Mini Moon Asteroid 2024 PT5 Vanishes from View After Brief Stint Around Earth

A bus-sized asteroid nicknamed "mini moon" or "second moon," asteroid 2024 PT5, has vanished from view after completing its close flyby of Earth. The asteroid was first spotted on August 7 by a NASA-sponsored asteroid detecting system and became temporarily trapped between the Earth's gravity, becoming visible for a brief period.

Astronomers have been thrilled by this unusual occurrence, but due to its small size and dim brightness, only professional telescopes could detect it. For most people, the asteroid was undetectable to the naked eye.

Currently approaching the end of its 4-year visit to Earth, asteroid 2024 PT5 will disappear until 2055. The asteroid is approximately 3,760,000 km from our planet and measures only about 37 feet (11,400,000 feet in circumference) long – roughly the size of a bus.

Scientists at Complutense University of Madrid are among those who detected the asteroid using a powerful NASA-funded telescope in Sutherland, South Africa. They speculate that it might be a fragment of the Earth's Moon itself from an ancient impact, although more research is needed to confirm this theory.

Experts warn that while asteroid 2024 PT5 does not pose a threat to our planet, "mini-moons" like the asteroid are celestial objects that can do brief flybys and cause interest among astronomers. Not all of these asteroids turn out to be small pieces of space junk or harmless space debris.

NASA has confirmed that asteroid 2024 PT5 was first observed on August 7 by the University of Hawai'i's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Sutherland, South Africa, and does not pose any hazard to Earth.