Holy hell, that was an awesome read.
Your comment convinced me to read it. Thank you!!!
Was expecting clickbait, but instead got an interesting Nitter thread about quasi-moons and the nature of asteroid hunting
I’ve developed a reflex to not click on clickbait. Then I saw all these comments… Maybe I’ll get over myself and click it later.
Same here - and then I start wondering if all the positive comments are just part of the bait. I need to be less suspicious!
Anyway, I clicked and it was worth it - but can you trust me?? ;-)
Okay I finally read it. Worth it.
It’s worth it. I avoid clickbait and Twitter, yet even with those two strikes, it was a homerun.
Okay I finally read it. Worth it.
Ok that was much more entertaining than I expected.
Do you know that when you look at a planet and you see that light, that planet’s not even there? That’s just a light. That’s just your neighbor shining a flashlight right into your yard looking for 'coons, and he says “What are you doing in my back yard? …With that flashlight?”
And I told him “I’m shining in the window so I can teach your son about the universe”.
He said, “Get out of my yard, and why are you communicating to my son? Why are you in all black, behind my bushes, shining a light into my house?”
And I said, “I’m teaching your son about the universe! I’m shining a light right in there and exploring his room, as he’s looking out and exploring the universe. I turn the light off and I see your son go to bed, and I turn the light back on and I do swirls on his wall like a comet’s tail.
I do this every night with your son.”Oh man Tim and Eric lol. Wasn’t expecting them this morning .
JFC, that was awesome.
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No need to be a spoil-sport, it’s an interesting read
I hate the twitter/nitter format, plus the instance is rate-limited. So OP not only saved me a click, it told me what the writing was about.
And this is not a movie plot. So, yes, OP, thanks for the info.
Technically, yes, that was all you needed to know.
But it’s still a nicely told story, and worth reading if you have a few minutes (plus the link is working now).
Nice. Thanks!
Yours was a friendlier comment, and so I appreciate it.
Except that some of us did or will enjoy reading it.
orbits it and the sun at the same time
Specifically, it’s in one of the stable Lagrange points. (L4 or L5)Edit: It’s in a horseshoe orbit, not at a Lagrange point.
Its not at any lagrange points. 2002 VE68 is a quasi-satellite in a semi stable horseshoe shaped orbit. Its trapped in a 1:1 mean-motion resonance with venus so it appears to orbit venus if youre looking at it from a venusian frame of reference but it actually orbits the sun in a highly elliptical orbit. The thing goes nearly to the earths orbit and then almost mercury’s orbit. If it were a trojan it would stay pretty much inside venus’ orbital path with a bit of wandering around the lagrange point.
Whoops, you’re right! I stand corrected.
meh i can get down with you Debbie downers BUT you left out the most important part of the whole story, which suggests to me that you didn’t really give it a fair shot. or didn’t understand it.
This is the first Quasi Moon ever discovered IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. and their orbits are fucking cool.
tiiiiiny little detail that is worth noting in a genuine good faith TLDR. you failed! poop emoji
If OP is a debbie downer, then so are you, judging by the contents of your reply.
ok
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I’m with you OP. If they liked the story, great. If you do a tl;dr, the nerve of calling you a “debbie downer” while whining that your tl;dr was incomplete and that you did it in bad faith. Like, what the fuck? This is lemmy and is a space community, not reddit or tumblr!
Probably the least depressing read in a while. Thanks for sharing.
glad you enjoyed it. although if you really genuinely haven’t read anything as positive as this in a while (or more positive) then you might have some media cleanup to do. this kind of content should be the norm - and it IS, for me!
This was a fun read. TIL about quasi moons and the first one ever found. The authors enthusiasm for space is really fun. It reminds me of how I feel about any space thing when I’m baked
Great post. I knew immediately what happened with the numbers and letters.
Instance has been rate limited 😕
I posted a transcription of it to another comment here. But I’m not seeing it on refresh. So here’s a link to my comment. Hope it helps.
Long live ZOOZVE!
Bummer… Was really curious to read that.
Keep trying, it’s 100% worth the read. Really neat stuff
Did in the end, very neat indeed
I was just reading about this. This is a type of neologism known as a Ghost Word!
the classic example (you may have heard from Vsauce) is Dord.
It’s funny how I would see this the very next day after learning about it! (Even though that may not be true for the rest of you.) Anyone know what THAT phenomenon is called?
Maybe some sort of aberrant Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (frequency illusion)? Although that is usually more like, I bought a Camry and now I see them everywhere, but they were everywhere before- I just didn’t notice until I had one.
I think that was the one I was thinking of
Great read!
I love this pic.
Curious how this compares to Cruithne which is also “sort of orbiting but not really” with Earth?
“And by the way, Earth even has at least seven different quasi moons dancing around us right now!!! The most recent one was discovered in 2023!”
Presumably this includes Cruithne.
Thank you very much. This was oddly inspiring!!!
This is the cool stuff I come here to read. Very interesting!
