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

[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!*