Isophoric News · Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Rubin Observatory's early data doubles the known long-term stable Trojans trailing Neptune
A team led by Megan Schwamb of Queen's University Belfast reported two new long-term stable Trojan asteroids in Neptune's trailing (L5) cloud, plus one candidate, using early data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, in a paper published 15 October 2026 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The two objects double the known trailing sample on long-lived orbits, according to the paper. The paper lists them as 2025 MH348 and 2025 NN80, with 2025 MD138 as the candidate. Neptune's trailing cloud had sat in front of the dense center of the Milky Way for the past ten years, which made faint objects hard to spot, Universe Today reported, quoting Schwamb as saying the cloud has now begun to move out of that region. Imaging through different filters showed the leading and trailing Trojans have similar surfaces, and Rubin's Legacy Survey of Space and Time is expected to find tens to hundreds more over the next nine years, according to Universe Today.
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