It is anticipated that the temporary visitor, known as 2024 PT5, would make friends with the usual moon for around two months beginning on September 29.
An associate professor of astronomy at Nottingham Trent University, Daniel Brown, defined a mini-moon as a tiny object circling another body in the solar system.
An asteroid is composed of rock, whereas a comet is composed of a mixture of rock, dust, and ice.
“In either case, we have to think about these not orbiting around us forever but for a short amount of time,” Dr. Brown stated.
The initial detection of 2024 PT5 was made in August of last year, one day before it made landfall at a distance of 353,200 miles (568,500 km).
It is a part of the solar system’s Arjuna asteroid belt, which is made up of space rocks that orbit the Sun.
Mini-moons are very abundant, according to Dr. Brown, but “observing them tends to be less common, as they are small, very faint, and very fast-moving.”
The mini-moon this year can only be seen using a telescope; it will not be visible to the unaided eye.
