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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

336E-355-2 Suns

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/05/13

The NASA Kepler Spacecraft has discovered more than 2,000 planets which have been confirmed to be orbiting distant stars. It performs this remarkable feat by imaging more than 145,000 stars simultaneously to observe and measure the tiny dips in light which occur as a planet passes in front of its star. Astronomers have long known that many of the solar systems in the Milky Way have more than one star. To investigate the possibilities for life in a double star system, Dr Max Popp a scholar at

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2:01

848-C.2024 E1 (Wierzchos)

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/05/09

On March 3, 2024 my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos was asteroid hunting with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted a fuzzy object in the constellation of Draco. After Kacper reported his discovery to the Minor Planet Center, observers in Arizona, New Mexico, and Tenerife confirmed it to be a comet and it was given the name C/2024 E1 (Wierzchos). Kacper’s discovery has a hyperbolic orbit indicating that after coming slightly closer to the Sun than the planet

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2:01

335E-354-Returnee

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/05/06

On May 5, 2014 when I discovered 2014 JO25 with the Catalina Sky Survey's 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona it was the brightest, fastest asteroid I had ever seen. In April of 2017, 2014 JO25 returned to come within 1.1 million miles of us at 21 mi/s. This rare, very close approach by an asteroid, of 2014 JO25's size allowed scientists at NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in California and the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to obtain radar images of it

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2:01

847-Ultra Distant Comet

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/05/02

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Gröller was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major with the University of Arizona 90 inch Bok telescope on Kitt Peak when he discovered a faint moving object surrounded by a tiny gas and dust cloud called a coma. May 19, 2028 comet C/2025 D1 (Groeller) reaches its closest point to the Sun some 14.1 times the Earth-Sun distance and thus sets the record for the comet which stays furtherest from the Sun.After rounding the Sun comet C/2025 D1

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2:01

334E-353-Backwards

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/29

Using the University of Arizona's Large Binocular Telescope atop Mt. Graham in southern Arizona, Dr. Paul Wiegert of Western University in Canada, led a team of astronomers who have determined that a 2 mile diameter object bucks the solar system traffic by traveling in a direction backwards to all of the planets. In their March 30, 2017 article in the journal Nature, these astronomers confirm that 2015 BZ509, travels about Jupiter on a path in a direction opposite to nearly every other member of our

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2:01

846-Bright Nights

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/25

One little known and infrequently observed phenomenon in the natural night sky are “bright nights” during which observers have reported being able to read a book when both the Sun and Moon are both well below the horizon.

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2:01

333E-352-Worth Tracking

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/22

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was observing with our team's 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon in Arizona when he discovered a relatively large space rock, 2017 FD157, which can theoretically come closer to the Earth's surface than the communications satellites. We don't have enough data to predict when it will make a very close approach to us. What we do know is that 2017 FD157's orbit and that of the Earth nearly intersect coming to about Earth diameter of each other. For 2017 FD157 to

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2:01

845-Mighty Schmidt

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/18

On a single February night my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Jacqui Fazekas reported the discovery of 5 Earth approaching objects using our small but mighty Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona.Rest assured that on any given night there are asteroid hunters on the look out for seriously dangerous space rocks.

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2:01

332E-351-Another Close One

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/15

Asteroid hunters have become aware of the many small space rocks which come near Earth because of improvements made to telescopes, cameras, and computer analysis software. Recently, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rose Matheny used her skills and a new camera to discover the second small space rock in 32 days which came between the communications satellites and the Earth's surface. Rose spotted her 10 to 12 foot diameter space rock as it approached the Earth more than a million miles away with its

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2:01

844-Global Meteor Network

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/11

As the Earth travels in its orbit around the Sun it collides with objects called meteoroids traveling through space. These tiny members of the solar system range in size from dust grains to objects a meter in diameter.By becoming part of the GMN’s network , your data will help to discover and document meteor showers, aid in identifying the parent cometary objects, and in some cases help to identify locations to search for meteorites.

