New Moon Discovered “Mini-Moon”, Earth has two Moon
NASA discovers there is a quasi-moon that is been orbiting the Earth for almost a century.
One Moon is the loneliest digit, especially if you are a moon circling the Earth. This new Moon is smaller as compared to old MOON.
NASA said:
“Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far away as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth”
The second “moon” is asteroid 2016 HO3, and it is lock into “a little dance” with Earth, and it is revolving for a century. The rock’s orbit is elliptical, causing it to go a wee bit off tangent—between 38 and 100 times.
HO3 is tilted by about 8° and It circles the Sun for 365.93 days. It is slightly longer than Earth’s 365.24 day-long year.
Due to elliptical orbit, and it is a bit closer some times to the Sun and moving faster slightly than Earth. Other times, it is moving a bit more slowly. It never gets closer more than about 14 million kilometers from Earth or We can say farther than about 40 million kilometers.
NASA claimed that its larger than 120 feet (36.5 meters) across, but no more larger than 300 feet (91 meters) wide, and will orbit for more and many centuries to come.
On April 27 2016 Astronomers first found out HO3 the Pan-STARRS 1 with asteroid survey telescope in Haleakala, Hawaii.