Discovery date April 29, 2011 Aphelion 32.588 AU (4.8751 Tm) Eccentricity 0.082112 Orbital period 165 years Inclination 29.393° Mean anomaly 31.306° | Minor planet category Trojan asteroid Semi-major axis 30.115 AU (4.5051 Tm) Mean motion 0° 0 21.47 /day Discovered 29 April 2011 Argument of perihelion 149.92° Asteroid group Neptune trojan | |
Similar (316179) 2010 EN65, S/2004 N 1, Sao, Psamathe, Laomedeia | ||
2011 hm102 an l5 neptune trojan
2011 HM102, also written 2011 HM102, is the ninth Neptune trojan discovered. It was first observed on April 29, 2011 by the New Horizons KBO Search Survey. It has the same orbital period as Neptune and orbits at the L5 Lagrangian point about 60 degrees backwards of Neptune.
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Orbit
2011 HM102 follows a low-eccentricity (0.08) orbit, and its semi-major axis (30.05 AU) is very similar to Neptune's (30.10 AU), orbiting in a 1:1 mean-motion resonance with it. It has a high orbital inclination of 29.42°. This large value makes 2011 HM102, as of July 2013, the highest-inclination Neptune trojan known. 2011 HM102 has been observed 145 times, over two oppositions.
Physical properties
With an absolute magnitude of 8.1, it has a diameter somewhere between 90 kilometres (56 mi) and 180 kilometres (110 mi). This makes 2011 HM102, as of October 2012, the brightest L5 trojan in the entire Solar System.
Exploration
In October 2012, 2011 HM102 was the closest known object of any kind to the New Horizons spacecraft. In mid- to late 2013, New Horizons passed within 1.2 AU of 2011 HM102, where it would be detectable with one of the onboard instruments. An observation from New Horizons would measure the phase curve of 2011 HM102 at phase angles unobtainable from Earth. The New Horizons team eventually decided that they would not target 2011 HM102 for observations because the preparations for the Pluto approach took precedence.