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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

730-Busy Night(518)

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/02/03

On Halloween night while observing with the Catalina Sky Survey's 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona I discovered 21 space rocks streaking through the night sky. The most interesting one could be the destination of asteroid miners.

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2:01

219E-231-Hot Hand

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/31

Every year asteroid hunters discover about a hundred objects which are larger than 450 feet in diameter and come closer than 20 times the Moon's distance from us. We call these potentially hazardous asteroids. In 2015 my group the Catalina Sky Survey discovered 21 of them. It was thus exciting news to our team, when, recently, our newest team member Greg Leonard discovered three of them in rapid succession.

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2:01

729-Close Again(517)

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/27

As asteroid hunters equipment and skills continue to improve we will be able to find and track some of these tiny impactors and perhaps be able to suggest where to find pieces of one of them on the ground.

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2:01

218E-230-Close or Not

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/24

In 2013 my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Steve Larson discovered a space rock streaking through the night sky. For the next 3 days this object was observed by telescopes in California, England, Chile, and New Mexico and given the name 2013 TX68. About 10 days after being discovered, this small asteroid became invisible to human telescopes as it moved towards the Sun with increasing amounts of its dark side facing towards us. Hopefully asteroid hunters will come across 2013 TX68 during its 2016

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2:01

728-Space Weather(516)

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/20

Space is not all that far away. If a powerful solar eruption in 2012 had happened a week earlier, the blast of radiation would have caused wide spread power blackouts disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket as well as the water and sewer systems which rely on electric pumps.

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2:01

217E-229-Close Duo

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/17

On consecutive nights my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski discovered two very close approaching asteroids. One of Richard's discoveries, 2016 BY14 must be made out of pretty tough stuff since when it was closest to the Sun it received more than twice the solar energy which heats the surface of Mercury to 800 F. Asteroid hunter's continue to need to track 2016 BY14 to make sure that its orbit does not change to make it a threat as it passes near the paths of Mercury, Venus, Earth, our

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2:01

727-Dust Moons(515)

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/13

In a dance of unequal partners the Earth and Moon orbit a common center of gravity which itself travels about the Sun. Leading and trailing the moon's twisted path by 60 degrees, are the L4 and L5 Lagrange points, where gravitational forces create a bowl in space time in which an object will remain until it is disturbed.The discovery of two large ghostly neighbors approximately 65,000 by 45,000 miles in size at the L4 and L5 sites approximately 250,000 miles from both the Earth and Moon verifies

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2:01

216E-228-Alien Contact

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/10

Humans are searching the Universe to discover life outside of our Planet.You could wake up any morning to the news that humans have found life beyond our planet. It could be fossils of ancient life on Mars. It could be the discovery of micro organisms in one of the salty oceans on the asteroid Ceres, the moons of Jupiter, Europa and Ganymede, and/or Enceladus the strange little moon of Saturn. It could be the reception of electromagnetic signals from a distant advanced civilization. Lacking hard

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2:01

726-Close Space Rocks(514)

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/06

Since 1900 there have been 11 close approaches by asteroids larger than 300 feet in diameter. One of them, the Tunguska Object was about 400 feet in diameter. It entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded with such force that it blew down trees over an 800 square mile area in 1908. Hopefully that will not happen again anytime soon.

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2:01

215E-227-Planet 9

Travelers In The Night ·

2023/01/01

Astronomers are searching the solar system for new planets. Calculations based on the orbits of the distant objects out near Pluto suggest the existence of a 10 Earth mass planet twenty times farther from the Sun than the planet Neptune. At its great distance the hypothetical new "Planet 9" would take 20,000 years or so to make a single orbit about the Sun. The search for "Planet 9" has begun. Until we have images of it moving through the night sky it will continue to be a theoretical curiosity.

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2:01

725-Mtn Ops(513)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/30

My team, the Catalina Sky Survey, would not find a single asteroid without Steward Observatory's Mountain Lemmon Operations, or Mtn Ops for short. Bottom line is that Mtn Ops does whatever it takes to make our Asteroid Hunting facilities continue to function.

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2:01

214E-226-Cosmic Campground

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/27

The Cosmic Campground is one of the last places where one can experience the natural night sky in the lower 48.

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2:01

724-Aten(512)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/23

Aten Asteroids are stealthy space rocks which can be dim and hard to detect since for most of their path about the Sun their illuminated side is facing away from us.

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2:01

213E-225-Greg Scores

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/20

My Catalina Sky Survey team mate Greg Leonard finds an interesting potentially hazardous asteroid.Since asteroid hunter's main concern are the large space rocks which we don't know about, my team the Catalina Sky Survey continues to scan the skies 24 nights per month using two telescopes located in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona.

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2:01

723-Very Close One(510)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/16

Ten hours and 46 minutes after my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard discovered a Toyota RAV4 sized space rock, now named 2018 UA, streaking through the constellation of Pegasus at 8.8 miles/second, this tiny asteroid passed less than 1/2 the distance of the communications satellites to the surface of planet Earth

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2:01

212E-224-Aten Ahead

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/13

Aten asteroids spend most of their time inside the Earth's orbit, come close to us, travel at speeds our rockets can match, and may be an economical source of raw materials for space exploration.

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2:01

722-Close(509)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/09

Until recently the discovery of very close approaching asteroids was rare, however, due to improvements in telescopes, cameras, and computers asteroid hunters are now finding a significant number of these small celestial visitors to our neighborhood every month

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2:01

211E-223-Back Home

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/06

A mysterious piece of space hardware comes back to Earth.

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2:01

721-Eric's Night(507)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/12/02

Asteroid hunters are developing the equipment and skills which enable them to predict the impact of tiny space rocks. Thus in the future you may have the opportunity to witness the light show an impactor creates and perhaps even obtain clues which will enable you to find a piece of it on the ground.

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2:01

209E-221-Human Geological Epoch

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/11/29

Humans are creating a new geological epoch

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