TPO - Earth's moon will have a new companion in the near future, scientists call it with the rather lovely name of a "mini moon".
The mini-moon is actually an asteroid called 2024 PT5, which is the size of a bus and 10 meters long. The asteroid was first discovered in August by astronomers at the Complutense University of Madrid using a powerful telescope in Sutherland, South Africa.
When the asteroid passed by Earth on September 29, it was captured by our planet's gravity and orbited Earth to become a second moon.
But this will only last for about two months. The mini-moon will circle Earth for nearly 57 days, but it won’t complete a full orbit. On November 25, it will separate from Earth and continue its solitary orbit through space. It is expected to pass by Earth again in 2055.
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The discovery of the mini-moon was also announced by the American Astronomical Society.
According to the announcement, this small moon cannot be seen with the naked eye or through amateur telescopes, but "can be observed with relatively large telescopes used for research purposes."
Short-lived mini-moons have appeared before. The last mini-moon was discovered in 2020.
“They happen all the time, but we rarely see them because they are so small and hard to detect,” said Richard Binzel, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It wasn’t until recently, when astronomers’ observing capabilities improved, that they were seen regularly.”
Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said 2024 PT5 could be a piece of material ejected from a lunar impact, meaning the mini-moon could have originated from a piece of the original moon, according to The New York Times .
The study said there could be several types of mini-moons, including those that orbit the Earth for one or more revolutions and stay in orbit for months or years, and “captured moons” that orbit for a short period of time and do not complete a single revolution.
According to AP
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