Saturn Trojan asteroid confirmed

A small international team of astronomers and astrophysicists has confirmed that asteroid 2019 UO₁₄ is a Trojan asteroid of Saturn. The team has posted a paper describing their study of the asteroid on the arXiv preprint server.

Trojan asteroids follow roughly the same path around the sun as a nearby planet—in this case, Saturn. The first of them was discovered in 1906 by Max Wolf. Prior to this discovery, Trojan asteroids for the other three giant planets in the solar system had been discovered—most of them around Jupiter, which has thousands of them.

Jupiter has so many because it lies next to the asteroid belt and has a massive gravitational pull. NASA has plans to send a probe to several of them over the years 2027 to 2033.

Researchers believed that it would only be a matter of time before a Saturnian Trojan asteroid was discovered due to the planet’s strong gravitational pull. Over the years, several researchers in the field have suggested it was all but certain that Saturn has one or more Trojan asteroids.

2019 UO₁₄ was first observed back in 2019, but it was not known at the time if it was a Trojan. To merit that designation, astronomers must confirm observations from several telescopes at different sites. In this case, 2019 UO₁₄ was also found to appear in prior images where its position could be confirmed. It was then observed afresh from several new sites.

In all, data for the asteroid was found over the years 2015 to 2024—enough to confirm that it is indeed a Trojan asteroid of Saturn. The research team has found that 2019 UO₁₄ takes approximately 30 years to revolve and lies approximately 60 degrees ahead of Saturn.

Like most other Trojan asteroids, 2019 UO₁₄ is believed to have an unstable orbit. Its orbit is influenced not only by Saturn’s gravity, but by Jupiter’s as well. The research team suspects the asteroid has only been a Trojan for a couple thousand years, and will likely remain one for just another 1,000.

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