2148 Epeios
2148 Epeios is a mid-sized Jupiter trojan from the Greek camp, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 24 October 1976, by Danish astronomer Richard Martin West at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile. The dark Jovian asteroid is the principal body of the proposed Epeios family and was named after Epeius from Greek mythology.
Orbit and classification
Epeios is a Jupiter trojan in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter. It is located in the leading Greek camp at the Gas Giant's Lagrangian point, 60° ahead on its orbit. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 4.9–5.5 AU once every 11 years and 11 months. Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.06 and an inclination of 9° with respect to the ecliptic. The body's observation arc begins with its official discovery observation at La Silla in October 1976.Epeios family
Fernando Roig and Ricardo Gil-Hutton identified Epeios as the principal body of a small Jovian asteroid family, using the hierarchical clustering method, which looks for groupings of neighboring asteroids based on the smallest distances between them in the proper orbital element space. According to the astronomers, the Epeios family belongs to the larger Menelaus clan, an aggregation of Jupiter trojans which is composed of several families, similar to the Flora family in the inner asteroid belt.However this family is not included in David Nesvorný HCM-analysis from 2014. Instead, Epeios is listed as a non-family asteroid of the Jovian background population on the Asteroids Dynamic Site which based on another analysis by Milani and Knežević.