This week, sky watchers are being treated to some full-moon beauty as well as excitement surrounding a small Near Earth Object that scientists initially thought may have been an asteroid. But now they believe it’s something from our early space era that’s coming back for a visit.
First, the full moon. While it does not officially become full until Monday morning, the moon will look full when it rises tonight and that appearance will last until Tuesday. Since we’ve got a snow-producing weather system moving into the Great Lakes region on Monday, cloud cover might keep us from seeing the moonrise on a couple of these nights.
The Nov. 30 full moon is known as the Cold Moon, according to NASA’s Gordon Johnston, who outlines sky-watching treats on his monthly blog. The full-moon names are drawn from monikers used by Native Americans and tied to the seasons, he said.
“Going by season, as the last full moon of the autumn, the Algonquin tribes of what is now the northern and eastern United States called this moon the Cold Moon, due to the long, cold nights,” Johnston said in his blog.
This moon is also known as the Beaver Moon, Frost Moon or the Winter Moon.
Johnston had some other full-moon history to share:
“As the full moon before the winter solstice, an old European name for this moon is the Oak Moon, a name that some believe ties back to ancient druid traditions of harvesting mistletoe from oak trees first recorded by the Roman historian Pliny the Elder in the 1st century CE. The term ‘druid’ may derive from the Proto-Indo-European roots for “oak” and “to see,” suggesting the term means “oak knower” or “oak seer.” Europeans also called this the Moon before Yule, a three-day winter solstice festival. In the 10th Century King Haakon I associated Yule with Christmas as part of the Christianization of Norway, and this association spread throughout Europe. Some sources use these names for the full Moon in December, even if it occurs after Yule and the winter solstice.”
Now onto the tiny “temporary moon.” On Tuesday, Dec. 1, the day after the moon officially becomes full, something known as Near Earth Object 2020 SO will pass by our planet traveling about 8,700 mph. At its closest point, it will be about 31,000 miles from Earth.
“This object’s orbit around the Sun is close enough to the Earth’s to make it a temporary moon of the Earth,” Johnston said.
2020 SO was first spotted in mid-September by researchers at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. Initially some scientists thought it was just a tiny asteroid approaching Earth, but its movements since then have led them to believe its really a piece of our past.
“This orbit and its size suggests 2020 SO might not be an asteroid at all,” Johnston said. “It might be a rocket booster from one of the Apollo-era moon missions that has been orbiting the sun ever since.”
This 1964 photograph shows a Centaur upper-stage rocket before being mated to an Atlas booster. A similar Centaur was used during the launch of Surveyor 2 two years later.
This week’s fly-by won’t be 2020 SO’s only near-Earth approach. It’s expected to get close to us again on Feb. 2 before leaving our orbit in early March.
Paul Chodas, manager of the NASA NEO program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, has said he thinks this tiny object might be the rocket booster for the Surveyor 2 Centaur, which launched in September 1966. Tests done from afar may allow scientists to determine whether the object is coated in white titanium dioxide paint, which would help pinpoint its origin.
Last month, NASA posted an explanation of their research so far into 2020 SO, and details on what first caught their attention.
“Earth has captured a tiny object from its orbit around the Sun and will keep it as a temporary satellite for a few months before it escapes back to a solar orbit. But the object is likely not an asteroid; it’s probably the Centaur upper stage rocket booster that helped lift NASA’s ill-fated Surveyor 2 spacecraft toward the Moon in 1966.” To read more about this cool discovery, see the NASA article here, which is complete with pictures of the Centaur craft.
Stay tuned for more info on what could be a blast from our past.
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