Travelers In The Night

2:01

760-Discover an Asteroid

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/09/01

Carson Fuls, one of my Catalina Sky Survey teammates, is leading the effort that will allow you to join our NASA funded adventure in asteroid hunting and discovery. You will learn how to scan our nightly archival images to discover new small solar system worlds.Happy asteroid hunting.

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2:01

249E-261-Cool Star Homes

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/29

Recently Dr. Michael Gillon of the University of Liege in Belgium and a team of astronomers hypothesized since that approximately 2/3 of the stars in our neighborhood are red dwarf stars some of them might host inhabitable planets. To test this idea the researchers began to carefully monitor some nearby red dwarfs with a robotic telescope in Chile to see if any of them the have regular dips in brightness which indicate the presence of planets orbiting them.This team of astronomers were delighted

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2:01

759-Number 7

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/25

Hungarian astronomer and geography teacher Krisztián Sárneczky was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Lynx with 0.6m (24 inch) telescope at the Piszkéstető station in the Mátra Mountains when an unknown object streaked through a set of his images. It is the 7th such object to be tracked in outer space and then observed to enter our atmosphere. A tiny asteroid the size of 2023 CX1 enters the Earth’s atmosphere about once a month and gives asteroid hunters a chance to practice for a big one.

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2:01

248E-260-Gliding to Space

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/22

About 20 years ago Dr. Elizabeth Austin began to investigate Polar Vortex winds during the long winter nights near the poles. One of its components, the stratospheric polar night jet, can create 300 mph winds which in turn can project atmospheric mountain waves as high as 130,000 feet into the stratosphere.The Airbus Perlan II is an engineless glider designed to surf stratospheric mountain waves in our atmosphere to the edge of space. Cruising at 400 mph at an altitude of 90,000 feet this glider

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2:01

758-Weird Supernova

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/18

An extremely wide field of view camera, the Zwicky Transient Facility, operated by Caltech on Palomar Mountain in California is able to take images of the entire northern sky every couple of days. This capability has enabled to astronomers to find nearly 8,000, Type IA supernova. A recent discovery SN Zwicky is unique.

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2:01

247E-259-Trans-Neptunian

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/15

During the course of a single night our telescopes can find more than 10,000 moving objects. Fortunately our software geniuses are able to sort through this pile to allow us to focus on unknown objects which require additional observations. Most of the time asteroid hunters are able to decide if an unknown moving object is an Earth approaching asteroid by observing it for a few nights to determine it's path around the Sun. However, recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammates Alex Gibbs, Greg Leonard,

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2:01

757-Alien Signals

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/11

Project Breakthrough Listen is spending $100 million over 10 years so that radio telescopes can search for signals which may indicate extraterrestrial intelligence.In a recent article in the Astronomical Journal a team of astronomers published a paper entitled “A 4–8 GHz Galactic Center Search for Periodic Technosignatures”. The teams first effort yielded a null result, however, they plan to continue to search for rotating beacons which could be used by extraterrestrials to communicate with far

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2:01

246E-258-Odds of Aliens

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/08

Recently Dr. Adam Frank of the University of Rochester and Dr Woodruff Sullivan of the University of Washington published a paper in which they addressed the question "What are the odds that humans are the only technological species that has ever arisen in a given volume of space"? Humans continue to look into the night sky and wonder what is out there. The immense distances and the uncertain lifetime of an advanced civilization make it seem unlikely that we will discover intelligent beings outside

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2:01

756-Nice PHA

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/04

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Cancer with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when he discovered a potentially hazardous asteroid, 2023 KM5.Rest assured there is no way, on its current path, that 2023 KM5 will impact the Earth in the foreseeable future, however, asteroid hunters will continue to track it to make sure its orbit does not change to make it a threat.

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2:01

245E-257-Raw Asteroid

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/08/01

Most asteroids that we observe have been baked by the Sun for billions of years. As a result, any ices or frozen gases that they may have once possessed are long gone. Comets on the other hand have spent so much time far from the Sun that they still contain volatile materials. As a typical comet approaches the Sun, the frozen gases and ices it contains evaporate to form a beautiful coma and a long tail.

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2:01

755-Geyser of Life-Maybe

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/07/28

In 2023 the James Webb Space Telescope spotted a geyser of water vapor extending more than 80% of the Earth’s diameter erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. If life does exist in the salty ocean of Enceladus shielded from the rest of the Universe by a thick layer of ice and rock its nature remains a mystery.

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2:01

244E-256-Pale Blue Dot

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/07/25

More than 25 years ago Voyager 1 took a picture of the Earth from beyond Pluto's orbit. This image shows our home planet to be an isolated tiny pale blue dot floating in the vastness of space.

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2:01

754-Very Fast Moving Objects In The Night Sky

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/07/21

Very small fast moving asteroids pass through our solar system.About once a month an object like 2023 KU4 enters our atmosphere, releases the energy of approximately 2.4 tons of TNT, explodes at an altitude of about 280,000 feet, creates a spectacular light show, produces a sonic boom that is barely audible, and rains pieces of itself on the ground for meteorite hunters to discover. Check out the fireball log on the American Meteor Society website for examples.

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2:01

243E-255-Earth Venus Express

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/07/18

We will probably never know the details of the collision that put my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls' recent discovery, 2016 HD3, on its current path. What we do know is that Carson's new space rock is about 25 feet in diameter and in the next 100 years will make 53 close approaches to planet Earth and 12 to our sister planet Venus. In 2016 this small object passed to near both the Earth and our Moon. It's 322 day orbit around the Sun can someday bring it to about a quarter of the Moon's

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2:01

753-Impactor Lights Up the Night Sky

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/07/14

Very small fast moving asteroids pass through our solar system.About once a month an object like 2023 KU4 enters our atmosphere, releases the energy of approximately 2.4 tons of TNT, explodes at an altitude of about 280,000 feet, creates a spectacular light show, produces a sonic boom that is barely audible, and rains pieces of itself on the ground for meteorite hunters to discover. Check out the fireball log on the American Meteor Society website for examples.

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2:01

242E-254-Blinded

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/07/11

Blinded by inappropriate outdoor night lighting, much of humanity is now unaware of the rich beauty of the Universe which surrounds them. To see sights which have inspired countless generations of lovers, poets, scientists, authors, artists, mathematicians, and dreamers people must travel out of their artificial light domes to one of the few remote locations which offer the opportunity to view the natural night sky.

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2:01

752-Lunker

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/07/07

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Jacqueline Fazekas was asteroid hunting , in the evening twilight, with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when she discovered a very large object in an unusual orbit. Rest assured that astronomers will continue to track Jacqueline's discovery to make sure that its orbit does not change to make it a threat as it passes near Jupiter, Earth, and Venus.

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2:01

241E-253-Lunar Village

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/07/04

Covered by a blanket of lunar soil to protect it from BB sized meteoroids arriving a gunshot speeds, a village is nestled in a large crater on our moon. The individual structures are connected together by tunnels. The site was chosen to access the water and metals which were brought to the site by asteroid impacts.

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2:01

751-Ball Pit

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/06/30

To the amazement of NASA scientists, when the NASA OSIRIS-Rex touched down on the surface of Bennu to obtain a sample, the sample collecting arm continued to sink into Bennu until rocket thrusters reversed its downward motion and allowing it to escape.

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2:01

240E-252-The King

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/06/27

Jupiter protects us as well as directs some objects our way.Jupiter, the king of our solar system, has provided us with a place to stand and air to breathe.

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