Environment
The mini moon is actually an asteroid about the size of a school bus.
A partial lunar eclipse supermoon rises over Lake Michigan in Chicago, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)
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 33-foot (10-meter) school bus. As it whizzes past Earth on Sunday, it will be temporarily captured by our planet’s gravity and orbit the globe — but only for about two months.
The space rock – 2024 PT5 – was first discovered in August by astronomers at the Complutense University of Madrid using a powerful telescope in Sutherland, South Africa.
These short-lived minimoons are likely more common than we realize, says Richard Binzel, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The last known one was discovered 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 have our investigative capabilities reached the point of routinely detecting them.”
The discovery by Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos was published by the American Astronomical Society.
This one won’t be visible to the naked eye or through amateur telescopes, but it “can be observed with relatively large research-grade telescopes,” Carlos de la Fuente Marcos said in an email.
Binzel, who was not involved in the research, said it is not clear whether the space rock originated as an asteroid or as “a piece of the moon that was blasted out.”
The mini-moon will orbit the globe for nearly 57 days but will not complete a full orbit. On November 25, it will separate from Earth and continue its solo orbit through the cosmos. It is expected to pass by again in 2055.
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