(514107) Kaʻepaokaʻāwela

Retrograde orbit of Kaʻepaokaʻawela with 100-day motion markers
Discovery [1]
Discovered by	Pan-STARRS 1
Discovery site	Haleakala Obs.
Discovery date	26 November 2014
Designations
MPC designation	(514107) 2015 BZ509
Pronunciation	/kəˌɛpə.oʊkə.ɑːˈvɛlə/ Hawaiian: [kəˈʔɛpə.oˌkəʔaːˈvɛlə][2]
Named after	Kaʻepaokaʻāwela ("the Jupiter trickster")
Alternative designations	2015 BZ509 Bee-Zed (nickname)
Minor planet category	retrograde Jupiter co-orbital [3][4][5] asteroid [6] · unusual [7]
Orbital characteristics [6]
Epoch 27 April 2019 (JD 2458600.5)
Uncertainty parameter 2
Observation arc	2.81 yr (1,026 d)
Aphelion	7.0899 AU
Perihelion	3.1889 AU
Semi-major axis	5.1394 AU
Eccentricity	0.3795
Orbital period (sidereal)	11.65 yr (4,256 d)
Mean anomaly	100.26°
Mean motion	0° 5m 4.56s / day
Inclination	163.02°
Longitude of ascending node	307.42°
Argument of perihelion	257.48°
Jupiter MOID	0.2252 AU
TJupiter	-0.7460
Physical characteristics
Mean diameter	3 km (approx.)[8]
Absolute magnitude (H)	16.0[6]

514107 Kaʻepaokaʻāwela (/kəˌʔɛpə.oʊkə.ʔɑːˈvɛlə/), provisionally designated 2015 BZ₅₀₉ and nicknamed Bee-Zed,^[9] is a small asteroid, approximately 3 km (2 mi) in diameter,^[8] in a resonant, co-orbital motion with Jupiter.^[3] It is an unusual minor planet in that its orbit is retrograde, which is opposite to the direction of most other bodies in the Solar System.^[4] It was discovered on 26 November 2014, by astronomers of the Pan-STARRS survey at Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui, United States.^[1] Kaʻepaokaʻāwela is the first example of an asteroid in a 1:–1 resonance with any of the planets.^[5] This type of resonance had only been studied a few years before the object's discovery.^[10][11] One study suggests that it was an interstellar asteroid captured 4.5 billion years ago into an orbit around the Sun.

The Hawaiian name Kaʻepaokaʻāwela [kəˈʔɛpəokəʔaːˈvɛlə] is composed of ka 'the', ʻepa 'tricky' or 'mischievous', referring to its contrary orbit, o 'of', and Kaʻāwela 'Jupiter'.^[2][12] The name was created by A Hua He Inoa, a Hawaiian-language program dedicated to naming objects discovered with Pan-STARRS.^[13] The A Hua He Inoa program consists of Hawaiian language experts and astronomers at the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center.^[6][13] Their submitted name was approved by the International Astronomical Union on 9 April 2019.^[6] Prior to the naming of Kaʻepaokaʻawela, it was given the provisional designation 2015 BZ₅₀₉ during 16–31 January 2015, for being the 12,750th object first observed in that period.^[1][14] It was then numbered 514107 and added to the minor planet catalog by the Minor Planet Center on 2 March 2018 (M.P.C. 109159),^[15] after its orbit became sufficiently determined.^[1]

Kaʻepaokaʻawela orbits the Sun at a distance of 3.2–7.1 AU once every 11 years and 8 months (4,256 days; semi-major axis of 5.14 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.38 and an inclination of 163° with respect to the ecliptic.^[6]

Its period is close to the 11.86-year period of Jupiter. During one Jovian year, Jupiter moves 360° around the sun whereas Kaʻepaokaʻawela moves 366.3° in the opposite direction. The eccentricity of its orbit allows it to alternately pass inside and outside of Jupiter's orbit at its closest approaches of 176 million kilometers. Each time it passes near Jupiter its orbital elements, including its period, are slightly altered. Over thousands of years the angle between the position of the asteroid and its perihelion minus the angle between Jupiter and the asteroid's perihelion tends to oscillate around zero with a period of about 660 years and an amplitude of about 125°, although sometimes this difference slips by a whole 360°.^{[note 1]}

