Earth will get a second moon for about two months this year when a small asteroid begins to orbit our planet. The asteroid was discovered in August and is set to become a mini-moon, revolving around Earth in a horseshoe shape from Sept. 29 to Nov. 25.

Researchers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, an asteroid monitoring system funded by NASA, spotted the asteroid using an instrument in Sutherland, South Africa and labeled it 2024 PT5. 

Scientists from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid have tracked the asteroid’s orbit for 21 days and determined its future path. 2024 PT5 is from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which orbits the sun, according to their study published in Research Notes of the AAs. 

But Earth’s gravitational pull will draw 2024 PT5 towards it and, much like our moon, it will orbit our planet — but only for 56.6 days.

While other non-Earth objects, or NEOs, have entered Earth’s orbit before, some don’t complete full revolutions of Earth. Some, however, do and become so-called mini-moons.

An asteroid called 2020 CD3 was bound to Earth for several years before leaving the planet’s orbit in 2020 and another called 2022 NX1 became a mini-moon of Earth in 1981 and 2022 and will return again in 2051. 

2024 PT5, which is larger than some of the other mini-moons, will also return to Earth’s orbit — in 2055. 

Earth’s gravity will pull it into its orbit and the asteroid will have negative geocentric energy, meaning it can’t escape Earth’s gravitational pull. It will orbit around Earth in a horseshoe shape before reverting back to heliocentric energy, meaning it will rotate around the sun again, like the other planets and NEOs in our galaxy.

Even after it leaves orbit, it will stay near Earth for a few months, making its closest approach on Jan. 9, 2025. Soon after, it will leave Earth’s neighborhood until its path puts it back into our orbit in about 30 years.

The study’s lead author Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Space.com the mini-moon will be too small to see with amateur telescopes or binoculars but professional astronomers with stronger tools will be able to spot it.

CBS News has reached out to Marcos for further information and is awaiting response.

The next full moon is arriving just in time for the weekend. According to NASA, the Buck Moon will make an appearance for three days, from Friday evening to Monday morning, reaching its peak at 6:17 a.m. EDT on Sunday.

The moon is also known as the Thunder Moon, given its overlap with thunderstorm season.

NASA advised viewers to stay safe from the lightning that comes with the storms, but also to indulge in a little fun as the Buck Moon arrives: “As usual, the wearing of suitably celebratory celestial attire is encouraged in honor of the full Moon.”

Why is it called the Buck Moon?

The name stems from a tradition established by the Maine Farmers’ Almanac in the 1930s, according to NASA, when the publication started listing the names of full moons. The Algonquin tribes of the Northeast reportedly called this month’s moon the Buck Moon – a nod to the deer that emerge this time of year.

“Early summer is normally when the new antlers of buck deer push out of their foreheads in coatings of velvety fur,” NASA said.

Other monikers for July’s full moon include Thunder Moon, Asalha Puja, Guru Full Moon, Hay Moon. and Mead Moon.

When will the next full moon take place?

August’s full moon — known as the Sturgeon Moon, according to the almanac.com — will peak on Monday, Aug. 19. This will be the first supermoon of the year, which means it will appear brighter and larger than other full moons.

Another event for stargazers to look forward to is a meteor shower on Saturday, July 31. Those on the East Coast will have to rise early if they want to catch the spectacle of light. According to NASA, the best time to see the shower from Washington, D.C., will be around 2 a.m. 

Sharks in the waters off Brazil have tested positive for cocaine, marine biologists said in a new study, marking the first time the drug has been found in the free-ranging predators. 

Thirteen sharpnose sharks were taken from the coast off of Rio de Janeiro and tested for the cocaine and benzoylecgonine, the primary molecule in cocaine. Each shark’s liver and muscles tested positive for high levels of cocaine, the study found, and the female sharks tested had higher concentrations of cocaine in their muscles than male sharks. 

The scientists — who dubbed the study “Cocaine Shark” — posited that this may show a correlation between a shark’s weight and size and how it metabolizes cocaine, but the study noted that more research was necessary. 

CBS News partner BBC News reported that experts have multiple theories on how the illicit substances are entering the water. It’s possible that illegal labs where cocaine is manufactured could be to blame. Scientists also said that it could be entering the waterway through the excrement of drug users. A less likely theory is that packs of cocaine lost or dumped at sea could be to blame. Cocaine and other illicit drugs have previously been found in water drainage systems and in rivers. 

It’s the first study to show levels of cocaine and benzoylecgonine in free-ranging sharks. More research is necessary to see how cocaine consumption affects sharks and other wildlife, the scientists said. 

