Do you like astronomy and space? For you, Earth has only one natural satellite: the Moon. What if you were told you were wrong. That our planet has two moons and this reality is only valid for a few days. Would you take us for crazy? And yet, it’s true… Explanations.
Earth temporarily has two Moons
In fact, it is noted that our good old Earth only has one and only natural satellite, namely the Moon. Like the Earth which orbits the Sun, the Moon revolves around the Earth and does so in 27.3 days which corresponds to one lunar month.
If this is what we all learned when we were young, know that since we left school, and more precisely since the end of last September, this is no longer the case. Certainly, our natural satellite still gravitates in the same way but we have a new moon and only for a few more days.
A team of astronomers was able detect a small asteroid with the sweet name of 2024 PT5. This was captured by Earth’s gravity and became a mini-moon for Earth.
An asteroid gravitating around the Earth for a few more days
For Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, from the Complutense University of Madrid and author of this research it is not uncommon for the Earth to “regularly capture asteroids from the near-Earth object population and place them in orbit“. Most of them are only temporary mini-moons and do not complete a complete revolution before leaving their orbit.
This rock of extraterrestrial origin which was detected at the beginning of last August and whose diameter is estimated between 5 and 42 meters, gravitates 4.2 million kilometers from Earth. According to experts, it began its gravitation around our planet on September 29 and should leave our orbit on November 25.
Of course, impossible to see it using binoculars or a telescopeits size is too small. As a reminder, the diameter of the Moon is approximately 3474 km.
As scientists point out, this is not the first time that the Earth may have two Moons. In 2020, another asteroid, 2020 CD3, had orbited around us for several years. Here, this phenomenon is quite rare because since the beginning of the 2000s, we have only had 4 so-called ephemeral mini-moons.
