Uranus trojan in the context of "Distant minor planet"

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⭐ Core Definition: Uranus trojan

A Uranus trojan is an asteroid that shares an orbit with Uranus and the Sun. Predicted in simulations earlier, two trojans have been discovered in Uranus’s Lagrangian point L4 (leading Uranus).

(687170) 2011 QF99 was the first body to be classified as such a trojan in 2013, while in 2017 (636872) 2014 YX49 became the second.

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👉 Uranus trojan in the context of Distant minor planet

A distant minor planet, or distant object, is any minor planet found beyond Jupiter in the outer Solar System that is not commonly thought of as an "asteroid". The umbrella term is used by IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), which is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation of these objects. As of January 2025, the MPC maintains 6101 distant objects in its data base.

Most distant minor planets are trans-Neptunian objects and centaurs, while relatively few are damocloids, Neptune trojans or Uranus trojans. All distant objects have a semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun) greater than 6 AU. This threshold, which is just beyond the orbit of Jupiter (5.2 AU), ensures that the vast majority of "true asteroids" – such as the near-Earth, Mars-crosser, main-belt and Jupiter trojan populations – are excluded from the distant minor planets.

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Uranus trojan in the context of Minor planet

According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term minor planet, but that year's meeting reclassified minor planets and comets into dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies (SSSBs). In contrast to the eight official planets of the Solar System, all minor planets fail to clear their orbital neighborhood.

Minor planets include asteroids (near-Earth objects, Earth trojans, Mars trojans, Mars-crossers, main-belt asteroids and Jupiter trojans), as well as distant minor planets (Uranus trojans, Neptune trojans, centaurs and trans-Neptunian objects), most of which reside in the Kuiper belt and the scattered disc. As of October 2025, there are 1,472,966 known objects, divided into 875,150 numbered, with only one of them recognized as a dwarf planet (secured discoveries) and 597,816 unnumbered minor planets, with only five of those officially recognized as a dwarf planet.

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