385695 Clete, provisional designation , is a Neptune trojan, co-orbital with the ice giant

Neptune Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 time ...

, approximately in diameter. It was named after Clete, one of the Amazons from

Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of ...

. The

minor planet According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term '' ...

was discovered on 8 October 2005, by American astronomers

Scott Sheppard Scott Sander Sheppard (born 1977) is an American astronomer and a discoverer of numerous moons, comets and minor planets in the outer Solar System. He is an astronomer in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Scie ...

and Chad Trujillo at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. 23 known Neptune trojans have already been discovered.

Numbering and naming

This minor planet was named from

after Clete, a member of the Amazons, an all-female warrior tribe that fought in the

Trojan War In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and ha ...

on the side of the Trojans against the Greek. Clete was one of the twelve followers of the Amazonian queen

Penthesilea Penthesilea ( el, Πενθεσίλεια, Penthesíleia) was an Amazonian queen in Greek mythology, the daughter of Ares and Otrera and the sister of Hippolyta, Antiope and Melanippe. She assisted Troy in the Trojan War, during which she w ...

and went looking for her after she went missing during the war. According to the queen's will, Clete sailed to Italy and founded the city of Clete. The official was published by the

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Function ...

on 18 May 2019 (). The naming follows the scheme already established with

385571 Otrera 385571 Otrera, provisional designation , is a Neptune trojan leading Neptune's orbit in the outer Solar System. It was discovered by American astronomers Scott Sheppard and Chad Trujillo at Las Campanas Observatory on 16 October 2004. It measures ...

, which is to name these Neptune trojans after figures related to the Amazons.

Orbit and classification

''Clete'' orbits near

Lagrangian point In celestial mechanics, the Lagrange points (; also Lagrangian points or libration points) are points of equilibrium for small-mass objects under the influence of two massive orbiting bodies. Mathematically, this involves the solution of ...

about 60 ° ahead of Neptune and thus has the about same orbital period as Neptune. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 28.5–31.6 AU once every 164 years and 9 months (60,182 days;

semi-major axis In geometry, the major axis of an ellipse is its longest diameter: a line segment that runs through the center and both foci, with ends at the two most widely separated points of the perimeter. The semi-major axis (major semiaxis) is the lo ...

of 30.06 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.05 and an

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a Plane of reference, reference plane and the orbital plane or Axis of rotation, axis of direction of the orbiting object ...

of 5 ° with respect to the

ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Sun's movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year traces out a path along the ecliptic agai ...

. The Neptune-

resonance Resonance describes the phenomenon of increased amplitude that occurs when the frequency of an applied periodic force (or a Fourier component of it) is equal or close to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts. When an oscillat ...

should keep it more than 19 AU from Neptune for 14,000 years. , it is 25.5 AU from Neptune. ''Clete'' is located close to the boundary separating stable orbits from unstable ones, and it may be influenced by a secular resonance.

Physical characteristics

Diameter

The discoverers estimate that ''Clete'' has a mean-diameter of 100 kilometers based on a magnitude of 23.2. Based on a generic magnitude-to-diameter conversion, it measures approximately 97 kilometers in diameter using an

absolute magnitude Absolute magnitude () is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale. An object's absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it we ...

of 8.3 with an assumed

albedo Albedo (; ) is the measure of the diffuse reflection of solar radiation out of the total solar radiation and measured on a scale from 0, corresponding to a black body that absorbs all incident radiation, to 1, corresponding to a body that refl ...

of 0.09.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Clete 385695 Discoveries by Chad Trujillo Discoveries by Scott S. Sheppard Named minor planets 20051008