Travelers In The Night

2:01

909- 2026 JH2

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/24

My Catalina Sky Survey teammates Josh Hogan and Alessandra Serrano were asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major when they discovered a fast moving point of light in the night sky. My team the Catalina Sky Survey operates 5 telescopes on top of mountains near Tucson, Arizona except for the 3 nights per month when the moon is too bright. Our goal is to detect an impacting object like 2026 JH2 in advance to warn people in the effected area to stay away from doors and windows.

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2:01

398E-439-Big and Close

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/21

Using our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski was searching for Earth approaching asteroids in the constellation of Virgo when he discovered a moving point of light which had suddenly appeared and was about 40 times brighter than is typical for a near Earth asteroid. 75 hours later, scientists at the Minor Planet Center used data from 17 different observatories around the globe to calculate it's orbit around the Sun, estimate it's size to be

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2:01

908-Head On

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/17

Asteroid hunters find asteroids by looking for objects which change their position relative to the stars. If an asteroid happened to match the Earth’s motion it might appear stationary and thus be virtually undetectable until it is right on top of us. The trick is finding potentially dangerous asteroids at some other point in their orbit so we know about them before they have a chance to approach Earth.

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2:01

397E-438-Bright Darkness

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/14

Most of the humans on planet Earth have never witnessed that the natural night sky is not dark; but rather it is alive with it's own lights. To see for yourself, pick a dark sky place near you like the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary from the International Dark Sky Association's website, darksky.org, and recruit a friend. Do a bit of research on how to achieve and sustain your night vision. Bring a red filtered flashlight, reclining lawn chair, star maps, binoculars, warm clothes,

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2:01

907-Large and Close

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/10

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Josh Hogan was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major with our small but mighty Schmidt telescope when he spotted a fast moving point of light in a set of his images and posted his observations on the Near Earth Object Confirmation Page or NEOCP for short. The NASA Sentry software system automatically scans the NEOCP and from the initial observations of Josh’s discovery predicted there was a tiny minuscule but non zero chance that it could impact our

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2:01

396E-437-Christmas Comet

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/07

On December 25, 2017, while searching for Earth approaching asteroids in the constellation of Virgo, the Universe gave my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard a Christmas present in the form of a comet which now bears his name. Comet P/2017 Y3 (Leonard) orbits the Sun once every 31 years on a highly elliptical path which takes it from between the orbits of Earth and Mars out to almost the planet Uranus's average distance from the Sun. Since it has been observed for only a very short piece of

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2:01

906-Pierazzo Lunar Crater

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/03

The visually stunning Lunar Crater Pierazzo, named for the late Planetary Scientist Elizabeth “Betty” Pierazzo was observed by the Artemis II Crew as they passed over the Moon’s far side. It is a 5.9 mile diameter crater with white streaks or rays which extend more than 50 miles in all directions.

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2:01

395E-436-Lonely Asteroids

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/30

Most asteroids are located in the lonely space between Mars and Jupiter where the average distance between two asteroids is about 600,000 miles. Even though there is a tremendous space between asteroids they occasionally collide and pieces of them become Earth approaching objects. Most of them remain close to the plane of the solar system, however, a few are sent on paths which take them into the extremely lonely space high above and far below the orbits of the planets about the Sun. In 2017, my

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2:01

905-Hogan’s Interesting PHA

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/26

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Josh Hogan has discovered a 2 football field diameter asteroid that was placed on NASA’s Sentry list because it has a tiny minuscule but non-zero chance of impacting our home planet. With this motivation my team the Catalina Sky Survey, the Pan STARRS group in Hawaii, the ATLAS group with telescopes Hawaii, Chile, and South Africa , the Vera C. Rubin telescope in Chile, will be soon joined NASA’s NEO Surveyor and groups world wide in a planet wide defense

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2:01

394E-435-Number 31

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/23

Asteroids appear as moving points of light in an asteroid hunter's images so that when my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Alex Gibbs spotted a fuzzy moving object he immediately suspected it to be a comet. The data obtained by astronomers over the next 8 days enabled scientists at the Minor Planet Center to verify Alex's 31st comet discovery and give it the name C/2018 A6 (Gibbs). In January of 2018 it was in the constellation of Leo traveling from the vast empty space above the Sun's north pole toward

