New Results on the Motions of Asteroids in Resonances

Abstract

In this article we present a numerical study of the motion of asteroids in the 2:1 and 3:1 resonance with Jupiter. We integrated the equations of motion of the elliptic restricted 3-body problem for a great number of initial conditions within this 2 resonances for a time interval of 104 periods and for special cases even longer (which corresponds in the the Sun-Jupiter system to time intervals up to 106 years). We present our results in the form of 3-dimensional diagrams (initial a versus initial e, and in the z-axes the highest value of the eccentricity during the whole integration time). In the 3:1 resonance an eccentricity higher than 0.3 can lead to a close approach to Mars and hence to an escape from the resonance. Asteroids in the 2:1 resonance with Jupiter with eccentricities higher than 0.5 suffer from possible close approaches to Jupiter itself and then again this leads in general to an escape from the resonance. In both resonances we found possible regions of escape (chaotic regions), but only for initial eccentricities e > 0.15. The comparison with recent results show quite a good agreement for the structure of the 3:1 resonance. For motions in the 2:1 resonance our numeric results are in contradiction to others: high eccentric orbits are also found which may lead to escapes and consequently to a depletion of this resonant regions.