November 03, 2002
Orbital Resonance

Suddenly it seems that there's a lot more to orbital resonance than just the Lagrange points I learned about it school:


Paul Wiegert's Web Page: ...I'm interested in the dynamics of the Solar System, particularly its smaller bodies, asteroids and comets. I'm also interested in the dynamics of planets in extra-solar systems around other stars, and in celestial mechanics in general.

The Earth companion asteroid 3753 Cruithne: I have been involved in an a study, in collaboration with Kim Innanen (York) and Seppo Mikkola (Turku), of near-Earth asteroids. During this research, we discovered that the Earth has a companion asteroid. If you would like to know more about asteroid 3753 Cruithne, you can visit its home page here.

Asteroid 2002 AA29: Quasi-satellite to horseshoe and back again.... Most near-Earth asteroids have no consistent dynamical connection to our planet. However, those that go around the Sun in precisely the same amount of time as our planet fall into 1:1 mean-motion resonance with our planet (which just means that both go around the Sun once in the same average (mean) amount of time). These rare bodies are called Earth coorbital or companion asteroids; they in some sense share the Earth's orbit with it. With a highly circular orbit that is the most Earth-like seen so far, and able to transit between two distinct types of resonant motion, is the newly-discovered ECA 2002 AA29.

Posted by DeLong at November 03, 2002 12:25 PM | Trackback

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Does anybody have an explanation for the horseshoe shap of AA29's (co)orbital?

BTW, I am sorry to say that Pluto is not considered a planet anymore. Quauar will now take its place as the known planet farthest from the sun. More from the BBC. So long, Pluto! Welcome around Quauar! %-)

Posted by: Jean-Philippe Stijns on November 3, 2002 02:56 PM

Suddenly it seems that there's a lot more to orbital resonance than just the Lagrange points I learned about it school

Hardly surprising... Unless I am hopelessly out of date, there is still no general solution for the three-body problem...

Posted by: Nikolai Chuvakhin on November 3, 2002 09:01 PM


I think it's known that there cannot be an exact solution to the three-body problem.

Posted by: Walt on November 3, 2002 11:00 PM

If you want more information about the three-body problem, gravitational resonances & so forth-- you should add the string 'KAM theorem' (stands for Kolmogorov, Arnold, Moser) to your Google searches.

Posted by: Matt on November 4, 2002 08:29 AM

I need some information about the new planet

Posted by: María José Alfano on December 29, 2002 06:57 AM
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