Abstract
RELATION OF ASTEROID ORBITS TO THAT OF JUPITER.— Prof. H. A. Newton, in the American Journal of Science, April 1886, points out that the orbits of the asteroids should have a relation to that of Jupiter. For suppoing the orbits of the asteroids to be distributed in any manner whatever, provided only that they make small angles with the plane of Jupiter's orbit, the action of Jupiter woul I give to each orbit a motion of its node which would differ for the different orbits, and even- tually the orbits would come to be distributed somewhat symmetrically about the orbit of Jupiter. And as a matter of fact, the centre of gravity of the poles of the 251 known asteroid orbits, computed as for points of equal weight, lies only 30′ from the pole of Jupiter's orbit; so that the plane of Jupiter's orbit lies nearer to the mean plane of all the asteroid orbits than any single asteroid orbit does the nearest orbits being those of Meduca and Euterpe, inclined to it 46′ and 49′ respectively.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Our Astronomical Column . Nature 33, 592 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/033592a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/033592a0