Dear Luna, we love you very much. For 4.51 billion years you have been a constant and faithful companion in orbit.
So with that in mind, please excuse us briefly as we marvel at the tiny mini-moon that astronomers have just discovered near our planet.
We know this is a car-sized piece of carbonaceous rock and has been in orbit for about three years.
On February 24, Hawaii's Gemini Observatory captured a beautiful color photo of our new friend using the 8-meter Gemini North telescope.
By combining the three images with different filters, the picture shows our small mini moon spot in the center of the image, with colorful stars around it.
It looks like this because the mini moon was tracked across the sky; when the camera moves, the stars (which are not moving that fast) are blurred.
Alas, our tiny new friend won't be around forever.
“Acquiring images was a challenge because the object quickly gets dimmer as it gets further from the Earth,” explains observatory astronomer John Blakesley.
“It is expected to completely de-orbit the Earth in April.”
While it's too late for us to get to know 2020 CD3, researchers believe there are many more such mini-moons – we just need to find them.
“We expect to find a population of these objects after the Rubin Observatory goes live,” said Grigory Fedorets , lead astronomer at the Gemini Observatory.
Sources: Photo: Gemini Observatory / NSF's NOIARL / AURA / G. Fedorets
