This video will talk about the most interesting groups of asteroids located near the orbit of Jupiter. These are the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter, as well as Hildas.
Trojan asteroids are divided into two groups: the Greeks and the Trojans. The Greeks move around the Sun in sync with Jupiter, 60° ahead of it, in the vicinity of the Lagrange point L4 of the Jupiter–Sun system. The Trojans move similarly, but 60° behind Jupiter, in the vicinity of the Lagrange point L5. To date, approximately 15,000 Trojan asteroids have been discovered, with approximately twice as many Greeks as Trojans. The ten largest Trojan asteroids of Jupiter were detailed in the video published in March 2024.
The Hildas are a group of asteroids that move around the Sun in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Jupiter. This means that each asteroid in this group completes 3 orbits around the Sun in the same amount of time that it takes Jupiter to complete 2 orbits. There are approximately 7,000 known Hildas. Each of them follows an elliptical orbit, delaying near one of the three Lagrange points of the Jupiter-Sun system. Two of them (L4 and L5) were mentioned earlier, and the third (L3) is located on the opposite side of Jupiter’s orbit. The Hildas delay at the vertices of the triangle because they pass through the aphelia of their orbits. The speed of their motion at these three points is minimal, so the concentration of asteroids is higher there. Unlike the Trojan asteroids, each object of the Hilda group is not associated with any of the three Lagrange points. However, it consistently passes through each of them.
Modeling and rendering were performed by the author of this publication using own software. The calculations took into account the mutual influence of the Sun, all the planets of the Solar system and the Moon on each other. Relativistic effects were also taken into account in the calculation. The motion of asteroids is shown without taking into account planetary disturbances. Throughout the video, the sizes of celestial bodies are shown to be greatly exaggerated compared to the distances between them.
The music track Asher Fulero – Aurora Currents was used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
