Earth’s ‘Second Moon’ Is Officially In Orbit For The Next Two Months
NASA scientists have announced that Earth’s orbit has captured a “second moon” on Sunday September 29th. The “mini-moon” is technically a small asteroid referred to as 2024 PT5. The asteroid typically orbits the sun as a part of an asteroid belt that follows Earth, and now, it’s orbiting Earth the same way the moon does.
Earth’s moon has been orbiting our planet for around 4 billion years. 2024 PT5, however, won’t be in our specific orbit for that long, and should exit its current course in November.
“According to the latest data available from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons system, the temporary capture will start at 15:54 EDT (1954 UTC) and will end at 11:43 EDT (1543 UTC) on November 25,” mini-moon event expert and Universidad Complutense de Madrid professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Space.com.
“The object that is going to pay us a visit belongs to the Arjuna asteroid belt, a secondary asteroid belt made of space rocks that follow orbits very similar to that of Earth at an average distance to the sun of about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers),” Marcos said last week.
“Objects in the Arjuna asteroid belt are part of the near-Earth object population of asteroids and comets.”
These “gravitational capture events” are actually fairly common in our solar system, according to Marcos.
“Some Arjuna asteroid belt objects can approach Earth at a close range of around 2.8 million miles (4.5 million kilometers) and at a relatively low velocity of less than 2,200 miles per hour (3,540 km/h),” Marcos explained.
“Asteroid 2024 PT5 will not describe a full orbit around Earth. You may say that if a true satellite is like a customer buying goods inside a store, objects like 2024 PT5 are window shoppers.”
After asteroid 2024 PT5 finishes its short journey around Earth in November, it will continue to orbit the sun with the Arjuna family of asteroids.
“The object is too small and dim for typical amateur telescopes and binoculars. However, the object is well within the brightness range of typical telescopes used by professional astronomers,” Marcos concluded.
“A telescope with a diameter of at least 30 inches plus a CCD or CMOS detector is needed to observe this object; a 30-inch telescope and a human eye behind it will not be enough.”
The research is currently published in the journal The Research Notes of the AAS.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