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2:01

331E-350-Asteroid Defense

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/08

In 2013 a 56 foot diameter space rock exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia releasing the energy of 450 kt of TNT and filled local hospitals with some of the 1,500 people who were injured. Fortunately no one died. In 1908 a 200 ft diameter meteor exploded over a largely unpopulated region at Tunguska, Siberia knocking down trees over a 750 square mile area. If it had hit over a populated area it could have caused a million casualties. The approximately 250 people in the USA that NASA has working on

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2:01

843-Possible Impactor

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/04

On 27 December 2024 the Atlas group in Chile discovered an object now known as 2024 YR4 which appeared to have a significant chance of impacting Earth 22 December of 2032. The most recent data indicates the chance that 2024 YR4 impact Earth is about 1 in 25,000. These data indicate our moon has about a 1 in 700 chance to be impacted by this space rock. Even so astronomers are preparing for 2028 when 2024 YR4 willagain come within the range of our instruments. Current data indicates 2024 YR4 will

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2:01

330E-349-Big and Fast

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/04/01

I was observing with the Catalina Sky Survey 60 inch telescope on Mt Lemmon, Arizona when a fast moving object appeared on a set of four images of the same area of the night sky. After I sent the discovery observations to the Minor Planet Center this new object was observed by telescopes in Arizona, Germany , South Bohemia in the Czech Republic , Chile, Pennsylvania , Italy, Hungary, and France. 2017 FE101's unusual path about our Sun is inclined by 53 degrees to the plane where the planets and most

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2:01

842-Tesla Recovered

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/03/28

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Hydra with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when a fast moving unknown point of light passed through a set of his images.After Greg reported his observations to the Minor Planet Center for the next 10 days it was tracked by observatories in Arizona, Italy, Hawaii, Australia, and Argentina. Citizen scientist H. A. Güler analyzed these data. The Minor Planet Center published the discovery of the

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2:01

329E-348-16

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/03/25

A clear night with excellent pinpoint star images allowed me to discover 16 near Earth approaching asteroid candidates with the Catalina Sky Survey 60 inch telescope on Mt Lemmon, Arizona. This 9 hr period of time provides us with a snap shot of the kinds of objects which constantly zip past our home planet. Thirteen of the candidates turned out to fit the definition of an Earth approaching object, two were lost because of a lack of additional observations, and the other one is an inner main belt

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2:01

841-Moon Fragment

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/03/21

Astronomers have yet to discover any long lasting natural object, beside our Moon, which orbits the Earth, however, occasionally, a small space rock enters into a temporary dance with our home planet.

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2:01

328E-347-Your Space Rock

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/03/18

If you are luckier than a hundred million dollar power ball winner you will see your space rock as a meteor streaking across the sky, fall to the ground, and land in a place where can you walk over and pick it up. On the other hand, with more persistence than luck you can find a space rock where it has been waiting for you on the surface of planet Earth . First you need a place to look. Dry lake beds have few surface rocks and can be a great place to find meteorites. There are strewn fields from

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2:01

840-Lunar South Pole Living

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/03/14

NASA has decided to make the lunar south pole the focus for human space exploration. It is a rough area consisting of high mountains, valleys, and craters.One serious problem is that the highest possible elevation of the Sun in the target landing areas is 7° making it akin to driving your car into the west at sunset. Such lighting conditions provide serious challenges to piloting landers, operating rovers, walking, operating tools, and just generally getting around.

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2:01

327E-346-Arctic Ice

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/03/11

Eliminating NASA's climate research programs is a bit like someone who has a CT scan which reveals a health problem demanding that the CT scan machine be destroyed instead of looking for a cure for themselves. On March 7, 2017 the Arctic Sea ice reached a record low wintertime maximum extent. The maximum Arctic ice cover in 2017 was about a half million square miles smaller than the average for 1981 to 2010. From the first satellite observations in 1979 till 2017 the Arctic sea ice cover has

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2:01

839-Dodged A Meteor

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/03/07

Recently , for the first time, the sight and sound of a meteor impact was recorded by a doorbell camera on Prince Edward Island, Canada. Fortunately the event occurred a few minutes after Joe Velaidum the home’s owner had been standing at the impact point on the way out to walk his dogs. Joe himself considers it to be a near death experience.

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1,166 results

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