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PODCAST

Travelers In The Night

Albert D. Grauer

A real "Science Snack" for anyone who is interested in the extraterrestrial.Dr. Al Grauer is a member of the Catalina Sky Survey which has led the world in near Earth asteroid discoveries for 17 of the past 19 years.The music is "Eternity" by John Lyell.Astronomy Asteroids Space NASA Comets Earth Impact Aliens

science astronomy

All Episodes

2:01

299E-318-Caves of Mars

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/08/27

Presently the surface of Mars is very dry and any liquid water that reaches it quickly boils away since the martian atmospheric pressure is what you could experience in your space suit 30 to 50 miles above the Earth's surface. However, since the martian gravity is about 1/3 that of the Earth, it's crust is less dense and more porous than what we find on our home planet. This situation leads Dr. Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory to state “I consider it likely

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2:01

811-Martian Meteroite Hunters

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/08/23

Perhaps someday humans will travel to Mars, walk the surface of the red planet, and collect meteorites. Recent studies suggest Mars to be an exciting place to find ancient relics of our solar system

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2:01

298E-317-Psyche Water

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/08/20

The asteroid Psyche may be one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the solar system. It is a small world about 116 miles in diameter and is composed of almost pure nickel-iron metal. It is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists find evidence that Psyche may be the exposed core of a planet which was destroyed by collisions as it was trying to form long ago.

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2:01

810-Humans Can

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/08/16

The James Webb Space Telescope or JWST for short is a superb scientific instrument which is revolutionizing our understanding of the structure of the universe and is providing a tool to help us to explore the possibility of life outside of Earth. It is also a testament to what humans can accomplish by working together.

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2:01

297E-316-Weird Centaur

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/08/13

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski was surprised to find a moving point of light on some his images which was more than 50 times brighter than a typical Earth approaching object he observes . He was even more amazed when it was not cataloged as a known object and he reported his observations to the Minor Planet Center. A couple of hours before Richard spotted it, scientists using the Space Surveillance Telescope in New Mexico had picked up this unknown object on some of their images

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2:01

809- How Close Can An Asteroid Approach

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/08/09

The Earth Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance or Earth MOID for short is the closest an asteroid can come to our home planet on it's current orbit.

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2:01

296E-314-Our Number

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/08/06

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard discovered, 2016 WJ1, a relatively large asteroid which can come close but will not hit the Earth. The extremely unlikely scenario of an impactor with our number on it would start the with the report of a fast moving point of light in the night sky. After a few days of data the Minor Planet Center would give it a name. Tracking the new asteroid, asteroid hunters would be alarmed as the chances that this object will impact the Earth starts to

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2:01

808-Global Auroras on Mars

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/08/02

When the Earth enters a stream of high speed protons and other charged particles in the solar wind or our home planet is impacted by a solar coronal mass ejection the Earth’s strong magnetic field acts a a shield. Mars on the other hand lacks an Earth-like magnetic field and thus has little protection from solar storms.

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2:01

295E-313-Martian Motherlode

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/30

Water for Martian Colonists Martian colonists will need to create mini environments with air to breathe and water to drink. Energy will be required to keep warm, power the settlement, and enable vehicles to move around the planet.

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2:01

807-Moon Orbit Crossers

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/26

During a recent 60 day period of time 23 space rocks came closer to Earth than our Moon

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2:01

294E-312-200 Yards Of Trouble

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/23

Dangerous Asteroids Are Still Out There Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard discovered a rapidly moving point of light in the night sky. Subsequent observations made by telescopes in Arizona, Romania, Illinois, the Czech Republic, Australia, and France revealed it to be a close approaching Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. The Minor Planet Center named it 2016 WJ1. This asteroid is about 200 yards in diameter, orbits the Sun once every 567 days, and currently can come to within about

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2:01

806-Distant PHA

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/19

It is hard to obtain time on the 8m Gemini South Observatory telescope on Cerro Pachon in Chile and the Large Binocular Telescope with its twin 8m mirrors on Mt. Graham, Arizona since they are among the largest telescopes in the world. My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos wrote a scientifically competitive proposal to obtain the time to track the potentially hazardous asteroid 2016 PR38 on both of these telescopes when it was near its furthest point from our Sun and thus much too faint

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2:01

293E-311-Bright and Bald

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/16

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered 2015 TC25 as a rapidly moving point of light in the night sky. Followup observations using data from four different telescopes has enabled a team of astronomers led by Dr. Vishnu Reddy of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory to determine that this small asteroid reflects four times more of the sunlight than do most other Earth approaching asteroids. Dr. Reddy points out that large asteroids are covered by a blanket of dust

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2:01

805-Very Close Miss

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/12

During a recent 60 day period asteroid hunters observed 23 asteroids which came closer to us than our Moon. Six of them passed closer to the Earth’s surface than 22,236 miles which is the distance to our communication satellites.

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2:01

292E-310-Ethics and Mars

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/09

Should martian microbes be sacrificed to human space exploration?It is unlikely that any living organism could survive being blasted from the surface of a planet, travel through interstellar space on a meteoroid, survive a fiery entry through another planet's atmosphere, and be viable when it reaches the surface. However, humans are breaching this interplanetary barrier. We have robots operating and are planning to land colonists on the red planet. This situation has prompted doctoral student Daniel

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2:01

804-Tracie's Solo

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/05

After months of training Tracie came full circle during her first solo 3 night observing run on the 60 inch telescope as she hosted groups of visitors as the observer instead of the tour guide.

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2:01

291E-309-Tiny Atira

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/07/02

Atira, named for the Pawnee goddess of Earth and the Morning and Evening Star orbits the Sun inside of our path. Atira, the first of this type of asteroid, was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research Program using telescopes in New Mexico. Atira is a stony object more than a mile in diameter, spins on it's axis of rotation once every three hours, has an irregular shape, and orbits the Sun once every 233 days. This asteroid was named Atira who is a goddess of the Native American

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2:01

803-Monster NEO

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/06/28

Since larger space rocks are rare, it was surprising when my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groller found a half mile diameter asteroid traveling through the constellation of Auriga.Fortunately on it’s current path 2024 JW1 can’t come closer than 53 lunar distances from us. Asteroid hunters will continue to track 2024 JW1 to make sure that it does not become a threat as it passes near Earth, Mars , and Jupiter.

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2:01

290E-306-Egg Rock

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/06/25

Egg rock's chemical composition and visual appearance is so different from other native Mars rocks that scientists have concluded that it is a meteorite which came from the molten core of an ancient asteroid.

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2:01

802-Bok Comet

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/06/21

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Draco with the Steward Observatory Bok 90 inch telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona when he discovered a faint fuzzy object moving through the night sky.Given the global warming which is happening in 2024 one has to wonder about the state of humanity and our home planet when comet C/2024 G1 (Wierzchos) returns to the inner solar system in 3331 CE.

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1,172 results

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