Astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey have recently announced that now our Earth has two moons. But you can’t check it with your naked eyes as this new friend of ours is very tiny.
Our new natural satellite is designated as 2020 CD3. It is basically little more than an asteroid that got tangled up in Earth’s gravitational pull. This second satellite is very small and tiny. It is between 1.9 and 3.5 m (6.2 and 11.5 ft) in diameter, and our main Moon has the massive 3,474 km (2,159 mi) diameter.
US astronomers Theodore Pruyne and Kacper Wierzchos, discovered it on February 15 using the telescope at Mount Lemmon Observatory. After doing further research, astronomers traced its orbit. Their calculations indicated that our new neighbour has been orbiting Earth for about three years.
However this is not the first mini-moon spotted by astronomers. Earlier also, one mini-moon was spotted by a team of astronomers in 2006. Known as 2006 RH120, this mini satellite looped around us a few times between September 2006 and June 2007 before being ejected.
