A small asteroid named 2024 PT5 is preparing for a short but unusual visit to our planet. About 10 to 11 meters in diameter and similar to the size of a bus, the asteroid was discovered on August 7 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in South Africa and will be temporarily captured by Earth’s gravity. and it becomes a “minimoon” for about two months.
According to astronomers Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, from the Complutense University of Madrid, the asteroid will begin its orbit around Earth on September 29 and stay with us until November 25. During those 56.6 days, Earth will boast two moons: our ever-faithful companion and this special temporary mini-moon.
This “minimoon” will not be visible to the naked eye
While the idea of a new space visitor is exciting, you don’t want to get too excited about seeing it with the naked eye. At an absolute magnitude of 27.6, 2024 PT5 is too faint to be visible with most amateur telescopes, so we’ll have to make do with knowing it’s there, orbiting us.
Scientists believe this asteroid could be a member of the Arjuna family, a group of near-Earth objects with orbits similar to our planet. These objects owe their name to a prince of ancient India, the protagonist of the Hindu epic Mahābhārata.
“Such orbital features are consistent with those of the Arjunas, a low-resonance population of small NEOs (near-Earth objects) in the secondary asteroid belt located around the path followed by the Earth-Moon system,” the researchers wrote in their study published in the journal American Astronomical Society Research Notes.
Similar cases
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Earth has temporarily “captured” an asteroid. In 2006, a small 5-meter object named 2006 RH120 circled our planet for about a year. Another asteroid recently accompanied us for several years before saying goodbye in May 2020.
And for those wondering if we’ll see our new space friend again, we have good news. 2024 PT5 is expected to make more visits in the future. According to calculations, it will welcome us again briefly in January 2025 and honor us with another visit in 2055.
So even if we can’t see it directly, let’s take a look at the sky this fall and say hello to our fleeting mini-moon. After all, how many times can you say your planet has two moons?
Edited by Felipe Espinosa Wang with input from Research Notes of AAS, Cosmos, and IFL Science.
