Earth is going to welcome a second moon to its orbit named 2024 PT5. It comes from the Arjuna Asteroid belt and was spotted on 7th August by astronomers using the South Africa-based observatory of the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS. The Arjuna belt which is made up of space rocks and follows a similar orbit as that of the Earth is around 93 million miles or 150 million kilometres away from the sun. It is going to orbit our planet for 56.6 days starting from September 29 up to November 25 this year.
The asteroid, which will be our planet’s mini-moon, is estimated to be around 16 and 138 feet approximately (5 and 42 meters) in terms of diameter, and around 55 to 65 feet or (17 to 20 ft.) in size. So far, only a few such bodies have been identified. The basic reason for the ejection of such bodies is the gravitational disturbances caused by the sun. The registered and observed bodies are 2006 RH120, 1991 VG, 2022 NX1, 2020 CD3, and 2024 PT5 of which 2006 RH120 and 2020 CD3 are long captures.
It implies that they are bounded by the Earth’s gravitational field and complete one or two revolutions around the planet. The rest of the documented bodies are short captures implying that they are ephemerally present in Earth’s gravitational field and don’t even complete even one single revolution around the earth.
More importantly, there is no danger of the body colliding with the planet. The space rock will orbit about 2.6 million miles (4.2 million kilometres) away, or about 10 times the distance between Earth and the moon. So, there is no chance of seeing the body with our normal telescopes or binoculars. A telescope of at least 30 inches with a CCD or CMOS detector will be able to help us observe this object in the night sky. Plus, this object won’t be visible in most of the skies. Thus, there will be no observable effects on our planet as a result of the asteroid being a part of our solar system.
Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, the research-led author and professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid spelled out that the body must approach the earth at a close range of the Two-Meter Twin Telescope, both on Spain’s Canary Islands 28 lakh miles or approximately 45 lakh kilometres at a slow speed of 2200 mph or 3540 kmph.
His team will use the Gran Telescopio Canarias and the twin telescope located in Spain’s Canary Islands. Once it fulfills the role of being our mini-moon the sun’s gravitational pull will pull it out of our orbit and put it back into its normal orbit. Further, it is expected to make an appearance for a few days in November 2055 and later in the early parts of the year 2084.
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