It’s not clear how the cocaine consumption affects the sharks, the study said. Some of the female sharks were pregnant at the time of the study, and it remains unclear how the illicit drugs may have affected the fetuses.  

The findings are “very important and potentially worrying,” marine eco-toxicologist Sara Novais, from the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre of the Polytechnic University of Leiria, told Science magazine. 

Researchers have tried to study the impact of illicit drugs on sea life in other parts of the world. Last year, Discovery TV aired a show called “Cocaine Sharks” (which was also the title of a 2023 horror movie) that used experiments to show how sharks might be affected by cocaine. Tracy Fanara, an environmental engineer who worked on the show, told CBS News that the experiments and their results were preliminary, but said it’s likely that sharks are coming in contact with the illicit drug. 

“My goal of this experiment was to shed light on the real problem of chemicals in our waterways and impacting our aquatic life and then eventually impacting us,” Fanara said in 2023. “But the goal of the study was basically to see if this is a research question worth exploring more. And I would say, yes, it is.” 

Monday was the hottest day ever measured by humans, beating a record set the day before, as countries across the globe continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.

Provisional satellite data published by Copernicus early Wednesday showed that Monday broke Sunday’s mark by 0.1 degree Fahrenheit.

Climate scientists say the world is now as warm as it was 125,000 years ago because of human-caused climate change. While scientists can’t be certain that Monday was the hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures haven’t been this high since long before humans developed agriculture.

The temperature rise in recent decades is in line with what climate scientists projected would happen if humans kept burning fossil fuels at an increasing rate.

“We are in an age where weather and climate records are frequently stretched beyond our tolerance levels, resulting in insurmountable loss of lives and livelihoods,” said Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

Copernicus’ preliminary data shows the global average temperature Monday was 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit.

The previous mark before this week was set just a year ago.

Before last year, the previous recorded hottest day was in 2016, when average temperatures were 62.24 degrees.

While 2024 has been extremely warm, what kicked Sunday into new territory was a way toastier than usual Antarctic winter, according to Copernicus. The same thing was happening on the southern continent last year when the record was set in early July.

But it wasn’t just a warmer Antarctica on Sunday. Interior California baked with triple digit heat, complicating the fighting of more than two dozen wildfires in the West. At the same time, Europe sweltered through its own deadly heat wave.

Copernicus records go back to 1940, but other global measurements by the United States and United Kingdom governments go back even further, to 1880. Many scientists, taking those into consideration along with tree rings and ice cores, say last year’s record highs were the hottest the planet has been in about 120,000 years. Now the first six months of 2024 have broken even those.

Frequency of records being surpassed cited as worrisome

Without human-caused climate change, scientists say extreme temperature records wouldn’t be broken nearly as frequently as in recent years.

“It’s certainly a worrying sign coming on the heels of 13 straight record-setting months,” said Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, who now estimates there’s a 92% chance that 2024 will beat 2023 as the warmest year on record.  

The former head of U.N. climate negotiations, Christiana Figueres, said “We all (will) scorch and fry” if the world doesn’t immediately change course. “One third of global electricity can be produced by solar and wind alone, but targeted national policies have to enable that transformation,” she said.

“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Copernius Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. “We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.”

July is generally the hottest month of the year globally, mostly because there’s more land in the Northern Hemisphere, so seasonal patterns there drive global temperatures.

Recent climate change contributors  

Scientists blame the supercharged heat mostly on climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas and on livestock agriculture. Other factors include a natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean, which has since ended. Reduced marine fuel pollution and possibly an undersea volcanic eruption are also causing some additional warmth, but those aren’t as important as greenhouse gases trapping heat, they said.

Because El Nino is likely to be soon replaced by a cooling La Nina, Hausfather said he would be surprised if 2024 sees any more monthly records, but the hot start of the year is still probably enough to make it warmer than last year.

Sunday’s mark was notable but “what really kind of makes your eyeballs jump out” is how the last few years have been so much hotter than previous marks, said Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini, who wasn’t part of the Copernicus team. “It’s certainly a fingerprint of climate change.”

University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said the difference between the this year’s and last year’s high mark is so tiny and so preliminary that he is surprised the European climate agency is promoting it.

“We should really never be comparing absolute temperatures for individual days,” Mann said in an email.

Yes, it’s a small difference, Gensini said in an interview, but there have been more than 30,500 days since Copernicus data started in 1940, and this is the hottest of them all.

“What matters is this,” said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler. “The warming will continue as long as we’re dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  … We have the technology to largely stop doing that today. What we lack is political will.”