Two Moons?!

Are we on another planet? I saw recently in some space news that we will be acquiring a second moon for about two months. A second moon! Floating around us. That is crazy talk. Will it have the similar affects as our moon, as it hurdles across space and time? One thing I do know before looking into this said second moon of ours is the mass and sizing is drastically different that our actual moon, but can it affect our tides of the ocean? So many questions are popping up in my head and the only true thing to do, other than speculate is to look it up. To the interwebs of the internet I go!

2024 PT5 is the name and hanging out and orbiting earth for 57 days is it’s game. Scientists have dubbed the name “mini moon” for the time being and thus I shall be referencing it as that.

What makes a mini moon classified as such? According to space. com, any space object that approaches Earth’s gravitational pull, which is a range of around 2.8 million miles, and slow enough to stay within it at about 2,200 mph, can be considered a “mini moon.” This asteroid that is currently approaching those numbers is from the Arjuna asteroid belt, also known as “Arjunas” and are identified as a “Near Earth Object,” or NEO. In this case, our soon to be captured mini moon is a “tiny” asteroid. I put quotes around tiny because, well, tiny to us is vastly different to tiny in terms of space. This particular mini moon/ asteroid is said to be approximately 33 feet in diameter and have a relative velocity of 3,280 feet per second as it travels by.

This is not the first mini moon that Earth has encountered and will not be the last. I have read that even this future mini moon of ours is debated as such, due to the fact that it will not be making a full rotation around our Earth. “The cause of the ejection of these objects from around Earth are gravitational disturbances caused by the sun. Once 2024 PT5 has fulfilled its role as a mini moon, it will return to a sun-centered orbit, remaining part of the Arjuna asteroid belt.” Robert Lee from space.com explains.

As for this second moon having a enough gravitational pull to affect our oceans, I wouldn’t hold your breathe. Unfortunately, “the object is too small and dim for typical amateur telescopes and binoculars. However, the object is well within the brightness range of typical telescopes used by professional astronomers… A telescope with a diameter of at least 30 inches plus a CCD or CMOS detector are needed to observe this object, a 30 inches telescope and a human eye behind it will not be enough,” explains research lead author and Universidad Complutense de Madrid professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos.

Even though we wont be able to see this mini moon, knowing about it and possibly feeling the difference in energy is something I look forward to. I don’t know how we all would handle waking up one day to a second large object in our sky.

BY

SEEKING

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ONDER

SAMANTHA Y OCIUS CREATIVE MEDIA