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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

700-Martian Storms(486)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/07/08

In a few weeks ,as Earth and Mars moved closer together, a dust storm engulfed most of the red planet making it impossible to see its surface features.

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2:01

188E-200-Comet Showers

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/07/05

It is possible that showers of comets changed the course of life on Earth.

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2:01

699-Last One(486)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/07/01

A huge Earth approaching asteroid is discovered right before the 2018 monsoon rains settled into the American Southwest. This weather imposed break from observing provides the opportunity for asteroid hunters to make major equipment upgrades and perform routine maintenance.

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2:01

187E-199-Space Boomerang

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/06/28

A space boomerang meets its fate in a collision with the Earth about 60 miles off of the coast of Sri Lanka producing a bright, but harmless light show in the noon sky.

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2:01

698-Aliens?(484)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/06/24

Most Astronomers find it hard to believe that given perhaps a trillion planets in the Milky Way alone that our Earth is the only one which hosts living organisms. It is both exciting and terrifying to realize we have no concept of what living forms may exist outside Earth in the Milky Way.

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2:01

186E-198-Asteroid Water Wagons

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/06/21

Our Moon is the nearest and most likely place for humans to colonize in the near future. It has a hostile environment where air and liquid water as we know them on Earth are not to be found. In the past astronomers hypothesized that comets are the source of water on the Earth and Moon. However, calculations by Svetsov and Shuvalov published in Planetary and Space Science indicate that when a comet impacts the Moon it is likely that 99% of its water evaporates into space and is lost. On the other

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2:01

697-Double Trouble(697)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/06/17

Asteroid hunters have discovered a strange asteroid pair. How they came to be together and what humans would do if such a large double trouble object is heading for us remains a mystery.

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2:01

185E-197-Rik's 2 Homers

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/06/14

During his last official observing run before retiring, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate, Rik Hill knocked two out of the park. On successive nights he discovered two new potentially hazardous asteroids 2015 TD323 and 2015 TK238. Not to worry, neither of these asteroids are a threat to Earth in the foreseeable future. However, they are large enough and can come close enough to prompt asteroid hunters to keep careful track of them.

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2:01

696-Botswana Fragment(482)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/06/10

An object is tracked in outer space, seen to explode in our atmosphere, and had a fragment of it discovered on the ground. Its analysis will help humans to prepare for and defend against a much larger object with our number on it.

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2:01

184E-196-Dark,Bright,and Beautiful

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/06/07

The Great Galaxy in Andromeda or M31 as it is also known is one of the furtherest objects that can be seen with the unaided human eye. It is about two and a half million light years away. More than a thousand years ago the a Persian astronomer named Al-Sufi described the Great Galaxy in Andromeda as a "small cloud" in his Book of Fixed Stars. Now there are few places on planet Earth like the Cosmic Campground where one can see it with the naked eye due to inappropriate night time lighting.

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2:01

695-A Large Visitor(480)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/06/03

Statistically, asteroid hunters are thought to have discovered 90% of our potentially dangerous celestial neighbors greater than 1 KM in diameter. Thus my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was surprised to discover an unknown very large asteroid moving through the constellation of Persus.

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2:01

183E-195-Flat Earth Society Reincarnation

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/31

In spite of the shape of the Earth's shadow on the Moon, sailing ships disappearing below the horizon, satellite photographs, orbiting objects, and a mountain of other information about the size and shape of the Earth there are still people who belong a flat Earth Society and even have websites. The number of believers has diminished from 3,500 twenty years ago to less than a few hundred today. Not to worry the Flat Earth Society is being replaced by the Climate Change Deniers.

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2:01

694-Comet Catalina(479)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/27

Comet C/2018 M1 (Catalina) is eternal in the sense that it will likely wander the vast space between the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy until the end of time.

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2:01

182E-194-Star Wanderer

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/24

From the dawn of history, humans have longed to wander amongst the stars. Now we know that comets are able to make such a voyage giving us paths to follow.NASA scientists have suggested that the first interstellar robotic spacecraft could be propelled by a solar sail as large as the state of Texas. Such a mission, perhaps two or three hundred years into the future could follow a comet's path. In this flight of fantasy the spaceship would be inclosed in a reflective spherical heat shield, placed into

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2:01

693-Comet Leonard III(478)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/20

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard knew he had bagged his third comet when he spotted an unknown fuzzy object with a broad tail moving through the constellation of Pisces. Eventually when it looses its volatile materials Comet Leonard will become one of the countless millions of main belt asteroids circling our Sun.

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2:01

181E-193-Survivor

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/17

Thirty six hours before my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rik Hill discovered it, a space rock about size of a Toyota Prius passed about 14,000 miles above the Earth's surface. When Rik first spotted it this small asteroid was about a million miles from us and was moving away from the Earth at 12.6 miles per second. Its orbit had been changed by a narrow escape from the Earth's gravity and it was on a new path around the Sun This small space rock was subsequently observed by telescopes in Russia and

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2:01

692-Lonely Fragment(475)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/13

A 2000 foot diameter space rock has stories to tell about violent events long ago. Asteroid hunters are eager to track this huge collision fragment and look for members of its family as it passes near Earth in 2026.

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2:01

180E-192-WISE Alive

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/10

When the NASA WISE spacecraft ran out of frozen hydrogen, its detectors warmed up, and it was no longer able to conduct its primary mission. It was placed in a hibernation mode and left to orbit the Earth in silence. A couple of years ago NASA engineers figured out that the spacecraft, even with warm detectors, could find some interesting asteroids and decided to wake it up. The WISE spacecraft in turn has produced data on more than15,000 solar system objects including more than 350 Earth

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2:01

691-Earth-Venus Shuttle(474)

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/06

A 100 foot diameter asteroid is spotted on one of its regular trips between the orbits of Venus and Earth. Its ultimate fate is to collide with one of these planets producing a spectacular light show.

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2:01

179E-191-Two Odd Fellows

Travelers In The Night ·

2022/05/01

Two quite different Earth approaching asteroids were discovered in a clear hole in the sky between storms.

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1,271 results

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