One is the loneliest figure, especially when you are a lone moon circling the planet full of humans. But let’s not lose hope here since NASA just announced that there might be a second moon come to stay you company. This newly exposed moon is smaller than our moon and goes about the Earth astonishingly irregularly, but motionless, two is quite improved than one. This second “moon,” is actually an asteroid called 2016 HO3 and it is at present locked into “a little dance” with Earth. It's being called as "Quasi-Moon".
This latest moon has been dancing around for over a century currently. Its orbit is extremely elliptical, moving 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 skewed 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.
NASA said:
“Since 2016 HO3 loops around our planet, but never ventures very far left as we both go around the sun, we refer to it as a quasi-satellite of Earth”
Since it’s tilted and has an indirect orbit, sometimes it is
quite closer to the Sun and moving a little quicker than Earth. Other times, it is a little bit farther out and moving a bit extra 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 better than 36.5 meters across, but no more than 91 meters wide, and will circle earth for many extra centuries to come.
2016 HO3 was 1stdiscovered by astronomers in April 27 with the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid review telescope located in Haleakala, Hawaii.
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