Day 284

Day 284

 

Earth has 2 moons

On Sunday, September 29th, a tiny asteroid named 2024 PT5 entered our orbit becoming earth’s second moon. It is not visible to the naked eye and it’s not going to be around for long—just until November 25, 2024, but for now we have 2 moons.

Scientists know of 2 other occurrences of what they call “short captures,” which lasted about a week. There have also been two rarer “long-capture” events. They estimate that this happens several times per decade. Mini-moons help scientists understand more about our solar system.

 

Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Dachris\~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth\_and\_moon\_3d\_komet.jpg

 

https://www.earth.com/news/its-official-earth-now-has-two-moons-captured-asteroid-2024-pt5/

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