Discovery date 2011 Observation arc 1449 days (3.97 yr) Semi-major axis 19.081 AU (2.8545 Tm) Orbital period 84 years Inclination 10.8233° Mean anomaly 277.47° | Minor planet category centaur Aphelion 22.487 AU (3.3640 Tm) Eccentricity 0.17846 Discovered 2011 Argument of perihelion 287.63° Asteroid group Centaur | |
Similar Hi'iaka, Jupiter trojan, (55565) 2002 AW197, Dysnomia, (55636) 2002 TX300 | ||
2011 qf99 motion next 1 kyr
Asteroid 2011 QF99 is the first known Uranus trojan. It was discovered in 2011 during a deep survey of trans-Neptunian objects conducted with the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope, but its identification as Uranian Trojan was not announced until 2013. It is thought to be roughly 60 km in diameter, assuming an albedo of 0.05.
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2011 QF99 temporarily orbits near Uranus's L4 Lagrangian point (leading Uranus). It will continue to librate around L4 for at least 70,000 years and will remain a Uranus co-orbital for up to three million years before becoming a centaur. 2011 QF99 is thus a temporary Uranus trojan—a centaur captured some time ago.
Uranus trojans are generally expected to be unstable and none of them are thought to be of primordial origin. A simulation led to the conclusion that at any given time, 0.4% of the centaurs in the scattered population within 34 AU would be Uranus co-orbitals, of which 64% (0.256% of all centaurs) would be in horseshoe orbits, 10% (0.04%) would be quasi-satellites, and 26% (0.104%) would be trojans (evenly split between the L4 and L5 groups). A second Uranian Trojan, 2014 YX49,was announced in 2017.