Earth’s
been hiding a little secret from its partner, the moon. Turns out the Earth has
had a “mini-moon” on the side for over a century, and even though the
relationship has been exposed, the partnership is likely to continue for centuries
to come. 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. It's being called as "Quasi-Moon".
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.
Learn
more here.