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Is This Moon Three?
tetrad writes "The BBC reports that a new object has been discovered orbiting Earth. It's possible that it's just a piece of space junk, but more likely it is a rock that has been recently (in the last year) captured by our planet's gravitational field. If the object is confirmed to be natural, this would be Earth's third moon. (Did you know there were two already?)" Here's our earlier mention of Earth's alleged second moon. Update: 09/12 04:52 GMT by T : Reader cscx adds a link to an article running on space.com which says this newfound object may be some trash from the Apollo missions.
Doesnt an orbiting object need to be of some specific minimum size? or does Saturn have billions of moons that just end up looking like rings?
Just out of curiosity, what is the scientific criterion for a moon?
:)
The "trojan asteroid" described in the previous story is only 3 miles wide and take 770 years to orbit the earth. That is not what elementary schoolteachers say is a moon, a la Jupiter's many moons... giants like Europa and IO.
I also heard a while back that Charon might not be a real moon either, because of size or rotation or something? Huh?
I'm not versed in astronomy enough to know, so does anyone have an answer for laypeople, so I can talk with people at work about this?
Space.com
Nasa and I had our hopes of a 4th moon dashed when that NSync kid couldn't cough up the money on time. He hadn't even read the fine print regarding a conditional return.
If you think
...has decided to deploy an advanced warning system, due to the number of missiles coming from Earth that have been hitting or narrowly missing Mars in recent years. While planetary defenses have had a decent intercept rate, some of the missiles are still getting through. Hopefully the new early warning system will enable the Martian Space Defense to improve intercept rates considerably.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
We all have grown up with the notion that there are three earth-orbiting natural satlites, but did you know that there is no mention of the third satelite in any media before 2002!
It's true!
See, it's all a plot of the Libertarians - they have been secretly construcing this "third moon" in order to live there and to not pay any of their taxes - taxes that you and I need in order to buy delicious governemnt cheese!
Being cheap bastards, this new moon is nesesairly small - but if you look at it with a high-power "telescope", then you'll realise that this "moon" has been meticulously constructed to look like Montanna!
Complete with Moon-Sheep!
I urge you, the right minded American, to rise up and take a stand! No third moon, unless taxes are to be paid on it.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
To see the data:
First off the parent post was refering to telescopes in earth orbit (read: hubble). Secondly while there would be little/no advantage for optical telescopes, a radio telescope on the far side of the moon would have a huge advantage over earth based dishes because the moon would block virtualy all radio waves coming from earth. Thus giving it a much clearer view over the entire spectrum instead of being limited to a few unused frequencies like it's earth-bound conterparts.
I hear there's some really good calamari on Cruithne. Some weird blue loop that seems to lead to other universes too, but mainly, good calamari.
Anytime you have something (Foo) orbiting something else (Bar), i.e., once the requirements of "orbit" are met, there are five points of gravitational equilibrium set up amongst the two bodies. They're called LaGrange points. The last two, L4 and L5, are on Foo's orbit around Bar, sixty degrees ahead of Foo (L4) and sixty degrees behind (L5).
L4 and L5 by themselves, ignoring L1-L3, are often called Trojan points, named for this particular group of satellites.
As for the defintion of moon versus just another satellite in general, I believe it has to do with respective mass ratios, and where the fulcrum point of rotation is between the two bodies. Right now our own moon isn't in a true rotation around us, we're in a sort of dumbbell tumble, and the center of the dumbbell is a bit below the ground.
(Actual astronomers please correct me, I'm on a number of narcotic-containing painkillers right now and could have gotten some words tumbled.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Cruithne isn't really a moon - it's a coorbital companion. And if you look at the Cruithne FAQ fm6 linked to, you'll see that it's not the only one. So if these coorbital companions counted as moons, this new object (if it isn't just a spent rocket booster) really would be the fifth moon.
Does the Earth have any other companions or moons?
Yes, the Moon. But apart from that, there are no natural objects known to be in close dynamical relationships with the Earth. NEW! Asteroid 1998 UP1 and 2000 PH5 have been found to be in similar relationships with our planet. We are currently (18 Sept 2001) working on publishing these results. Look for more info here soon.
That's really backward. The main reason there is nothing about this story on the main page of CNN or MSNBC is that the american news media has barely reported anything non related to 9/11 this week. Comparing these news sources to the BBC is laughable, and an insult to those who provide proper and disinterested news reporting.
If you look at the BBC World Service news site, there are also many more very important news stories that will never make it to the mainstream US media outlets. It doesn't mean those stories are not important, they just don't help sell advertising.
Scientists think a newly-found object orbiting the Earth could be a remnant from the Apollo era.
Experts at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe its brightness and distance shows it's a rocket booster.
'J002E3' was discovered on September 3 and listed by scientists as a minor planet or asteroid.
But Nasa's Donald Yeomans believes that designation is erroneous.
He told Space.com: "It's most likely a spacecraft. It's not likely to be a natural object, not in that kind of orbit."
He said minor planets or asteroids tend to be on strange orbits gravitationally-influenced by the Sun. This does not appear to be the case with this object.
Nasa are currently running computer calculations and expect to be able to identify the object conclusively soon.
Story filed: 10:39 Thursday 12th September 2002
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
If the path of an object is concave with respect to the sun, the object is a planet.
In the case of the Earth/Moon system, it is called a double planet because the path of the moon from the point of view of the sun in strictly concave -- that is it dosn't loop back on itself as do other moons.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i