Earth has captured a second moon, says NASA

Ron Czapala

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/earth-has-captured-second-moon-says-nasa

Well, this is awkward. Earth's relationship with the moon is no longer a monogamous one. Scientists have identified a second, mini-moon orbiting our planet that has probably only been around for about 100 years, reports NASA.

This second moon looks to be a recently captured asteroid, and like a mistress, its subtle dance with Earth may be fleeting, only sticking around for a few centuries. Still, it's a remarkable event that proves just how dynamic our gravitational relationship is with near-Earth objects.

lardom

You're suggesting the earth has a 'side chick'. The gossip mags will have a field day!

evanh

If it ain't big enough to be roughly spherical then I'm happy to carry on calling it an accretion disc. And that goes for a number of other so-called moons too.

erco

lardom wrote: »

You're suggesting the earth has a 'side chick'. The gossip mags will have a field day!

Side chicks are expensive, costing money and time. If she meddles with our orbital mechanics, we may have to add a leap second every thousand years to compensate.

Waitin' on a Woman. Again.

MikeDYur

In another story on astronomy, the New Horizons Spacecraft was busy doing work before it ever reached Pluto. Awesome close-up photo of Jupiter's cloud structure.

The New Horizons spacecraft took some stunning images of Jupiter on its way out to Pluto. Famous for its Great Red Spot, Jupiter is also known for its regular, equatorial cloud bands, visible through even modest sized telescopes. The featured image, horizontally compressed, was taken in 2007 near Jupiter's terminator and shows the Jovian giant's wide diversity of cloud patterns. On the far left are clouds closest to Jupiter's South Pole. Here turbulent whirlpools and swirls are seen in a dark region, dubbed a belt, that rings the planet. Even light colored regions, called zones, show tremendous structure, complete with complex wave patterns. The energy that drives these waves surely comes from below. New Horizons is the fastest space probe ever launched, has successfully complete its main flyby of Pluto in 2015, and is now heading further out and on track to flyby Kuiper belt object 2014 MU69 in 2019.