Earth and her *3* moons?!?

[furtech]

While looking up an unrelated topic, I came across an interesting event that I hadn't heard about: Earth's third moon.

*THREE* moons??? Well, actually no. Not even two, really. But Earth does have an extra "faux" moon, named "Cruithne" (thanks a LOT for a name only Celts can pronounce!) was discovered by European astronomers in 1986. Technically, it's not really a satellite of Earth, but an asteroid that shares its unusual horseshoe-shaped orbit with the Earth and the sun.

The "third" satellite was discovered in late 2002 by amateur astronomer Bill Yeung in a backyard observatory in Arizona. Astronomy is one of the few areas left where serious amateurs have a chance against huge operations to make major discoveries (with an infrastructure that protects and encourages such discoveries!). Read the article...it's fascinating!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2251386.stm

And:
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/technews/157576.htm

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=9319

The resolution:
http://www.birtwhi.demon.co.uk/GallerySatelliteJ002E3.htm

Comments

[skorzy.livejournal.com]

That's kind of neat, especially about Cruithne (Krut-NEE!) :P

Though.. I'm reluctant to call anything man-made or artificial as a "moon". That Apollo 12 booster rocket is really just another piece of space junk orbiting this planet. There's thousands of those already. What sets it apart from other pieces to make it a "moon"? Its atypical orbit?

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Oh, they pretty much confirmed that it's "an object in near earth orbit" (ie, space junk) but I thought it was cool that when this (lucky) guy first reported it, it -could- have been a captured asteroid...and even discovering that it's an old moon booster is really neat, in a Star Trek/NOMAD kind of way! I used to eat stuff like this up as a kid (read "Science News" the moment it arrived!). If you read the (brief) last link, it flipped out of Earth orbit the next year (but may be re-captured in about 30 years).

And Cruithne is worse than that-- the article says: "Cruithne, pronounced "Croo-een-ya"" *Gak!*