Yeah, a quasi-moon doesn't even orbit the earth, it's just orbiting the sun on a similar plane an happens to be nearby. But due to it's small mass, it cant stay for too long before it's flung out again. It's only the Earth's gravity that's keeping it around a little longer than usual, typically, anyway. There's lots of types and thus lots of scenarios.

[–] vrek@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah you're correct. My comment was referring to the same segment on qi was in which my comment was called out when they claimed there were 2 moons. Depending on the exact episode you watch they state 1, 2, "many" or 0 moons of earth.

[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Yeah, I was agreeing. I think the many argument doesn't much water so to speak. I think the 0 argument has some merit depending on how you define a moon, but Trojans and quasi-moons definitely shouldn't count since they aren't relatively permanently. Problem is the IAU doesn't have a good definition partly because many of the more detailed definitions that have been tried tend to disqualify our own moon and that would be way more disruptive than disqualifying Pluto as a planet which is still causing a mess in education.

I just find it a quite interesting subject that can only even be a subject because out technology has improved so much over my lifetime.