One is
the loneliest number, especially when you are a single moon circling the planet
full of humans. But let’s not lose hope here because NASA just announced that
there might be a second moon come to keep you company. This newly discovered
moon is smaller than our moon and goes around the Earth astonishingly
irregularly, but still, two is quite better than one. This second “moon,” is
actually an asteroid called 2016 HO3 and it is currently locked into “a little
dance” with Earth.
This new moon has been dancing around for over a century
now. Its orbit is extremely elliptical, affecting it to go a wee bit off
tangent—between 38 and 100 times the distance of Earth’s primary moon—and bob
up and down across Earth’s orbital plane. This new moon is tilted by about 8°
and it orbits the Sun for 365.93 days, which is a little longer than Earth’s
365.24 day-long year.
Since it’s tilted and has an elliptical orbit, sometimes it
is a quiet closer to the Sun and moving a little faster than Earth. Other
times, it is a little bit farther out and moving a bit more slowly, however it
never gets any closer than about 14 million kilometers from Planet Earth or
farther than about 40 million kilometers.
According to NASA, it’s larger than 36.5 meters across, but
no more than 91 meters wide, and will circle earth for many more centuries to
come.
2016 HO3 was first discovered by astronomers in April 27
with the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope located in Haleakala, Hawaii.
Source : Physics Astronomy