The Blue Planet has acquired a new moon that’s about the size of a car! On 19 February, astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spotted a dim object moving quickly across the sky.
On Wednesday 19 February, astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spotted a dim object moving quickly across the sky. Over the next few days, researchers at six more observatories around the world watched the object, designated 2020 CD3, and calculated its orbit. They confirmed the fact that it has been gravitationally bound to Earth for about three years.
On Wednesday 19 February, astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spotted a dim object moving quickly across the sky. Over the next few days, researchers at six more observatories around the world watched the object, designated 2020 CD3, and calculated its orbit. They confirmed the fact that it has been gravitationally bound to Earth for about three years.
@newscientist
Earth has acquired a brand new moon that’s about the size of a car
http://bit.ly/3c7qNVj
Kacper Wierzchos
@WierzchosKacper
BIG NEWS . Earth has a new temporarily captured object/Possible mini-moon called 2020 CD3. On the night of Feb. 15, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne and I found a 20th magnitude object. Here are the discovery images.
The object is an asteroid and is only the second asteroid known to orbit Earth. And while it won’t last, it acts as a temporary mini-moon circling around our planet. The asteroid is expected to drop out of orbit around the Earth in April and return to a heliocentric orbit, which is an orbit around the Sun. The first asteroid (mini moon) called 2006 RH120, hung around between September 2006 and June 2007 before escaping.
The newest addition to our moon family measures between 1.9 and 3.5 metres across, roughly the size of a car, making it no match for Earth’s primary moon. It circles our planet about once every 47 days on a wide, oval-shaped orbit that mostly swoops far outside the larger moon’s path.
Kacper Wierzchos
@WierzchosKacper
The object has a diameter between 1.9 – 3.5 m assuming a C-type asteroid albedo. But it’s a big deal as out of ~ 1 million known asteroids, this is just the second asteroid known to orbit Earth (after 2006 RH120, which was also discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey).
This discovery was made by Kacper Wierzchos and Theodore Pruyne who are researcher specialists for the Catalina Sky Survey. It’s a NASA-funded project at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tuscon, Arizona.
The survey is supported by the “Near-Earth Object Observations Program”, which reports into NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Specialists at Catalina help NASA discover and track near-Earth objects that could be potentially hazardous to the planet.
Kacper Wierzchos
@WierzchosKacper
The object has just been announced by the MPC and its orbit shows that it entered Earth’s orbit some three years ago. Here is a diagram of the orbit created with the orbit
The orbit isn’t stable, so eventually 2020 CD3 will be flung away from Earth. “It is heading away from the Earth-moon system as we speak,” says Grigori Fedorets at Queen’s University Belfast in the UK.
However, there are several different simulations of its trajectory and they don’t all agree more observations are needed to accurately predict the fate of our mini-moon and even to confirm that it is definitely a temporary moon and not a piece of artificial space debris. “Our international team is continuously working to constrain a better solution,” says Fedorets.
Apparently the Earth’s gravity has captured a tiny new moon … so small it could fit in a shed.
The mini-moon appears to have been orbiting our planet for three years.
Earth Has Captured A Second, Tiny Mini-Moon
That big crescent that will be hanging in the night sky this week isn’t the only natural moon circling our planet.
