by On Sunday (Sept. 29), Earth captured a "second moon" that will accompany our planet on its journey around the sun for the next two months.
The clingy space rock is actually a near-Earth asteroid named 2024 PT5, which measures an estimated 33 feet (10 meters) wide, or about the length of a school bus.
Snagged by Earth's gravity during an unusually close approach, this "minimoon" is predicted to orbit our planet for just 57 days.
On Nov. 25, the asteroid will break free of Earth's influence and resume its regular orbit of the sun without a chaperone, astronomers wrote in the journal Research Notes of the AAS.
While the idea of a "second moon" may sound surreal and exciting, 2024 PT5 will be a mostly invisible travel companion.
Measuring at least 300,000 times smaller than our permanent moon, the new minimoon is far too tiny to be visible to the naked eye — and commercial backyard telescopes and stargazing binoculars won't help much, either.
Source
The clingy space rock is actually a near-Earth asteroid named 2024 PT5, which measures an estimated 33 feet (10 meters) wide, or about the length of a school bus.
Snagged by Earth's gravity during an unusually close approach, this "minimoon" is predicted to orbit our planet for just 57 days.
On Nov. 25, the asteroid will break free of Earth's influence and resume its regular orbit of the sun without a chaperone, astronomers wrote in the journal Research Notes of the AAS.
While the idea of a "second moon" may sound surreal and exciting, 2024 PT5 will be a mostly invisible travel companion.
Measuring at least 300,000 times smaller than our permanent moon, the new minimoon is far too tiny to be visible to the naked eye — and commercial backyard telescopes and stargazing binoculars won't help much, either.
Source
