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At the end of September, the Earth will receive a second moon, but you should not get used to it. Scientists say that it will last only 57 days, and besides, you will hardly be able to see the temporary second satellite.
The second satellite
This second moon is actually a small asteroid named 2024 PT5. It was only discovered on August 7 thanks to the Asteroid Collision Warning System (ATLAS). The object is on a trajectory where it will be temporarily captured by Earth's gravity.
According to the calculations of Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, researchers from the Spanish University Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the asteroid will orbit the Earth from September 29 to November 25. During this time, it will make only one revolution in orbit before moving away again.
2024 PT5 is very tiny, only 10 meters across, so don't expect to see anything with the naked eye. Even those with their own telescopes probably won't be able to see anything because the asteroid will at best have too faint a magnitude.
A double moon scenario is rare for our planet, but not unheard of:
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- Something similar happened in July 2006, when a similar small moon orbited the Earth for about a year.
- The other orbited the planet for several years before escaping from the planet's gravitational pull in May 2020.
- Other objects passing by can also sometimes fall under the influence of the Earth's gravity, but break out of it, not having time to complete one full revolution.
- In 2020, scientists announced that they had found another candidate for an additional satellite, but the data was inconclusive.
Scientists believe that this new asteroid may come from the Arjuna asteroid belt - a collection of near-Earth objects that have orbits similar to the orbit of our planet.
Amateur astronomer Tony Dunn published a simulation of the asteroid's trajectory:
According to astronomers' calculations, 2024 PT5 will fly by the Earth again 9 January 2025 of the year. After that, it will not come close to Earth until 2055.
