SUBSCRIBE NOW TO SPACE TODAY PLUS PREMIUM, ONLY R$29.00 PER MONTH, LESS THAN 1 REAL PER DAY!!! Venus and Mercury are the only planets in the Solar System without moons, but that’s not all. In 2002, astronomer Brian…
SUBSCRIBE NOW TO SPACE TODAY PLUS PREMIUM, ONLY R$29.00 PER MONTH, LESS THAN 1 REAL PER DAY!!!
Venus and Mercury are the only planets in the Solar System without moons, but that’s not all.
In 2002, astronomer Brian Skiff of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, discovered the first known near-moon around Venus. This unusual object was originally given the temporary title of 2002VE68, but on February 5, 2024 it was given a flashier name: Zoozve.
Zoozve is a near-moon, meaning it is an asteroid that appears to orbit Venus but is not gravitationally bound to it. Instead, it revolves around Venus and the Sun in a complex orbit. Zoozve’s orbit is unstable, meaning it will eventually be ejected from its quasi-satellite orbit.
Near-moons like this were predicted, but none were discovered until Skiff spotted and tracked Zoozve in 2002. Since then, a near-moon of Neptune has been discovered, as well as seven near-moons of Earth.
Because Zoozve crosses Earth’s orbital path, it is also considered a near-Earth asteroid. This designation, combined with the asteroid’s diameter of about 230 meters (750 feet), means that Zoozve is considered a potentially hazardous object, although it is not predicted to impact Earth.
The name Zoozve is not at all typical of planetary bodies. The International Astronomical Union, responsible for approving names for celestial objects, prefers names of mythological origin for objects like Zoozve that cross Earth’s orbit. The name was proposed by Latif Nasser, co-host of the science podcast Radiolab, who contacted Skiff after seeing a children’s Solar System poster that showed a moon next to Venus with the name “ZOOZVE” next to it.
Nasser investigated this strange label, having confirmed that Venus has no known moons, and discovered that the name (and the inclusion of the moon itself) was a mistake made by the artist who made the poster. When researching which moons to include, Alex Foster, the artist, saw something online about the discovery of Venus’s near-moon and wrote “2002VE” in his notes, later misinterpreting it as “ZOOZVE” when copying it into the illustration. map.
Nasser reached out to Brian Skiff, convincing him to pursue an official renaming of the object to the more enchanting Zoozve, and on February 5, 2024, the IAU officially announced the newly named quasi-moon.
Although Venus remains a moonless planet, its newly named quasi-satellite is a welcome addition to the planetary family.
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