Research Article

Gravitational Capture of Asteroids by Gas Drag

Figure 1

Grid of initial conditions of the asteroid with respect to the Sun. In the plot we can see which initial conditions that lead to negative two-body energy w.r.t. Jupiter, that is, the asteroid was temporarily captured by Jupiter. The white region in the middle of the plot are trajectories which lead to a two-body energy greater than one. For each asteroid initial condition in the space, Jupiter begins its orbit at 5.2 AU from the Sun with .
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