514107 Kaʻepaokaʻāwela
retrograde asteroid discovered in 2014
514107 Kaʻepaokaʻāwela (), provisionally designated 2015 BZ509 and nicknamed Bee-Zed, is a small asteroid, approximately 3 km (2 mi) in diameter, in a resonant, co-orbital motion with Jupiter. It is an unusual minor planet in that its orbit is retrograde, which is opposite to the direction of most other bodies in the Solar System. It was discovered on 26 November 2014, by astronomers of the Pan-STARRS survey at Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui, United States. Kaʻepaokaʻāwela is the first example of an asteroid with a retrograde orbit that is also in a stable 1:–1 resonance with any of the planets at the same time. This type of resonance had only been studied a few years before the object's discovery. One study suggests that it was an interstellar asteroid captured 4.5 billion years ago into an orbit around the Sun.
Nomenclature
The Hawaiian name Kaʻepaokaʻāwela ([kəˈʔɛpəokəʔaːˈvɛlə]) is composed of ka 'the'; ʻepa 'tricky' or 'mischievous', referring to its contrary orbit; o 'of'; and Kaʻāwela 'Jupiter'. The name was created by A Hua He Inoa, a Hawaiian-language program dedicated to naming objects discovered with Pan-STARRS. The A Hua He Inoa program consists of Hawaiian language experts and astronomers at the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center. Their submitted name was approved by the International Astronomical Union on 6 April 2019. Prior to the naming of Kaʻepaokaʻāwela, it was given the provisional designation 2015 BZ509 during 16–31 January 2015, for being the 12,750th object first observed in that period.
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