons.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Resonant moons and asteroids do all kinds of crazy things. Earth also has a bunch of objects in quasi-horseshoe resonant orbits like Cruithne.

The solar system's greatest playground for weird orbital dynamics has to be the Saturn system, though. Just about everything's going on somewhere in there.