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Posted by David Williams on June 16, 2006, 12:13 am
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There are, of course, two groups of asteroids that share Jupiter's
orbit, one 60 degrees ahead of the planet, and the other 60 degrees
behind it. Originally, only one of these groups (I'm not sure which)
was called the Trojans. The other was called the Greeks. The names were
intended to recall the battles between the Greeks and Trojans in
classical antiquity. But among the asteroids, unlike on Earth, the
Trojans seem to have conquered and assimilated the Greeks. Now, all
these asteroids are called Trojans.
dow
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Posted by Henry Spencer on June 18, 2006, 6:36 pm
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>...Originally, only one of these groups (I'm not sure which)
>was called the Trojans. The other was called the Greeks...
No, that wasn't the way it happened.
The first Lagrange-point asteroid discovered was named Achilles more or
less arbitrarily: since it was not in the main belt, it should get a male
name (there was a well-established tradition, then, that main-belt
asteroids got female classical names, and Eros had already set a precedent
that objects not in the main belt got male classical names), but otherwise
its discoverer just picked a particularly well-known name, without any
intent to establish a pattern.
Achilles is in (or rather, near) Jupiter's L4 point. When another such
asteroid was discovered in Jupiter's L5 point, it got named Patroclus --
Achilles's best friend(*). *Now* a pattern was established: asteroids
in Jupiter's L4 and L5 points got named after heroes of the Trojan War.
Unfortunately, both Achilles and Patroclus were Greeks. Later names
established a general pattern of using Greek names for the L4 asteroids
and Trojan names for the L5 asteroids, but Patroclus is in the wrong
group. Worse, so is the next one discovered, Hektor (much the largest of
the bunch).
So no, there were never separate collective names for the two groups.
They were all "Trojan asteroids", in the "Trojan points", from the name
of the war, not from the nationality of the characters.
(* Well, that's the kids' version... The fact is, Achilles and Patroclus
were lovers, with the same sort of iconic status in classical Greek culture
that Romeo and Juliet have in the English-speaking world today. )
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | henry@spsystems.net
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