After a stopover of a few weeks around the Earth during which it temporarily became our second Moon, the small asteroid which arrived at the end of September has just returned to the Arjuna belt where it originated.
This object is what specialists call a NEO, for near-earth object. These are generally small celestial bodies, such as asteroids, whose long journey brings them close to the Earth; they must pass within 1.3 astronomical units, or a little less than 200 million kilometers from our planet, to meet the official definition.
They are actively monitored by various scientific institutions, because they can pose a significant risk of collision with the Earth. Even if the majority of NEOs would be completely harmless because of their small size, the larger ones would not have time to completely disintegrate during atmospheric reentry, and could therefore impact our planet with a crash.
A temporary second moon
But if this object called 2024 PT5 caught the attention of astronomers, it wasn’t because of its size or the threat it poses; it was rather because of its very particular trajectory. Next September 29, during its passage near the Earth, was captured by the gravitational influence of the Blue Planet. The latter therefore found itself with a second temporary natural satellite!
This little object kept our good old Moon company for almost two months. But this idyll ended on November 25thWhen the unstable orbit in which it had settled eventually gave way. Due to complex gravitational interactions between the Earth, the Moon and the Sun (see the concept of the three-body problem), it ended up being ejected from our orbit. At this very moment, he is therefore heading towards his cradle: the Arjuna’s belt.a minor asteroid belt located about 150 million kilometers from the Sun.
However, some astronomers wanted to keep a memory of this space visitor. But it was not easy to capture a clear image of it because of its small size (around 11 meters in diameter). A Spanish astronomer from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, spotted by Space.com, however managed to take a portrait of him thanks to the Two-Meter Twin Telescope, an observatory made up of a network of four telescopes located in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands.
In the middle of the white trails left by the movement of the stars along the celestial vault during the exposure, we can see a small, vaguely spherical object; it is 2024 PT5, shortly before his departure for Arjuna’s belt.
A new visit in January 2025
The good news is that according to NASA modeling, it will return to visit us just after the holiday season, on January 9, 2025. This time, it will come even closer, with a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers from our planet. On the other hand, it should arrive at around 3700 km/h – too high a speed to consider a new gravitational capture. Therefore, 2024 PT5 will only pass by, this time non-stop. It will therefore be very difficult to portray him again.
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