The adjunct diagram shows one complete orbit of asteroid Kaʻepaokaʻawela in a frame of reference rotating with Jupiter. The view is from the north looking south onto the Solar System. The dot in the middle is the Sun and the green circle is the orbit of Earth. The black circle shows the size of the orbit of Jupiter but in this frame of reference Jupiter (the red dot) stays almost stationary at the point on the circle directly to the right of the sun. The orbit of this asteroid is shown in blue when it is above the plane of the orbit of Jupiter, and in magenta when it is below the plane of the orbit of Jupiter.^[3]

The second diagram shows one complete orbit of asteroid Kaʻepaokaʻawela in a frame of reference rotating with Jupiter. The view is from the side looking into the Solar System. The Sun is the yellow disk in the middle. The plane of the orbit of Jupiter is shown in black, but in this frame of reference Jupiter (the red dot) stays at the right end of the black line. The orbit of this asteroid is shown in blue when it is above (north of) the plane of the orbit of Jupiter, and it is shown in magenta when it is below (south of) the plane of the orbit of Jupiter.^[3]

Perturbations from Jupiter alone would maintain the co-orbital configuration indefinitely.^[16] Simulations including also the perturbations from the other planets show that it has been in its co-orbital relation with Jupiter for at least a million years and will continue for at least another million years. It is somewhat of a mystery how this asteroid (or comet) got into this orbit, but it is thought that at some time in the distant past it was put into an orbit resembling its present orbit by an interaction with Saturn, and then its orbit was perturbed into the state it is in today.^[3] Likewise, in the far future it may eventually get close enough to Saturn to be expelled from its present co-orbital relation with Jupiter.

A statistical search for stable orbits by Fathi Namouni and Helena Morais using one million objects with similar orbits to that of Kaʻepaokaʻawela identified 27 that were stable for 4.5 billion years, the lifetime of the Solar System. Using this result they concluded that Kaʻepaokaʻawela has been in its retrograde resonance with Jupiter since the origin of the Solar System instead of it being an object that is only briefly in this orbit that was observed by chance using the Copernican principle.^[17][18] Since its retrograde orbit is in the opposite direction as objects that formed in the early Solar System they posit that Kaʻepaokaʻawela has an interstellar origin.^[19] If confirmed, this origin would have implications on current theories such as the detailed timing and mechanics of planet formation, and the delivery of water and organic molecules to Earth.^[17]

Others suggest that Kaʻepaokaʻawela originated in the Oort cloud or that it acquired a retrograde orbit due to interactions with Planet Nine, and that it is a short term resident of its current resonance.^[17] Given the small fraction of objects with orbits like Kaʻepaokaʻawela that survive for the life of the Solar System, they find that a primordial population of similar objects must have been an implausible ten times as large as the current asteroid belt if it was an interstellar object captured during the formation of the Solar System.^[20] Another potential source of retrograde Jupiter trojans are escaping near-Earth asteroids.^[21]

• List of exceptional asteroids § Retrograde
• 'Oumuamua, an interstellar object

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 514107 Kaʻepaokaʻawela.

• The first retrograde co-orbital asteroid: 2015 BZ509 on YouTube, Scientias.nl (0:52 min)
• Asteroid Lightcurve Database (LCDB), query form (info Archived 16 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine)
• Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (510001)-(515000) – Minor Planet Center
• Backwards asteroid shares an orbit with Jupiter without crashing 29 March 2017
• Is There An Alien Asteroid Among Us? Bob King, 23 May 2018
• Animation of orbital motion at APOD (30 May 2018)
• 514107 Kaʻepaokaʻawela at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site
  • Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info
• 514107 Kaʻepaokaʻawela at the JPL Small-Body Database
  • Close approach · Discovery · Ephemeris · Orbit viewer · Orbit parameters · Physical parameters