"Rare" discovery: a second "Moon" orbiting the Earth spotted by astronomers
The Moon would therefore not be our only satellite.
It is a celestial object that will accompany us in our orbit around the Sun for a few more centuries. An asteroid, dubbed "2023 FW13", has just been discovered following the trajectory of the Earth. Even seeming to be in "quasi-orbit" around our planet, this asteroid of about twenty meters can be considered as a "quasi-moon", or a "quasi-satellite" of the Earth.
"2023 FW13 has been in this quasi-state for centuries and will remain Earth's quasi-satellite for many centuries to come," amateur astronomer Tony Dunn, who made this discovery, explains on his Twitter account.
“This discovery is relatively rare”
"This asteroid is in resonance 1:1 with the Earth, that is to say that it takes as long as the Earth to go around the Sun", specifies the doctor in astronomy and astrophysics at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Geneva, which estimates that the star could remain our quasi-satellite for another 4,000 years.
And to affirm: "This discovery is relatively rare since we only know about ten asteroids which are, have been or will be in this configuration". This is the case, for example, of the asteroid (469219) Kamoʻoalewa, discovered in 2016 and which regularly passes close to our planet, as Numerama points out.
Source: websites