Neptune Trojan

A Neptune Trojan is an asteroid which is in the same orbit as the planet Neptune. 

Their name comes from the Trojan asteroids which have the same orbital period as a planet. As of March 2007, there are six, listed earlier as a Neptune Trojan, proved to be a scattered disk object.List Of Neptune Trojans (March 8, 2007) at cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/. known Neptune Trojans. They lie in the elongated, curved region around the L4 Lagrangian point 60° ahead of Neptune. The six Neptune Trojans are , 385571 Otrera, , 385695 Clete,  and .

The discovery of  in a high inclination (>25°) orbit is significant because it suggests a ‘thick’ cloud of Trojans.S. Sheppard and C. Trujillo "A Thick Cloud of Neptune Trojans and Their Colors" (2006) Science 313, pp. 511-514 It is believed that large (radius ≈ 100 km) Neptune Trojans could greatly outnumber the Jupiter Trojans.E. I. Chiang and Y. Lithwick Neptune Trojans as a Testbed for Planet Formation, The Astrophysical Journal, 628, pp. 520–532    Preprintspace.com popular article (Jan 2007) 

The New Horizons spacecraft passed through the L5 Neptune region in 2014. It was preparing to observe Pluto and did not observe any asteroids there.

References

Category:Trojan asteroids
Category:Neptune