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Astronomers found a minimaon orbiting Earth earlier this year, however, it has now receded.
When astronomers from the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spotted a dark object called 2020 CD3 whizzing across the sky in February, they couldn’t be sure whether it was a minimaon or an artificial object like a rocket. In the following months, Grigori Fedorets of Queen’s University Belfast in the UK and his colleagues used a number of telescopes around the world to make further measurements of the object and understand what it was, according to NewScientist.
The 2020 CD3 rolled out of Earth’s orbit in March, but researchers predict that once the Vera C Rubin Observatory – a huge telescope currently under construction in Chile – is completed we should be able to find many more objects like this.
The astronomers found that it was about 1.2 meters in diameter. Based on its color and brightness, it was likely made of siliceous rock, like many rocks in the asteroid belt. The researchers also charted its orbit in an attempt to find out where it might have come from before it was captured in Earth’s orbit some 2.7 years earlier.
“Based on the simulations, the average acquisition time for lows is only nine months, so it has been acquired for a longer time than expected,” says Fedorets. “But this object flew very close to [regular] moon, and this put it in a more stable orbit. “
“We could detect a minimum of once every two or three months at best,” says Fedorets. “At worst, maybe once a year.” This could be important because we know very little about these relatively small asteroids and finding them in orbit could give us a unique opportunity to study them closely.
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