Asteroid 2024PT5 to be Temporary Guest of Earth, Creating a Unique Astronomical Scene
TapTechNews September 15th news, Asteroid 2024PT5, due to the influence of the Earth's gravity, will visit the Earth from September 29th to November 25th, presenting a short 57-day astronomical scene of two "moons" accompanying each other.
Researchers Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos from the Complutense University of Madrid discovered this asteroid.
TapTechNews note: 2024PT5 is a near-Earth asteroid with a diameter of about 10 meters (33 feet), which was discovered by the ATLAS observatory in Sutherland, South Africa on August 7, 2024, and the next day it will approach the Earth at a distance of 568500 kilometers (353,200 miles).
The celestial body orbits the sun, but will slowly approach the Earth-Moon system. During this short 57 days, it will pass through the periphery of the Earth's Hill sphere (about 0.01 astronomical unit, that is, 1.5 million kilometers or 930,000 miles), and will be briefly captured by the Earth's gravity. Its geocentric orbital eccentricity is less than 1, and the geocentric orbital energy is negative.
The research team pointed out in the paper: "2024PT5 will escape back into space after orbiting the Earth once." This phenomenon is called "temporary capture flyby", that is, the asteroid enters the Earth's gravitational range, but does not perform multiple orbital operations.
