Spoiler for those that don't want to wade through a 40 minute podcast: It is not a moon, it is object 2002 VE 68. When space objects are first seen, they are given a provisional name based on when...
Spoiler for those that don't want to wade through a 40 minute podcast:
It is not a moon, it is object 2002 VE 68. When space objects are first seen, they are given a provisional name based on when they were discovered. The provisional designation includes the year of its discovery (2002) followed by two letters that give the order of its discovery during that year. Objects, discovered between 1 and 15 January, are designated in order of their discovery, AA, AB, AC, and so on.
So it's not Zoozve it's a 2002 VE on a child's poster in a bad font.
More info on why Zoozve is unique/interesting Just a summary of a very shallow dive into wikipedia: 2002 VE 68 is on a orbit around the sun that is in 1:1 resonance with that of Venus, meaning...
More info on why Zoozve is unique/interesting
Just a summary of a very shallow dive into wikipedia: 2002 VE 68 is on a orbit around the sun that is in 1:1 resonance with that of Venus, meaning from Venus it could look kinda like a moon - well, it's too small and far away most of the time to be visible. But it's actually orbiting the sun. Its orbit brings it all the way out to earth's and all the way in to mercury's, which means it is in an unstable orbit - eventually it's going to get too close to something and will be flung off into a new orbit yet again. It's been stable for a few thousand years though. On this WP page is an illustration of what that looks and such. Apparently 2002VE is the first quasi-satellite we found.
As co-host Latif Nasser was putting his kid to bed one night, he noticed something weird on a solar system poster up on the wall: Venus had a moon called … Zoozve. But when he called NASA to ask them about it, they had never heard of Zoozve, and besides that, they insisted that Venus doesn’t have any moons. So begins a tiny mystery that leads to a newly discovered kind of object in our solar system, one that is simultaneously a moon, but also not a moon, and one that waltzes its way into asking one of the most profound questions about our universe: How predictable is it, really? And what does that mean for our place in it?
Spoiler for those that don't want to wade through a 40 minute podcast:
It is not a moon, it is object 2002 VE 68. When space objects are first seen, they are given a provisional name based on when they were discovered. The provisional designation includes the year of its discovery (2002) followed by two letters that give the order of its discovery during that year. Objects, discovered between 1 and 15 January, are designated in order of their discovery, AA, AB, AC, and so on.
So it's not Zoozve it's a 2002 VE on a child's poster in a bad font.
More info on why Zoozve is unique/interesting
Just a summary of a very shallow dive into wikipedia: 2002 VE 68 is on a orbit around the sun that is in 1:1 resonance with that of Venus, meaning from Venus it could look kinda like a moon - well, it's too small and far away most of the time to be visible. But it's actually orbiting the sun. Its orbit brings it all the way out to earth's and all the way in to mercury's, which means it is in an unstable orbit - eventually it's going to get too close to something and will be flung off into a new orbit yet again. It's been stable for a few thousand years though. On this WP page is an illustration of what that looks and such. Apparently 2002VE is the first quasi-satellite we found.
I very much enjoyed short original Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/latifnasser/status/1750952860131729544
Or alternatively:
https://nitter.lanterne-rouge.info/latifnasser/status/1750952860131729544
The name is official.
https://www.wgsbn-iau.org/files/Bulletins/V004/WGSBNBull_V004_002.pdf
Transcript: https://radiolab.org/podcast/zoozve/transcript