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2:01

904-Ohio Fireball

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/19

On St. Patrick’s day 2026 a fireball meteor brighter than the full moon streaked across the daytime sky. The American Meteor Society received 223 eyewitness reports from observers in 15 states, the District of Columbia, and Ontario Canada as well as 5 videos and 6 photos. NASA reported that the incoming object was approximately 6 feet in diameter, weighed about 7 tons, released the energy of 250 tons of TNT, created a sonic boom heard over a wide area , and rained bits of itself onto the ground in

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2:01

393E-431-Tough Space Rocks

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/16

Most small asteroids are likely to be rubble piles of small rocks and dust loosely held together by their weak force of gravity while others may be made of ices of various substances. A few are solid objects which may contain metals like iron and nickel as well as gold, silver, and platinum. As they whiz by us it is hard to tell much about them from their overall brightness and distance from us. In 2017 my team the Catalina Sky Survey found 21 asteroids having an average diameter of 750 feet which

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2:01

903-Eclipse of the Moon Observing

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/12

My team the Catalina Sky Survey has pioneered searching for asteroids coming from the direction of the dark side of the moon.

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2:01

392E-430-Deportee

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/09

The beautiful star cluster the Pleiades in the constellation of Tauris is about 100 million years old making it one of the youngest objects that you can see in the natural night sky. Data obtained by observing Oumuamua (“Oh-moo-ah-moo-ah”), the first object humans have identified which is definitely from outside of our solar system suggests that it is an icy body with a red, rock appearing shell, of carbon rich organic material. By tracing Omuamua's path for millions of years into the past, Dr. Fabo

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2:01

902-Lighting Up The Night

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/05

A start up company Reflect Orbital is proposing to launch 50,000 satellite mirrors by 2035 to illuminate solar panels on Earth all night long. This would be devastating for human sleep cycles, birds, insects, plants and many of the biological systems of organisms on which we all depend.

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2:01

391E-428-Phaethon

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/06/02

The mysterious Earth approaching object Phaethon (FAY-eh-thon) does not fit neatly into our definition of either an asteroid or a comet. Further it appears to be like the Peanuts character Pigpen in that it leaves a trail of dust and other fine debris in it's wake which in the case of Phaethon produces the Geminid Meteor Shower to delight us every year around Christmas time. Phaethon is amazing in that every 524 days it makes a death defying flight to a point less than one of half of the planet

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2:01

901-Rubin and Incoming Asteroids

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/05/29

However, according to a recent research project, the Rubin Observatory will discover but not give an adequate warning time for objects destined to hit the Earth. To provide time to take action to deflect an incoming object we will need to rely on ground based telescopes used by my Catalina Sky Survey teammates and other asteroid hunting groups as well as NASA’s NEO Surveyor satellite when it is launched.

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2:01

390E-427-Meteor Whispers

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/05/26

Often observers report hearing a percussive sound, like a sonic boom from an aircraft, minutes after viewing a bright meteor fireball. In addition, in a fewer number of instances, there are many reliable reports of observers hearing popping, hissing, and rustling sounds at the same time they are observing a very bright meteor traveling though the night sky. Professional astronomers have long dismissed these reports saying that what these people hear simultaneously with their visual observations

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2:01

900-Earth Life from Mars

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/05/22

Some of the 635,000 impact craters found on Mars are the result of such violent impacts that pieces of Mars are ejected, travel around the solar system, and a few become one of the several hundred Martian meteorites which have been discovered here on Earth. An experiment is described which does not prove we are descendants of martian bacteria however it does improve our ability to protect our planet and understand where life may be possible elsewhere in the universe.

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2:01

389E-426-Rose Rules Again

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/05/19

389E-426-Rose Rules Again Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rose Matheny discovered 8 new Earth approaching object candidates on a single night with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona. One of them, 2017 YO is a mile and a half diameter, main belt asteroid, while the other 7 are interesting Earth approaching objects. Another one of Rose's single night discoveries is 2017 YM1. When Rose first spotted it this space rock was moving rapidly north, at 6.9 miles per second, away from the

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