Scientists have observed that some of Neptune's Trojan asteroids are deep red, possibly revealing what asteroids may have been like in the early days of the solar system.
Neptune is famously a vivid blue, but the asteroids orbiting near it are decidedly not. An international team of astronomers recently took a peek at Neptune's Trojan asteroids and found that they all seem to be some shade of red — far redder than most asteroids in the solar system. They published their results Feb. 14 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters .
The reason for this is not that Neptunian Trojans are rare; it's probably because it's difficult to spot space rocks that are so small and far away. These asteroids tend to be 31 to 62 miles across and orbit at a distance of 2.8 billion miles from the sun. Prior to this research, astronomers had studied only a baker's dozen of these asteroids, and had to use some of Earth's largest and most powerful telescopes to do it.
Bolin's team synthesized data collected by four telescopes — the Palomar Observatory telescope in California, the Gemini North and South telescopes in Hawaii and Chile and the Keck telescope in Hawaii — over two years. Researchers tracked 18 Neptunian Trojans and analyzed their color. They found that most were significantly redder than most asteroids, including four that were extremely red.
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