Search for L4 Earth Trojan asteroids with the 2.5-meter Wide Field Survey Telescope

[2606.31751] Search for L4 Earth Trojan asteroids with the 2.5-meter Wide Field Survey Telescope Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Astrophysics > Earth and Planetary Astrophysics arXiv:2606.31751 (astro-ph) [Submitted on 30 Jun 2026] Title: Search for L4 Earth Trojan asteroids with the 2.5-meter Wide Field Survey Telescope Authors: Junqiang Lu , Lulu Fan , Shaohan Wang , Minxuan Cai , Bingxue Fu , Xu Kong , Haibin Zhao , Bin Li , Qingfeng Zhu , Zhen Wan , Feng Li , Ming Liang , Binyang Liu , Zheng Lou , Jinlong Tang , Hairen Wang , Jian Wang , Yongquan Xue , Hongfei Zhang View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Earth Trojan asteroids (ETAs) are a mysterious population, and dynamically stable ETAs, if primordial, could be "living fossils" of the early solar system. To date, there are only two known ETAs, but both are temporary ETAs. The aim of our survey is to discover new temporary or stable ETAs; in the absence of detections, we derive upper limits on the population of stable ETAs. We conducted the largest wide-area survey of the Earth's L4 Lagrange point region so far using the Wide Field Survey Telescope, covering about 236.74 deg^2, corresponding to 33.24% of the probability coverage for sky regions where dynamically stable L4 ETAs are likely to reside. No new ETAs were detected in our survey. We place a cumulative upper limit of N(H < 19.1) < 19 on the stable population of objects larger than ~520 m (for an assumed albedo of 0.15). This represents the most stringent constraint on the ETA population to date. Comments: Accepted for publication in A&A, 8 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) ; Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) Cite as: arXiv:2606.31751 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2606.31751v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.31751 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Related DOI : https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202660889 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Jun-Qiang Lu [ view email ] [v1] Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:42:29 UTC (1,392 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: astro-ph.EP < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: astro-ph astro-ph.IM References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender ( What is IArxiv? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab) Major funding support from

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