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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

830-Imaging Alien Worlds

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/01/03

Through out history humans have dreamed about living creatures on planets orbiting distant stars. As technology has improved and our robotic missions have begun exploring our solar system in some detail the aspiration to learn about alien solar systems continues to build. At the focal point of the solar gravitational lens it is theoretically possible to image a planet orbiting a distant star to show its details as small as 20 miles in diameter. Such images could reveal oceans, land masses, clouds,

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2:01

317E-336-Meteorite Mystery

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/31

A research expedition to near the south pole is developing to investigate a meteorite mystery. Meteorites landing on the Antarctica ice sheet are slowly transported along by ice flows until they are dumped into the ocean or up against a mountain range. The concentration of meteorites into stranding zones on the lower slopes of mountain ranges has allowed humans to collect 2/3 of the meteorites discovered on Earth in Antartica. The fact that the percentage of iron meteorites found in these places in

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2:01

829-Space Weather and National Security

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/27

The Sun emits a solar wind of charged particles reaching speeds of more than a million miles per hour, bursts of energetic ultraviolet photons, huge blobs of ionized gas called coronal mass ejections and other phenomena which effect the near Earth environment. A team of scientists present a comprehensive network of ground based instruments and analysis tools called the Chinese Meridian Project. This research project has been established to provide stereoscopic, comprehensive, monitoring of space

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2:01

316E-335-DART

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/24

A stony asteroid 130m or about 430 feet in diameter has a mass of 3 billion Kg or 6.5 billion pounds. Such an object is likely to strike the Earth every 11,000 years or so creating a crater a mile in diameter crater and inflicting damage over a hurricane sized footprint on the surface of our planet. If one like this were found to be heading straight for us deflecting it would take some ingenuity. The key is early discovery so that perhaps a gentle nudge would do the trick. How do do we test such an

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2:01

828-Alive With Light

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/20

Most humans live in cities under a dome of light pollution. They 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 natural night sky location near you like the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary in New Mexico and recruit a friend.

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2:01

315E-334-Last 19 Hours

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/17

2008 TC3 was discovered by my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski on October 6, 2008. It is the first of only 9 asteroids which humans have tracked traveling through space, have seen exploding in our atmosphere, and have been able walk up to pieces on the Earth's surface.

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2:01

827-Meteor Parents

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/13

One of the joys of visiting a natural night sky location on a clear dark of the Moon night is to observe meteors streaking across the sky. It took more than 2,000 years for humans to figure out at meteors and comets are related.

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2:01

314E-333-Whoppers

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/12

Recently, my Catalina Team Captain Eric Christensen discovered a potentially hazardous 3,000 foot diameter asteroid, 2017 CH1. Asteroid hunters are discovering less than one asteroid of this size or greater per month. Eric's discovery, 2017 CH1, has an orbit which can bring it to about twice the Moon's distance from planet Earth. Although it will not come anywhere near Earth in the foreseeable future, asteroid hunters will continue to monitor 2017 CH1's orbit to make sure that it remains no threat

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2:01

826-Ants and Asteroids

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/06

About 66 million years ago a 6 to 9 mile diameter asteroid traveling at approximately 12 miles per second slammed into the Gulf of Mexico off of the modern coastline of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Ants survived, flourished, and developed agriculture while other species went extinct.

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2:01

313E-332-Greg's Destination

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/12/03

A winter storm hit Mt. Lemmon, Arizona closing access to the observatory by blowing over trees and producing large snow drifts. After the Mountain Operations Crew cleared the road, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was able to make his way to the top and discover an asteroid which could be visited by human astronauts. Greg's new 120 foot diameter space rock , named 2017 BV93, spends most of its time between Earth and Venus as it orbits the Sun once every 346 days.

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2:01

825-Backyard Asteroid Discovery

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/29

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin’s regular job is asteroid hunting at the telescope and creating software to improve detection as well as to better keep track of space rocks that come near our home planet. During his time off, in his backyard in Tucson, Arizona, David has built and operates equipment to track meteors, a seismograph to detect Earthquakes, and a small observatory to discover asteroids.

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2:01

312E-331-Space Salsa

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/26

If Lunar and Martian colonists are to have chips and salsa they will need grow their own tomatoes. To test methods to do this German Aerospace Center or DLR has developed the EU:CROPIS satellite which will be launched by a Space-X Falcon 9 rocket into low Earth orbit sometime in 2017. Once in orbit the satellite will be programmed to rotate at two different speeds on its own axis to produce Lunar gravity for 6 months and then Martian gravity for the next 6 months. Inside the satellite tomato seeds

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2:01

824-Catalina Near Earth Comet

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/22

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos was asteroid hunting with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when he discovered and reported a fuzzy looking unknown object in a set of his images. There is no chance of an impact from Kacper's discovery, P/2019 Y3 (Catalina), in the foreseeable future.

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2:01

311E-330-Comet Johnson

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/19

Comet C2/2015 V2 Johnson was discovered by my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Jess Johnson on November 3, 2015. It travels on a hyperbolic path around the Sun which is highly inclined to the plane where the planets and most of the asteroids travel. Jess's comet's path takes it from deep space into the inner solar system slightly further from the Sun than the planet Mars. Although it will not get closer to the Earth than about 75 million miles it may out gas enough material to make it visible to the

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2:01

823 Jacqui's Impactor

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/15

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Jacqueline Fazekas was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Aquarius with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon Arizona when she discovered a tiny asteroid which would impact the Earth in about 10 hours.

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2:01

310E-329-Near Neighbor

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/12

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls was using the new hundred million pixel camera on our team's Schmidt telescope located on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona, when he discovered 2017 AG13. It passes near the Earth's orbit twice a year on its own 345 day path around the Sun. When Carson spotted it, 9 lunar distances from him it was heading in our direction at about nine and a half miles per second. Three days later it came to less than two times the distance the Moon's distance from us. Carson's new

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2:01

822-Dark Matter and Alien Beings

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/08

In a recent paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, a philosopher Dr. Vojin Rakić (voyin rack itch) reviews some 50 or so proposed solutions to Fermi’s paradox, including, that human life is so exceptional that it happened only once in the universe, that perhaps other civilizations destroy themselves like we are trying to do, civilizations broadcast radio and TV signals only for a relatively brief period of time, alien intelligent life maybe incomprehensible to our species, and

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2:01

309E-328-The Heat is On

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/05

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has published an extensive data based review, analysis, and summary of the Earth's Climate. 2016 was hotter than 2015 which was hotter than 2014. 2016 is the warmest year the Earth has been in the more than 180 years of record keeping. Overall in 2016 the whole Earth was 1.8 F above the 1951-1980 average. The Arctic in 2016 was 7.2F higher than it was the pre-industrial age.

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2:01

821-Dinosaur Killing Asteroid

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/11/01

Scientific results are consistent with the hypothesis that the dinosaur killing, K-T layer forming Chicxulub impactor came from well beyond Jupiter while the other 5 impactors in the past 541 million years as well as most meteorites found on Earth came from asteroids formed between Mars and Jupiter. All of this prompts us to marvel that we are here at all and puzzle over how to prepare for what the future might hold. In particular asteroid hunters should take seriously the possibility of an impactor

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2:01

308E-327-Suddenly Bright

Travelers In The Night ·

2024/10/29

An example that a relatively large space rock can approach the Earth suddenly started with what appeared as a bright star moving across the images that I had just obtained with the Catalina Sky Survey's 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. It was about 100 times brighter than most of Earth approaching objects asteroid hunters discover. Over the next 64 hours it was tracked by 45 different observatories around the globe. This previously unknown space rock, now named 2017 AG5, is approximately

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