> As these asteroids trace their orbits, they are slightly affected by Earth’s gravity, too. They don’t circle Earth like satellites, but their orbits do fall into a kind of lockstep with our planet that keeps them close by. A quasi-moon sometimes drifts ahead of Earth and sometimes trails behind it as both go around the Sun. From our vantage point, it ends up looking like the quasi-moon is orbiting us instead of our star.
What is the fundamental difference between this and a true natural satellite? The moon orbits the sun in a sort of curved sinusoidal wave around the earth as it also orbits the sun, so from our vantage point appears to orbit earth, yet we don't say it doesn't actually orbit earth. So why do we say that about these smaller bodies doing (according to this article) the exact same thing?
> As these asteroids trace their orbits, they are slightly affected by Earth’s gravity, too. They don’t circle Earth like satellites, but their orbits do fall into a kind of lockstep with our planet that keeps them close by. A quasi-moon sometimes drifts ahead of Earth and sometimes trails behind it as both go around the Sun. From our vantage point, it ends up looking like the quasi-moon is orbiting us instead of our star.
What is the fundamental difference between this and a true natural satellite? The moon orbits the sun in a sort of curved sinusoidal wave around the earth as it also orbits the sun, so from our vantage point appears to orbit earth, yet we don't say it doesn't actually orbit earth. So why do we say that about these smaller bodies doing (according to this article) the exact same thing?