[thechat] Earth's other moon

Judah McAuley judah at wiredotter.com
Wed Sep 11 14:04:08 CDT 2002


Wandering around a bit today on the web, I noticed an announcement
saying that an object in a near earth orbit had been found.  They aren't
quite sure what it is (spent rocket casing, asteroid, etc) but they
mentioned that if it is determined to be of natural material, it will
become Earth's *3rd* "moon".  Obviously I wondered, "the Earth has a
second moon?".  I figured that would be something that I would have
heard about.  Turns out that I didn't hear about it, but we do have
another celestial body in a stable orbit around the Earth.  It's called
Cruithne (pronounced croo-een-ya) and its an odd duck because not only
does it orbit the Earth, it orbits in a horseshoe shape.

Great page devoted to it:
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~wiegert/3753/3753.html

It's amazing what kinds of things just don't make the news.  This will
be cocktail trivia for me for quite some time.

Judah





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