588 Achilles is an asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 discovered on February 22, 1906, by the German astronomer Max Wolf

Max Wolf

Maximilian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf was a German astronomer and a pioneer in the field of astrophotography...

. It was the first of the trojan asteroid

Trojan asteroid

The Jupiter Trojans, commonly called Trojans or Trojan asteroids, are a large group of objects that share the orbit of the planet Jupiter around the Sun. Relative to Jupiter, each Trojan librates around one of the planet's two Lagrangian points of stability, and , that respectively lie 60° ahead...

s to be discovered, and is named after Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

, the fictional hero from the Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

. It orbits in the Lagrangian point

Lagrangian point

The Lagrangian points are the five positions in an orbital configuration where a small object affected only by gravity can theoretically be stationary relative to two larger objects...

 of the Sun

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...

-Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

 system. After a few such asteroids were discovered, the rule was established that the point was the "Greek camp", while the point was the "Trojan camp", though not before each camp had acquired a "spy" (624 Hektor

624 Hektor

624 Hektor is the largest Jupiter Trojan. It was discovered in 1907 by August Kopff.Hektor is a D-type asteroid, dark and reddish in colour. It lies in Jupiter's leading Lagrangian point, , called the 'Greek' node after one of the two sides in the legendary Trojan War...

 in the Greek camp and 617 Patroclus

617 Patroclus

617 Patroclus is a binary minor planet made up of two similarly-sized objects orbiting their common centre of gravity. It is a Trojan asteroid, sharing an orbit with Jupiter. It was discovered in 1906 by August Kopff, and was the second trojan to be discovered...

in the Trojan camp).

External links

• Orbital simulation from JPL (Java)
• Ephemeris