I heard there is a second moon ?! ?

Question

I heard on the UK tv program 'QI' that there is a second moon ?! Has anyone got any info on this ? A link to some pictures ? Thanks

Answer 1

No i don't think so that there is an another moon of earth.while there are some other moon of other planet

Answer 2

have you looked at the sky recently? i hadn't seen anything unusual.

cruithne has an orbital relationship with earth, but it doesn't orbit earth, so it's a not a moon.

meeus (who else? :-) discusses this in one of his morsels books.

Answer 3

Instead of getting your knowledge about this from a TV program, go out side and look up.

Answer 4

David, I watched that it referred to the asteroid that orbits our planet, not a moon nor' star or anything.

Daniel.

Answer 5

How the h**l can there be a second. If there was wouldn't the sea be going mad with floods and changes since the first moon controls that... BUT IT WOULD BE COOL IF THE WAS ANOTHER MOON.. ive heard that the moon now is moving 4 inches toward the earth a year or month or summing so in billions of years time the earth would have flooded and any survives would be able to touch the moon and see if it really is made of cheese :| :| :| :| :| :|

Answer 6

There is no "second moon" in orbit around the Earth.  Even something 1/2 the size of our moon and made of something much less reflective would be terribly obvious in the night sky.

The asteroid referenced in that show (3753 Cruithne) is actually in orbit around the sun.  Even if it were in orbit around the earth, it is far too small (about 5km in diameter) to be considered a "second moon".

EDIT: It does NOT orbit the earth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruith...

Answer 7

Yes, there was a second moon.  

It was called Sputnik, and it was launched on October 4, 1957.

Answer 8

The program you mention must have been talking about an asteroid known as Cruithne. It *does* orbit Earth at a great distance so in that respect you could consider it another moon. However, it's not gravitationally bound to Earth like our "real" moon and its orbit is also temporary.

Take a look at this website for a more detailed discussion, with graphics, about Earth's "second moon." ==>http://burtleburtle.net/bob/physics/c...

Answer 9

There's email going around that claims that today, August 27th, Mars will be as large in the sky as the full Moon.  It's not correct.  But here's what happened.

In 2003, the Mars opposition on August 27th was the closest Mars had been for a really long time.  That's when the Sun, Earth, and Mars lined up.  And in a 100x telescope, Mars appeared as big as the full Moon does (without a scope).  So, you could get an idea of how much detail you might see on Mars by looking at the Moon.  And it was awesome.  We had over 13,000 people show up to our star party (we were prepared, which is amazing in itself).

But each summer since, the email has morphed a bit, but not with accuracy.  The bit about the telescope was dropped, leaving Mars and the full Moon the same size.  But we don't have an opposition every summer.  It's about every two years.  The next one is January 2010.  Mars is currently on the other size of the Sun.  It's either visible at sunset, or is already lost to the glare of the Sun.  I have a terrible western horizon, and haven't seen it for months.

Jupiter totally dominates the southern skies right now, most of the night.  Face more or less South, and the really bright thing (that doesn't blink) is Jupiter.

I was under the distinct impression that UK TV was of generally high quality.  I'm disappointed.

Answer 10

The Earth doesn't have another moon. I'm an astrophysics major so I should know!

Answer 11

You have very bad information.

That awful, undated, article is still circulating in e-mails from back in 2003 when a poorly informed news reporter misunderstood that Mars was going to be as bright as the Moon so he wrote that it was going to be as big and bright as the moon. It was never going to be as big as the moon, only as bright as measured in light magnitudes.

Please do not continue to spread these lies in your e-mails.

You can see Mars during the right seasons every year, it is just in different distances so it is not as bright as it was back in 2003.

http://www.stellarium.org/

This is a great freeware program that you can download. Use it to find Mars. You can also tell it where you are and it will tell you what you see in the sky.