Image: AsbolA

Description: Predicting the overall orbit and position of Asbolus beyond a few thousand years is difficult because of errors in the known trajectory, error amplification by perturbations due to all of the gas giants, and the possibility of perturbation as a result of cometary outgassing/fragmentation. This plot shows the variation of the semi-major axis of the unstable Centaur 8405 Asbolus during the next 5500 years, computed using the current Astorb elements (black trace) and AstDys elements (red). The "jumps" correspond to relatively close approaches to Jupiter or Saturn, that you can check using the "spatial approaches" function of Solex, setting the limit distance to 450000 (3AU). The first large decrease corresponds to two successive approaches to Jupiter and Saturn (April 2377 and May 2379, respectively) adding up coherently their effects. Compared to centaur Nessus, the orbit of Asbolus is currently much more chaotic: you can see that after the Jupiter encounter of year 4713 (27 Cy in the future) the two orbits become substantially divergent.
Title: AsbolA
Credit: Aldo Vitagliano's Solex 10 website
Author: Aldo Vitagliano
Permission: Text and images in this site may be freely reproduced, provided credit is given to the author.
Usage Terms: GNU General Public License
License: GPL
License Link: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Attribution Required?: Yes