Travelers In The Night

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Alex Gibbs discovered his 31st comet while asteroid hunting in Leo with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. It orbits the Sun once every 6 years on a path between Mars and Jupiter. Comet P/2023/Y1 (Gibbs) is one on the 600 plus known members of the Jupiter family of comets.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile have discovered a rocky Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to our Sun. The planet named Proxima b is about 1.3 times more massive than Earth, orbits it's dim red star every 11 days, and may always keep the same side towards it's sun. Attention grabbing is the fact that Proxima b is at the right distance from it's sun to allow for liquid water on it's surface.

Unlike other space missions which are conducted out in the open the asteroid mining company AstroForge’s first mission to a potentially valuable nearby rocky M type asteroid is being planned in secret so that some other company doesn’t have the chance to grab it before they do.

In 2015 the Earth was struck by at least 43 meteoroids which created bright fireballs. Their arrival does not seem to be correlated with the position of the Earth in it's orbit about the Sun.Overall a given piece of ground on Mars is several times more likely to be hit by a space rock than is a similar sized area on Earth.

So far asteroid hunters have discovered approximately half of the 5,000 PHAs which are likely to exist. Asteroid hunters will continue to search the sky to discover dangerous asteroids 50 years before impact so that humans can either deflect or pulverize them.

A faint shooting star or meteor streaking across the sky is produced when a tiny bit of rock or dust enters the Earth's atmosphere and burns up some 60 miles above us. NASA scientist Dr. Marc Fries and his collaborators have used Doppler Weather Radar to track twenty meteor's dark trails through the sky. In the past year or so they have used this technique to direct searchers on the ground to the probable location of freshly fallen meteorites.

Centaurs have long puzzled astronomers since they have traits in common with both asteroids and comets.

The history of our spot in the Universe is written in the composition of meteorites and other samples of materials we have obtained from space. Even the smallest speck has a story to tell.

In the past two decades astronomers have discovered that galaxies are not randomly distributed in space but rather occur along filaments of mass with huge empty voids between them. How objects and structures in the early Universe became nearby clusters of galaxies and third generation stars like our Sun is an evolving picture we are beginning to understand.

We don't know much about our Ethiopian ancestor Lucy who walked the Earth some 3 million years ago, however, it is likely that she made her way around at night but the light of the stars, air glow, and the Moon. In modern humans, the Rod receptors in our eyes become amazingly sensitive when they are not exposed to bright light for some 30 to 45 minutes. At this point things look black and white even though your eye's maximum sensitivity is close to the color of the green light given off by atmospheric night airglow.Your visit to a dark sky location like the Coismic Campground IDSS in New Mexico will allow you to experience the age old sense of wonder which happens when a human looks into deep space and thinks about what might be out there.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Aquarius with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when he discovered his 19th comet. Turns out Greg's new comet is a member of a family of comets orbiting the Sun like a string of cosmic pearls across the vast distances in our solar system.

Scientists have spotted icy plumes coming from below the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus but have yet to witness such events on Ceres. Even so there is significant evidence which points to the possibility of a liquid water ocean layer below Ceres icy crust which could provide an environment suitable for microorganisms.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was being filmed and interviewed by the NASA 360 crew at our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he discovered a scary space rock moving through the constellation of Aquarius at 13 mi/s.Rest assured that asteroid hunters will carefully keep track of 2023 VS3 to make sure that its orbit does not change to make it a threat in the distant future as it passes near to Earth, Mars, and other asteroids.

The warming that is happening is having a variety of consequences. In the American midwest and northeast extreme heat, heavy rain storms, and flooding will impact agriculture, forestry, infrastructure, and air as well as water quality. In the southwest increased heat, insect outbreaks, and declining water supplies will increase the possibility of wild fires and other threats. Costal regions regions are experiencing sea level rises and storm surges which effect ports, tourism, and the fishing industry. Alaska has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the country and has witnessed sea ice retreating, glaciers receding, and permafrost melting.

A research project whoes goal is to explore if it would be possible, on short notice, to pulverize a small asteroid so that it would not enter the Earth’s atmosphere as a single object perhaps saving humanity from an very expensive sonic boom.

This is the story of the big one that got away. It illustrates the problem that there are a number of possible orbits which may fit a short arc of an object in the night sky. There may be scores of kilometer sized objects out there but 2016 NA39 is not one of them.

Matching his wife’s discovery of two comets on the same observing run seven years previously my Catalina Sky Survey team caption Carson Fuls discovered two comets on consecutive nights. They have very different origins and ultimater fates.

Imagine a telescope old enough for Senior Citizen discounts, which has traveled between mountains, and started life with a metal mirror measuring one thing at time being equipped with a camera with 100 million pixels. This is the story of the "old girl", the 60 inch Catalina Sky Survey telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona.

The NASA Psyche Spacecraft will use a multispectral imager, gamma and neutron spectrometers, and other instruments to map, measure, and characterize an unknown weird world.

During a 6 night observing run with the 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered three new Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. They range in size from 600 to 1500 feet in diameter. Fortunately, none of them comes closer than about 14 times the Moon's distance from us.