RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

摘要

Planetary scientists have discovered the first object known to share its orbit with Uranus. The body, measuring some 60 kilometres in width and dubbed 2011 QF_(99), stays just ahead of Uranus as the two orbit the Sun. Computer simulations indicate that 2011 QF_(99) will remain near the planet for around 3 million years. It is part of a group of outer Solar System bodies in unstable orbits D they become temporarily trapped by giant planets and later return to wandering the Solar Systems fringes,report Mike Alexandersen of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and his colleagues.