2021/11/23 by Man-To Hui, Paul Wiegert, D. J. Tholen +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Astro and Planetary Science #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #High-pressure geophysics and materials
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ac37bf
openalex publication_date 2021/11/23 · openalex created_date 2021/12/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Abstract The Earth Trojans are coorbitals librating around the Lagrange points L 4 or L 5 of the Sun–Earth system. Although many numerical studies suggest that they can maintain their dynamical status and be stable on timescales up to a few tens of thousands of years or even longer, they remain an elusive population. Thus far only one transient member (2010 TK 7 ) has been discovered serendipitously. Here, we present a dynamical study of asteroid 2020 XL 5 . With our meticulous follow-up astrometric observations of the object, we confirmed that it is a new Earth Trojan. However, its eccentric orbit brings it close encounters with Venus on a frequent basis. Based on our N -body integration, we found that the asteroid was captured into the current Earth Trojan status in the fifteenth century, and then it has a likelihood of 99.5% to leave the L 4 region within the next ∼10 kyr. Therefore, it is most likely that 2020 XL 5 is dynamically unstable over this timescale.