A new “mini-moon” is temporarily orbiting around Earth.
The International Astronomical Union’s Small Planet Center, a scientific group that monitors the spatial positions of small orbital bodies, announced last month that a new moon orbited Earth for the past three years. Astronomers Teddy Pruyne and Kacper Wierzchos, who made the discovery, posted about the news on Twitter.
“Earth has a new temporarily captured object/Possible mini-moon called 2020 CD3,” Wierzchos tweeted. “On the night of Feb. 15, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne and I found a 20th magnitude object. Here are the discovery images.”
BIG NEWS (thread 1/3). Earth has a new temporarily captured object/Possible mini-moon called 2020 CD3. On the night of Feb. 15, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne and I found a 20th magnitude object. Here are the discovery images. pic.twitter.com/zLkXyGAkZl
— Kacper Wierzchos (@WierzchosKacper) February 26, 2020
The moon is estimated to be between 1.9 and 3.5 meters across, roughly the size of a car. According to the Small Planet Center, there is “no link to a known artificial object has been found,” indicating the object is likely an asteroid caught by Earth’s gravity as it passed.
The moon’s orbit, however, is unstable and will eventually leave Earth’s gravitational field.
