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On Sunday ( Sept. 29 ) , Earth becharm a " 2nd moonshine " that will accompany our planet on its journeying around the sun for the next two months .
The clingy space rock is actually a nigh - Earthasteroidnamed 2024 PT5 , which measures an estimated 33 foot ( 10 beat ) wide , or about the length of a school double-decker . Snagged by Earth ’s sobriety during an unusually close approach , this " minimoon " is predicted to orbit our planet for just 57 days ; on Nov. 25 , the asteroid will break liberal of Earth ’s influence and resume its regular scope of the Dominicus without a chaperone , astronomers wrote in the journalResearch Notes of the AAS .
An illustration of a small asteroid orbiting the Earth. Our planet just acquired a new “minimoon” called 2024 PT5
While the idea of a " second moon " may sound phantasmagoric and exciting , 2024 PT5 will be a mostly invisible travel fellow . measure at least 300,000 times smaller than our permanentmoon , the raw minimoon is far too tiny to be visible to the naked eye — and commercialbackyard telescopesandstargazing binocularswon’t help much , either .
" The aim is too minor and faint for typical amateur telescopes and opera glasses , " report authorCarlos de la Fuente Marcos , a prof at Universidad Complutense de Madrid , told Live Science ’s sis siteSpace.comin an interview . " However , the object is well within the luminousness range of typical telescopes used by professional astronomer . "
associate : How many Sun Myung Moon does Earth have ?
That mean the only mode to see Earth ’s young moonlet will be to wait for researchers at a professional observatory to relinquish image of it . ( However , in the meanwhile , you’re able to look for the hopeful comet that will be seeable in the aurora sky until Wednesday , Oct. 2 . Here ’s everything you need to know tospot Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan - ATLAS . )
— ' Stepping endocarp to Mars ' : Minimoons may help oneself us become an interplanetary species , order MIT astrophysicist Richard Binzel
— NASA flyby of " Dinky " asteroid expose hidden moon
— A ball of the lunar month is likely orbiting near Earth , new study suggests
accord to the novel report , 2024 PT5 belike originated from the Arjuna asteroid belt , a secondary asteroid belt that aligns closely with Earth ’s arena . Given its proximity to our planet , the cozy asteroid is expected to make another close flyby of Earth in January 2025 , and then another in 2055 .
This bus - size asteroid is n’t Earth ’s first minimoon . Our satellite has likely capture millions of irregular moon over its lifetime , but the first to be keep an eye on by world was the roughly 20 - foot - wide ( 6 m ) asteroid 2006 RH120 , which lingered in Earth ’s orbit for 18 months from 2006 to 2007 . Not long after , thespace John Rock 2020 CD3spent three year orbiting the planet before drifting away in 2020 . Given the relatively easy trip to a minimoon from Earth , some researchers have proposed using these transient satellites as " stepping stones " for future missions to mine asteroids or search deeper into oursolar system .
