Uppsala-DLR Trojan Survey

The Uppsala-DLR Trojan Survey (UDTS) is an effort to study the movements and locations of asteroids near Jupiter, specifically those in orbits similar to that of Jupiter (in the Jovian Lagrangian cloud) and those which Jupiter blocks from the Earth. Not be confused with the Uppsala-DLR Asteroid Survey (UDAS) which was started shortly after the UDTS concluded.

This group of about 400 asteroids is called the Trojans, because of the naming scheme and each asteroid is named after Greek and Trojan heroes.

The survey was carried out at the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in Sweden, in collaboration with DLR, the Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt ("German Aerospace Center"), by Claes-Ingvar Lagerkvist, Gerhard Hahn, Stefano Mottola, Magnus Lundström and Uri Carsenty.

The ESO Schmidt telescope was used to survey 900 square degrees of the Jovian L4 Lagrangian point during the fall of 1996 to identify the asteroids, and additional positions and magnitude data were detected using the 0.6-m Bochum telescope at La Silla Observatory.

There is some notable controversy over P/1997 T3, one of the objects found in the Uppsala-DLR Trojan Survey, namely an asteroid-like object with a comet-like tail. It is thought that this tail is composed of dust, due to its consistent appearance, and the fact that it is pointing towards the Sun, not away from it.

External links

* [http://www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/cometeso.html Comet or Asteroid?]
* [http://www.astro.uu.se/~classe/projects/trojan.html Trojans]

ee also

*Uppsala Astronomical Observatory