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Did Earth have more than one moon?

June 2nd 2010 00:44

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The earth as we know has just one moon. Popular theories suggest that the moon was forged from the early earth when another large body collided with earth.

The earth does form time to time capture fragments of left over debris, bits of broken asteroids meteors. Some of these fragments are large ranging from a few meters to house size objects.

Some of these objects burn up in our atmosphere, some pass by and are eventually ejected back into space. Apart from our moon there is no other object currently orbiting our earth that we could call a second moon.

Technically any object captured by a planet can be defined as a moon.
Although some astronomers in the 19th century believed that earth does have a second moon.

There are numerous publications dating back the 1800s that laid claim to the second moon theory. Most planets in our solar system have more than one moon except Mercury and Venus.
A number of astronomers back then made mention that Mercury and Venus did have moons.

Some 19th century astronomers were convinced that there were several large moon like objects orbiting Mercury and Venus, later astronomers dismissed the idea that Venus had a moon.

According to a publication By Helge Kragh, Kurt Møller Pedersen Globus Veneris The moon that wasn't: the saga of Venus' spurious satellite.

“Although Venus’s moon was no longer seriously considered by the ma¬jority of astronomers it was not totally forgotten. Jean-Sylvain Bailly the French astronomer and pioneer of astronomy included the subject in volume 2 of his history de l’astronomie moderne and it was also covered in some detail in Montucla’s Histoire mathematiques. Bailly’s attitude was sceptical but not dismissive and he recommended to “suspend our judgment: its existence cannot be affirmed nor can it be denied”

Why were they so sure?

19th century astronomers did not have access to state of the art equipment, but their methodology was sound.
For years astronomers made calculations regarding the movement of the planets in orbit and the consensus was that there were a few unexplained anomalies they could not account for.

Some of the planets seemed to “wobble” during their orbit around the Sun. The cause was then attributed to other object’s gravity forces ‘pulling” the planet’s orbit an effect that seemed to slow the planets orbit and then speed it up. The only thing that can effect a planets orbit is another nearby object.
19th century telescopes were not very reliable these “objects” were too faint to be seen even by large telescopes. The only other way was to predict the path of an object as it passed the Sun. Many objects passing in front of the Sun were documented by 19th century astronomers these objects showed up as dark dots as they passed the Sun.

The probability these objects were moons was not very high. These objects were more likely to be asteroids or comets that eventually impacted the Sun never to be seen again.

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