Population and Size Distribution of Small Jovian Trojan Asteroids

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 m telescope. We used a 8192×8192 pixel charge-coupled device (CCD) mosaic to observe 20 deg2 at locations spread over the L4 Lagrangian swarm and reached a limiting magnitude V=22.5 (50% of maximum detection efficiency). Ninety-three Jovian Trojans were detected with radii 2 km =1 km is of order 1.6×105, and their combined mass (dominated by the largest objects) is ~10-4 MEarth. The bias-corrected mean inclination is 13.7d+/-0.5d. We also discuss the size and spatial distribution of the L4 swarm.