A panel of experts has picked seven finalists for the name of asteroid (164207) 2004 GU9, a "quasi-moon" of Earth. You can vote for your favorite through Jan. 1, 2025.

Lunar swirls are light-colored patterns on the moon that almost look like they have been painted on the darker lunar surface. Some of them are hundreds of miles long. So far, the origin and cause ...

This is where the rings came back into play. One possible explanation for their existence is the breakup of a moon that wandered too close to Saturn and was disrupted by the giant planet's gravity.

Strange 'quasi-moon' of Earth gets named Cardea, after goddess of door hinges. Monisha Ravisetti. Wed, January 22, 2025 at 9:00 PM UTC. 5 min read.

Right now, the object is named 2004 GU9, or asteroid 164207 — but it's dubbed a "moon" because it appears tagged to our planet's gravitational tides like Our Moon™️.

And the moon really is significant: It's roughly 1.2% the mass of Earth.That may not be big in an absolute sense, but for the solar system, that's huge. No other moon is that large relative to its ...

Mars's moon Phobos is so strange that no one knows how it formed. But a forthcoming mission could solve this mystery - and a host of other puzzles connected to the solar system's deep past.