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Earth will have a temporary ‘mini moon’ for two months

Earth will have a temporary ‘mini moon’ for two months

Vaseline 1 month ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth’s moon will soon have some company — a “mini moon.”

The mini moon is actually an asteroid about the size of a school bus and 10 meters high. When it zooms past Earth on Sunday, it will be temporarily captured by our planet’s gravity and orbit Earth – but only for about two months.

The space rock – 2024 PT5 – was first spotted in August by astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid using a high-powered telescope in Sutherland, South Africa.

These short-lived minimoons are probably more common than we realize, says Richard Binzel, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The last known one was detected in 2020.

“This happens with some frequency, but we rarely see them because they are very small and very difficult to detect,” he said. “Only recently has our investigative capacity reached the point where we can routinely spot them.”

The discovery by Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos was published by the American Astronomical Society.

This will not be visible to the naked eye or through amateur telescopes, but “can be observed with relatively large research-quality telescopes,” Carlos de la Fuente Marcos said in an email.

Binzel, who was not involved in the study, said it is not clear whether the space rock came from an asteroid or from “a piece of the moon that blew out.”

The mini moon will orbit the Earth for almost 57 days, but will not complete a full orbit. On November 25, he will say goodbye to Earth and continue his solo journey through the cosmos. This is expected to be over by 2055.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.