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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

370E-403-Double Comet

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/01/06

In November of 2006, University of Arizona's Spacewatch astronomers on Kitt Peak discovered a faint moving point of light in the night sky which appeared to be a garden variety main belt asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. The Minor Planet Center calculated it's orbit and gave it the name 2006 VW139. Five years later when it again moved closest to the Sun the Pan-STARRS group in Hawaii discovered that 2006 VW139 is surrounded by a gas cloud like a comet and it was given a comet

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2:01

882-David’s Goliath PHA

Travelers In The Night ·

2026/01/02

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was asteroid hunting in the evening twilight with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon Arizona when he spotted an unknown object in the constellation of Lyra. The largest telescopes on Earth will likely track David's discovery until it becomes too faint to observe in 2027 and catch it again when it again becomes bright enough to track in 2050. Fortunately it is extremely unlikely that it will strike Earth when it again comes close to our home planet in

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2:01

369E-401-Night Vision

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/30

Many people in our modern world rarely if ever experience night vision. To achieve this interesting state of sensory awareness you cannot look at your cell phone or any other source of bright light for 30 to 45 minutes. Your night vision comes about over time because the rod sensors in the retina of your eye undergo a chemical change when they are placed in total darkness. The process starts immediately but takes 20 to 30 minutes to get 80% of maximum sensitivity. The night vision process can be

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2:01

881-Dangerous Comets

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/26

It is possible the object creating the Tunguska event in Russia 1908 which knocked down 80 million trees over an area about twice the size of New York City was a fragment of a comet or asteroid. The International Asteroid Warning Network 2025 campaign to track Comet 3L/Atlas prepares the worlds observatories for the eventual time when a comet fragment has our number on it.

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2:01

368E-400-Roving Venus

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/23

Venus and Earth are similar in size, composition, density, and mass. Unfortunately, our sister planet Venus is an example of a place where green house gases have created an extreme situation. Venus's thick carbon dioxide atmosphere has a surface pressure 90 times that of Earth. It would crush a submarine. Additionally, the thick atmospheric blanket holds in the heat causing Venus's surface temperature to be 864 F, hot enough to melt lead.

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2:01

880-Carrington Anticipated

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/19

Just before noon on September 1st of 1859 Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson were making sketches of clusters of sunspots when they were nearly blinded by an intense solar flare. 17.6 hours later a geomagnetic storm thought to be caused by a solar coronal mass ejection traveling at some 1,500 miles per second slammed into the magnetic field surrounding our home planet. We missed being hit with a such large coronal mass ejection by only 9 days in July of 2012. Next time we might not be that

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2:01

367E-399-Moons of Florence

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/16

Dr Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory headed up a team of scientists who used the 70 meter antenna at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex to bounce RADAR beams off of the asteroid Florence as it made a close approach to Earth in September of 2017. The RADAR images these researchers obtained reveal that Florence consists of a 2.8 mile diameter primary asteroid which is orbited by two small moons. Florence's two satellites appear to be between three hundred and a thousand

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2:01

879-Lurking Asteroid

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/12

The Dark Energy Camera on the National Science Foundation’s Blanco 4-meter telescope on Cerro Tololo in Chile is taking near Sun twilight images to search for asteroids, hidden in the glare of our Sun, sneaking up on home planet.

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2:01

366E-398-Mars Rocks

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/09

At about 2AM on July 18, 2011 several people in near Tata, Morocco saw a bright fireball which was described by one of them to be initially yellow, then turned green, and finally exploded into several pieces producing two sonic booms. In October of 2011 desert wandering nomads began finding very fresh looking dark fusion-crusted stones which were radioactively dated by Dr. John Duke of the University of Alberta to be less than 5 years old. In total 15-24 lbs of meteorites consistent with a very

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2:01

878-Comet Fragment

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/05

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Vivian Carvajal was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Eridanus with the 90 inch, University of Arizona’s Bok telescope on Kitt Peak when she was treated to an amazing sight. Comet COMET 240P/NEAT with a small version of itself cruising along beside it.It is virtually impossible to predict if Vivian’s fragment 240P-B will survive to make another approach to the Sun in 2033 or so.

