Loading...

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

919-Automatic Detection Of An Impactor

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/10/02

Recently a pair of JPL SynTrack Robotic automated telescopes located at a high altitude low light pollution site in California provided 4 tracking data points taken less than 30 minutes apart which indicated that a small space rock with a diameter smaller the height of a human being was on a collision course with Earth.

en

2:01

408E-449-Cloud 7

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/29

To give you an idea of the asteroid traffic in our neighborhood, on a mostly cloudy night, through holes in the clouds, in a space of less than 2 hours, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski posted 7 new close approaching asteroid discoveries on the Minor Planet Center's Near Earth Object Confirmation Page

en

2:01

918-Auroras from Space

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/25

The northern lights or Aurora Borealis have fascinated humans throughout the ages. Today aurora watching is a multimillion dollar industry in places like Alaska, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Greenland, and Iceland. Auroras are manifestations of the interaction between the solar wind, radiation, and our atmosphere we call space weather.

en

2:01

407E-448-Two PHA's

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/22

The large dangerous asteroids that we don't know about are what keep asteroid hunters going to the telescope.

en

2:01

917-Space Dust

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/18

As the Earth orbits the Sun at 18.5 mi/s it sweeps up about 100 tons of micrometeorites and space dust every day of which some 14 tons eventually makes it to the ground. You can even find some of these particles of space dust by using a magnet on material in the rain gutters attached to your roof.

en

2:01

406E-447-Nuking An Asteroid

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/15

Tonight, even though the chances are extremely slim, an asteroid hunter could find a sizable asteroid on a collision course with planet Earth. If we have decades warning, the potential impactor's arrival time could be changed by impacting the dangerous object with a high velocity mass or if we have less time we will need to nuke it which will either blow it to bits or give it a rocket like push.

en

2:01

916-Past Glory

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/11

When accurately recorded historical observations do not agree with what we what we see today it is often very rewarding to find out why. In modern telescopes we see Theta Eridani to a be pair separated by about 425 times our distance from the Sun orbiting a common center of gravity. Detailed observations of the spectrum of one of these show it to be itself a pair of stars orbiting each other every 4.1 days. One of this very close pair, as it is aging, dumps matter onto its companion causing it to

en

2:01

405E-446-Asteroid Homestead

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/08

In the future one can envision a space mining family boarding a descendent of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Vehicle for a trip into low Earth orbit. A few hundred miles above the Earth's surface they would rendezvous with their asteroid mining spacecraft which will be their home for the next five years or so.

en

2:01

915-Raining Comets

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/04

The comets we observe generally start out as icy dirty snowballs of frozen gases like water and frozen carbon dioxide in the Oort cloud. If recent scientific analysis is correct, we are now witnessing a parade of comets produced by the passage of a star when our first ancestors began to roam the Earth in Africa.

en

2:01

404E-445-Not So Secret

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/09/01

A partnership of humans and computers will help to minimize the damage when asteroid hunters find a space rock with our number on it.

en

2:01

914-Deep Synoptic Array

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/08/28

Looking into the sky at night with radio eyes you would not see the points of starlight forming the constellations instead you would see a very bright, colorful and wildly changing scene. In a desert valley near the Great Basin National Park Caltech is building the world’s largest radio telescope called the Deep Synoptic Array or DSA for short.

en

2:01

403E-444-Near Comets

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/08/25

Although no comet nucleus impact on the Earth has been conclusively identified, there is some evidence that suggests the 1908 Tunguska event in Russia, which knocked down trees over a 770 square mile area, could have been caused by a fragment of Comet Encke. However there is no doubt that the Earth's collision with dust and small debris left trailing from comets produces some of the meteor showers we enjoy so much.

en

2:01

913-Moon Impact

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/08/21

Bill Gray is an astronomer who specializes in tracking objects in space which come near the Earth. In addition to natural objects like asteroids and comets Bill also tracks rocket boosters and space junk that humans have discarded. On several occasions he has helped asteroid hunters to not waste time following a piece of space junk which initially appeared to be a threatening Earth approaching asteroid. Recently Bill used observations by very well equipped and talented amateur observers in Utah,

en

2:01

402E-443-Unsung Heroes

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/08/18

In 2017 observers in 50 countries at 440 different observatories made nearly 19 million observations of asteroids and comets which enable scientists to calculate where about 800,000 objects will be in the future.

en

2:01

912-Boston Bolide

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/08/14

Recently on a Saturday afternoon a loud double booming sound startled residents of Massachusetts and Rhode Island as a large bolide meteor exploded high above. This type of space rock is a message from nature which reveals the conditions which existed when the planets formed.

en

2:01

401E-442-Brian's Debut

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/08/11

During the only 3 clears hours of his first night solo as an asteroid hunter, my new Catalina Sky Survey teammate Brian Africano discovered two new Earth approaching asteroids with our Schmidt Telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona. Since one of Brian's discoveries is almost 300 feet in diameter, astronomers at 18 different observatories around the world stayed on it for more than 68 hours, after Brian posted his discovery observations, to determine a reasonable orbit for it.

en

2:01

911-Comet Brightness Explosion

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/08/07

Comet 220P/McNaught orbits the Sun once every 5.5 years on a path which is between Mars and Jupiter. At that extreme distance, more than 1.5 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun, it still receives a significant amount of solar radiation. In 2026 Comet 220P/McNaught had an outburst which caused it to brighten 600 times in about 13 hours and then to continue to brighten to about 8,000 times brighter than in was in its pre-outburst state.

en

2:01

400E-441-Carson's Pair

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/08/04

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls was observing, in the constellation Lynx, with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona , when within the space of only 35 minutes, he discovered two small space rocks well before they made very close approaches to Earth. 79 hours after Carson discovered the first, 2018 CB, this approximately 70 foot diameter space rock passed about 1/5 of the Moon's distance from us. Turns out that the second of Carson's duo, an approximately 50 foot diameter space

en

2:01

910-Mega Constellations

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/31

In an experiment that will involve all of the residents of planet Earth SpaceX has asked the FCC for permission to launch 1 million satellites into low Earth orbit to create a solar powered data center. Since the agriculture which produces our food is very sensitive to weather and climate it is important to conduct serious research about the effect of a mega constellation of satellites before allowing such a project to produce changes to the environment we don’t understand.

en

2:01

399E-440-Tracking Elon's Car

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/07/28

Elon Musk decided not to use a traditional mundane concrete block dummy payload for the first launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle to test his rockets lifting capabilities. After orbiting the Earth for 5 hours a third burn by the Falcon second stage placed a 2,750 pound payload consisting of a 2008 Tesla Roadster, Starman mannequin, Hot Wheels toy model roadster, electronic copy of Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, and plaque etched with the names of more than 6,000 Space X employees

en

1,270 results

Similar Podcasts

Beyond the Divide

Koala Moon

Planetterrian Daily

Patrick · Nerra Network

NSF’s Discovery Files Podcast

U.S. National Science Foundation

Curious City: Exploring Science and Wonders

Synthetic Universe

Science Busters Podcast

Martin Puntigam, Martin Moder, Florian...