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This asteroid's orbit keeps it near the Earth, but not orbiting it in the usual sense. When analyzing its orbit from the perspective of different bodies, the presumed quasi-satellite does seem to have a more stable location near the Earth The orbit of 2020 CD 3 around the Earth. The white band is the orbit of the Moon.
Some moons, minor planets and comets of the Solar System to scale (major planets not to scale) Selected moons, with Earth to scale. Nineteen moons are large enough to be round, and two, Titan and Triton, have substantial atmospheres The number of moons discovered in each year until November 2019
Several different types of small moons have been called moonlets: A belt of objects embedded in a planetary ring, especially around Saturn, such as those in the A Ring, S/2009 S 1 in the B Ring ("propeller" moonlets), [2] [3] and those in the F Ring [4] Occasionally asteroid moons, such as those of 87 Sylvia [5]
The giant planets have extensive systems of natural satellites, including half a dozen comparable in size to Earth's Moon: the four Galilean moons, Saturn's Titan, and Neptune's Triton. Saturn has an additional six mid-sized natural satellites massive enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium , and Uranus has five.
This ring system may have originated from a large asteroid that passed by Earth at this time and had a significant amount of debris stripped by Earth's gravitational pull, forming a ring system. Evidence for this ring comes from impact craters from the Ordovician meteor event appearing to cluster in a distinctive band around the Earth's equator ...
Some, however, do and become so-called mini-moons. An asteroid called 2020 CD3 was bound to Earth for several years before leaving the planet's orbit in 2020 and another called 2022 NX1 became a ...
The existence of shepherd moons was theorized in early 1979. [1] Observations of the rings of Uranus show that they are very thin and well defined, with sharp gaps between rings. To explain this, Goldreich and Tremaine suggested that two small satellites that were undetected at the time might be confining each ring. The first images of shepherd ...
Earth may have had a ring made up of a broken asteroid over 400 million years ago, a study finds. The Saturn-like feature could explain a climate shift at the time.