Trojan camp in the context of "Jupiter trojan"

Play Trivia Questions online!

or

Skip to study material about Trojan camp in the context of "Jupiter trojan"

Ad spacer

⭐ Core Definition: Trojan camp

This is a list of Jupiter trojans that lie in the Trojan camp, an elongated curved region around the trailing L5 Lagrangian point, 60° behind Jupiter in its orbit.

All the asteroids at the trailing L5 point have names corresponding to participants on the Trojan side of the Trojan War, except for 617 Patroclus, which was named before this naming convention was instituted. Correspondingly, 624 Hektor is a Trojan-named asteroid at the "Greek" (L4) Lagrangian point. In 2018, at its 30th General Assembly in Vienna, the International Astronomical Union amended this naming convention, allowing for Jupiter trojans with H larger than 12 (that is, a mean diameter smaller than approximately 22 kilometers, for an assumed albedo of 0.057) to be named after Olympic athletes, as the number of known Jupiter trojans, currently more than 10,000, far exceeds the number of available names of heroes from the Trojan War in Greek mythology.

↓ Menu

>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<

👉 Trojan camp in the context of Jupiter trojan

The Jupiter trojans, commonly called trojan asteroids or simply trojans, are a large group of asteroids that share the planet Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. Relative to Jupiter, each trojan librates around one of Jupiter's stable Lagrange points: either L4, existing 60° ahead of the planet in its orbit, or L5, 60° behind. Jupiter trojans are distributed in two elongated, curved regions around these Lagrangian points with an average semi-major axis of about 5.2 AU.

The first Jupiter trojan discovered, 588 Achilles, was spotted in 1906 by German astronomer Max Wolf. More than 15,300 Jupiter trojans have been found as of October 2025. By convention, they are each named from Greek mythology after a figure of the Trojan War, hence the name "trojan". The total number of Jupiter trojans larger than 1 km in diameter is believed to be about 1 million, approximately equal to the number of asteroids larger than 1 km in the asteroid belt. Like main-belt asteroids, Jupiter trojans form families.

↓ Explore More Topics
In this Dossier

Trojan camp in the context of Patroclus–Menoetius

617 Patroclus (/pəˈtrkləs/ pə-TROH-kləs) is a large binary Jupiter trojan asteroid. It is a dark D-type asteroid and a slow rotator, due to the 103-hour orbital period of its two components. It is one of five Jupiter trojan asteroids targeted by the Lucy space probe, and is scheduled for a flyby in 2033.

Patroclus was discovered on 17 October 1906, by astronomer August Kopff at the Heidelberg Observatory in Germany, and was named after Patroclus in Greek mythology. It was the second trojan to be discovered and the only member of the Trojan camp named after a Greek figure, as the convention of naming one 'camp' after Greek figures of the Trojan War and the other after Trojan figures had not yet been established.

↑ Return to Menu