Astronomers from the
Arman Observatory, United Kingdom, led by Apostolos A. Christou reported
finding a new family of Trojan asteroids of Mars.
The orbital evolution
of the detected lasted about 100 million years, scientists say, and the orbits
of the asteroids orbit recall now the largest of the known Trojan asteroids of
Mars Eureka 5261. This group forms a cluster within a region of space, which is
usually the most stable are the Trojan asteroids.
Among the objects found
there was quite a bit of asteroids larger than 1 kilometer. This led scientists
to believe that an open cluster of asteroids formed as a result of the natural
fragmentation of a common ancestor - a Trojan asteroid of Mars from the
Lagrangian point L5.
Based on the scenario
of crushing, the astronomers were able to estimate the approximate age of this
group "Trojans", which turned out to be about 2 billion years.
The researchers say
their work represents the first direct observation of the orbital cluster of
asteroids from the inner solar system near the Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment