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Earth to have two ‘Moons’ till Nov 25

Since Sunday September 29, 2024, our Earth has two Moons – one our own permanent neighbour and the other a temporary “Mini Moon” that will orbit our planet alongside the Moon for the next two months

Friday October 4, 2024 9:21 PM, ummid.com News Network

Earth to have two ‘Moons’ till Nov 25

[AI image for representation]

Since Sunday September 29, 2024, our Earth has two Moons – one our own permanent neighbour and the other a temporary “Mini Moon” that will orbit our planet alongside the Moon for the next two months.

2024 PT5

The mini moon is actually 2024 PT5, an asteroid about the size of a school bus at 33 feet (10 meters). When it first whizzed by Earth Sunday, it temporarily trapped by our planet’s gravity and started orbiting the globe.

The space rock - 2024 PT5, was first spotted in August by astronomers at Complutense University of Madrid using a powerful telescope located in Sutherland, South Africa.

These short-lived mini moons are likely more common than we realize, said Richard Binzel, an astronomer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The last known one was detected in 2020, Associated Press reported.

“This happens with some frequency, but we rarely see them because they’re very small and very hard to detect,” he said. “Only recently has our survey capability reached the point of spotting them routinely.”

'Temporary Moons'

These mini moons, don’t stick around for long — they might hang out for a few weeks or months, or two months as in case of 2024 PT5, before breaking free and continuing their journey around the sun.

Scientists find mini-moons really interesting because they give us a chance to study near-Earth objects up close and learn more about how our solar system works, according to Earth.com.

2024 PT5 is part of the Arjuna asteroid belt — a group of space rocks that follow orbits similar to Earth’s, about 93 million miles from the sun.

PT5 was first captured at 03:54 p.m. EDT on September 29, 2024, (around 01:30 AM IST on September 30, 2024).

The “mini moon” will be hooked to Earth till 11:43 a.m. EDT on November 25, 2024 (around 09:30 PM IST on November 25, 2024.

The PT5 asteroid, also known as 2024 PT5 is part of the Arjuna asteroid belt, a group of asteroids 93 million miles away from our planet with an Earth-like orbit, Earth.com said.

However, unlike our moon, the temporary mini-moon won’t complete a full orbit around our planet and is not visible to the naked eye or using telescopes due to its small size but can only be tracked using typical telescopes used by professionals.

Planets with more than one Moon

Our Earth has only one Moon and there is a scientific explanation for the same. But apart from Earth there are planets that have more than one Moon.

Moons are either gravitationally captured if they are within the planet’s Hill sphere radius, or they’re formed along with a solar system.

Small planets like Mercury and Venus have a small Hill sphere radius, which is why they cannot experience a large gravitational pull. Any potential moons likely get pulled by the sun.

Planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have larger Hill sphere radii and are farther from the sun, making it easy for them to attract and keep more moons in their orbit.

According to a recent study, Saturn has a total of 145 moons – a maximum by any planet in our solar system.

In terms of number of moons, Jupiter is second with 95 Moons.

Also, 121 of the 145 moons that Saturn has are ‘irregular moons.’

Irregular moons are characterised by their large, elliptical, and inclined orbits compared to regular moons. They tend to clump together into orbital groups based on the tilt of their orbits.

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