Population and Size Distribution of Small Jovian Trojan Asteroids

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Abstract

We present a study of Jovian Trojan objects detected serendipitously during the course of a sky survey conducted at the University of Hawaii 2.2-meter telescope. We used a 8192 x 8192 pixel charge-coupled device (CCD) mosaic to observe 20 deg^2 at locations spread over the L4 Lagrangian swarm and reached a limiting magnitude V = 22.5 mag (50% of maximum detection efficiency). Ninety-three Jovian Trojans were detected with radii 2 - 20 km (assumed albedo 0.04). Their differential magnitude distribution has a slope of 0.40 +/- 0.05 corresponding to a power law size distribution index 3.0 +/- 0.3 (1-sigma). The total number of L4 Trojans with radii > 1 km is of order 1.6 x 10^5 and their combined mass (dominated by the largest objects) is ~ 10^{-4} M_{Earth}. The bias-corrected mean inclination is 13.7 +/- 0.5 deg. We also discuss the size and spatial distribution of the L4 swarm.

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