Talk:Quasi-satellite

picture
Sorry about the picture quality...if someone can find a better one please replace it.


 * Well, I don't think that it has a poor quality (it looks smooth and has nice colors) but it lacks a feature. The unique feature that quasi-satellites seem to orbit the earth isn't visible in it. I have taken a picture out of a Public Domain GIF-sequence from Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the german article Quasisatellit about the same topic and translated the labelling to german and changed the size of the bodies to make the clearly visible. This image also shows the quasi-satellite's orbit (of asteroid 2002 AA29 in the future) from earth's point of view in a very self explanatory manner, but of course the colors aren't looking that nice and is has only a poor resolution. Perhapes you want to adopt it (vectorizing it in Photoshop and changing the colors) and want to make a more fancy looking one? The image can be found directly at de:Bild:2002aa29-orbit-4.png and the original GIF-sequence on http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/2002aa29/2002aa29f.gif on a nice web page with more animations: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/2002aa29.html . Arnomane (in german Wikipedia)

definition

 * A quasi-satellite is an object similar to a planet or satellite, but its orbit encompasses both its planet and the planet's star.

This is still confusing, because the orbits of true moons orbiting a planet also encompass the star simply by following the planet. Also "is an object similar to a planet or satellite" is not informative, because the definition of a quasi-satellite is all about its orbits (so I have removed at least this). Does anyone know a rigorous definition that lets you determine whether an object is a true or quasi satellite? Deuar 12:35, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Difference between quasi-satellite, co-orbital moon, and object on horseshoe orbits
Could someone please explain what the difference is between quasi-satellite, co-orbital moon, and objects on horseshoe orbits? The text is not too clear. Aren't objects in horseshoe orbits about the Earth in a 1:1 mean motion resonanance, at least temporarily? I would like to categorize all these objects accordingly, but its not clear if the planetary community even has a clear definition of what these things are. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lunokhod (talk • contribs) 11:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC).

Pluto
Couldn't Pluto be a Quasi-satellite of Uranus? Their orbits do cross. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greggydude (talk • contribs) 13:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No, read the description of a quasi-satellite's orbit. It must be the same period as the planet, which is not true for Pluto. Uranus takes around 84 years to orbit the Sun once, but Pluto takes almost 250 years. 71.104.187.210 (talk) 09:25, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

broken link
Footnote 4 appears to be dead. A Russian-speaker could confirm that and possibly get more information; the link goes to what looks like a short error message in Russian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.182.240.194 (talk) 14:26, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Perspective from Planet
I was doing some modeling in Celestia with quasi-satellites and found that the view of the quasi-satellite from the planet is actually not "an oblong retrograde loop around the planet" (quoted from page). It does so relative to the central star, but relative to the background stars, a quasi-satellite appears to simply occilate back and forth within a fixed region of sky. Not sure if there's a reference somewhere, but it might be worth a look. 71.104.187.210 (talk) 09:25, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Plutinos
From the definition given in the article I don't see why Arawn in particular rather than plutinos in general should be considered (accidental) quasi-satellites of Pluto. Am I missing something? Lavateraguy (talk) 16:34, 22 October 2017 (UTC)