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2:01

365E-397-Spotting Meteors

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/12/02

Meteors, shooting stars, or falling stars are different names for the streaks of light in the night sky which are in reality the dying embers of tiny asteroids. These small interplanetary travelers were speeding along at between 7 and 44 miles per second when they entered the Earth's atmosphere. In space, they are called meteoroids and typically ranged in size from that of a grain of sand to perhaps ones as big as of a piece of driveway gravel. Large space pebbles can produce fireballs which are

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2:01

877-Close Grazer

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/11/28

On a busy night of asteroid hunting with the 90 inch, University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory Bok telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Vivian Carvajal discovered 13 new Earth approaching objects. One of them now known as 2025 TF immediately got her attention as it streaked through the constellation of Pegasus. Another space rock 2020 VT4 came about 30 miles closer to the surface of our home planet giving 2025 TF second place as a grazing non impactor.

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2:01

364E-396-Jupiter

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/11/25

Jupiter has been observed throughout human history and is so bright that you can even spot it under the artificial light dome of one of our cities. Even so it is less than 40 years ago that we were first able to view Jupiter in detail as the Voyagers streaked by it. Jupiter contains more than twice the mass of all of the other planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets in our solar system combined. Eons ago, our solar systems very own giant planet, Jupiter, appears to have cleared out the inner

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2:01

876-Neighborhood Traffic - 9:28:25, 6.28 PM

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/11/21

In a recent 60 day period asteroid hunters tracked 24 space rocks which came closer than our Moon. My team the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey operates 5 telescopes in the mountains around Tucson, Arizona. Our goal is to find objects like 2025 RM1 which are on an impact trajectory with our home planet in advance so that people in the effected area can be warned to stay away from doors and windows.

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2:01

363E-395-House Sized Space Rocks

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/11/18

Throughout history small close approaching space rocks have been a part of our environment. Now, thanks to improved telescopes and cameras, asteroid hunters are routinely discovering these small asteroids as they pass closer than the Moon is to us. Since these tiny asteroids are only bright enough to detect for a few days out of their long, many month duration paths about the Sun, astronomers have had difficulty in determining how many of these small space rocks may exist in near Earth space. This

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2:01

875-Newly Discovered Crater - 9:28:25, 6.13 PM

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/11/14

Dr Uisdean Nicholson from Heriot-Watt University and his team of 9 co-authors analyze 3D seismic imaging and drill cuttings from a 1980s oil well to make a convincing case that the Silverpit crater was produced by a the impact of a 1.5 football field diameter asteroid approximately 45 million years ago.

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2:01

362E-394-Tiny Beasts

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/11/11

Humans have a long history of partnerships with a variety of micro organisms. Although the proportions vary widely with individuals, recent scientific estimates suggest that a typical human being has approximately the same number of bacteria and other microbes as they do actual human cells. Now it appears that a partnership with yeast and algae will enable spacefaring humans to use their waste products to produce food and plastics during long duration space flights. Dr. Mark Blenner of Clemson

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2:01

874-Good night at Bok

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/11/07

On a recent clear night my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groller was asteroid hunting with the Steward Observatory 90 inch Bok telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona when he discovered 8 natural visitors to our neighborhood. Telescopes around the world began to track and determine the natures these asteroids. Six of Hannes’s discoveries are classified as Near Earth Objects while the other two are more distant Mars crossing asteroids

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2:01

361E-393-Newest Moon

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/11/04

The moon cycle from new moon through full moon and back to new moon again was used by many nations to regulate their activities and forms the basis of the Islamic lunar calendar. A calendar based on the first visibility of the lunar crescent is difficult to predict in advance since this observation depends on the clarity of the atmosphere and other local conditions. The interesting observational problem of when it is possible to spot the new moon has been analyzed in the scientific literature as an

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2:01

873-Tracking 3I/Atlas

Travelers In The Night ·

2025/10/31

Scientists are using many approaches to understanding the nature and history of 3I/Atlas the third known interstellar traveler in the night. At a hyperbolic velocity of 130,000 mph it is the fastest interstellar visitor ever measured.

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1,193 results

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