[HN Gopher] New Quasi-Moon Discovered Orbiting Earth, but It's B...
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       New Quasi-Moon Discovered Orbiting Earth, but It's Been Around for
       Decades
        
       Author : fidotron
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2025-09-25 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (explorersweb.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (explorersweb.com)
        
       | Terr_ wrote:
       | The description makes me think it might be a Horseshoe Orbit [0],
       | where something spends time in about the same circular orbit, but
       | slowly bounces back and forth through the unoccupied portion.
       | 
       | Looking up 2025 PN7 [1], it says:
       | 
       | > Over time, it may transition between quasi-satellite and
       | horseshoe orbits due to gravitational perturbations.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_orbit
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_PN7
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | The math on that orbit is making my head hurt beautifully--
         | thank you!
        
       | yellowapple wrote:
       | Would be neat to be able to get some photographs of it. Curious
       | if it's a near-Earth asteroid or yet another case of a rocket's
       | upper stage re-entering Earth orbit (like with 2020 SO and
       | J002E3). An expected appearance of 1957 would be pretty early for
       | the latter case (that's when the USSR launched Sputnik 1 and 2,
       | and I'm pretty sure both those upper stages came back down a long
       | time ago), but who knows?
        
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       (page generated 2025-09-25 23:00 UTC)