The Earth is getting a second moon for a restricted time starting the tip of September.

An asteroid will come shut sufficient to Earth to briefly enter its orbit on the finish of the month, a phenomenon dubbed as “mini-moon,” based on astronomers.

Ranging from Sept. 29, the asteroid, which was found by NASA on Aug. 7 from the Arjuna asteroid belt, shall be orbiting the Earth for about two months till Nov. 25.

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Researchers on the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Final Alert System – a NASA-funded program – detected the asteroid utilizing an instrument in Sutherland, South Africa and named it as 2024 PT5.

The asteroid is tiny in comparison with the scale of the Earth’s moon, measuring about 10 meters in size.

Chatting with ABC Information, Astrophysics Professor Adam Frank from the College of Rochester defined the so-called mini-moon phenomenon.

What’s a mini-moon and the way does this work?

“What we’re having right here is an asteroid, which is principally a flying mountain in house that often orbits near the Earth, or orbits in the identical distance from the Solar because the Earth, and it is getting captured by the Earth’s gravity. They usually’ll be a part of the Earth Moon system,” he mentioned. “It’s going to orbit the Earth for possibly about two months, after which they will get flung again out. So we get just a little, teeny, tiny, little moon for about two months.”

Can we see the mini-moon?

Frank informed ABC Information that sadly we cannot be capable of see the mini-moon with the bare eye as a result of it’s fairly small.

“You are gonna want a telescope,” he defined. “Even then it could be fairly tough, given its distance. So it is extra the concept of it than truly we’re getting an additional moon.”

Do now we have to be anxious in regards to the asteroid?

In response to Frank, fortunately, at this level, there’s nothing to fret in regards to the steroid coming into the Earth’s orbit.

“As a result of if one thing this dimension had been to hit the Earth, , it might be an apocalypse of a biblical sort,” he mentioned. “So actually right here, what we have is one thing that is in regards to the moon’s orbit or so it is about that form of distance. So by no means is it going to get shut sufficient to threaten us in any manner.”

This phenomenon, nonetheless, will permit astronomers to study extra about asteroids and the skies.

“Astronomers are spending loads of time making an attempt to catalog these lessons of asteroids to be sure that we perceive the place all of them are, as a result of if any had been to get shut sufficient to the earth, we thought there was a risk of hitting us, we might have to determine divert it or do one thing to it to maintain it from hanging the earth,” he added.

Within the research revealed this week, researchers mentioned that the earlier mini-moon occasions had been short-lived and occurred in 1981 and in 2022.