Earth has picked up a tiny new ‘mini-moon’ – but can you spot it in Melbourne?
If you were impressed by September's supermoon , then how about this? Earth has just gained a new 'mini-moon', which will travel alongside our planet for the next two months.
Known as 2024 PT5, this asteroid was caught by Earth's gravitational pull and will complete a single orbit between September 29 and November 25. It will then break free of Earth's grip and resume its regular orbit around the sun.
As cool as a second moon sounds, it sadly won't be visible to the naked eye in Melbourne – or anywhere in the world, for that matter. The clingy asteroid measures about ten metres wide, which is at least 300,000 times smaller than the Earth's moon. Amateur telescopes and binoculars won't do the trick either, but we can count on professional astronomers with large-scale telescopes for some pretty epic images.
Mini-moons are incredibly rare, with only a handful of instances ever recorded, including similar events in 1981 and 2022. After its brief visit, 2024 PT5 is not expected to return until 2055.
If you start feeling funny over the next 50 or so days, just blame it on the mini-moon.
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