Earth will soon have an extra moon for a month or two. This mini-moon is actually a bus-sized asteroid with a diameter of about 10 meters. When it passes Earth next Sunday, it will be temporarily captured by our planet’s gravity and orbit the Earth, but that will only last about two months.
Astronomers at Madrid’s Complutense University first spotted the space rock with the tantalizing name 2024 PT5 in August. They used a powerful telescope located in Sutherland, South Africa.
According to Richard Binzel, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, these short-lived minimoons are probably more common than we think. The last known minimoon was observed in 2020.
“This happens quite regularly, but we rarely see them because they are very small and hard to see.” said Binzel. “It’s only recently that our powers of observation have evolved to the point where we can detect them routinely.”
2024 PT5 was discovered by Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos and published by the American Astronomical Society. Although this minimoon is not visible to the naked eye or through amateur telescopes, it can be observed with large, professional research telescopes.