Travelers In The Night

Even though humans have been aware of the planet Saturn from from the dawn of history this beautiful object still offers mysteries for us to explore.

Comets may have brought the life enabling element Carbon to our planet.

From the time 3 million years ago that our ancestor Lucy walked in what is now Ethiopia until the widespread use of electric lighting began in the 1880s the changing panorama and awe inspiring beauty of the natural night sky was available to most human beings.

The NASA NEOWISE satellite has discovered a family of dark, stealthy asteroids some of which make close approaches to planet Earth.

Fuzzy, spread out, asteroid images due to atmospheric and or equipment produced distortions can cause important objects to slip through an asteroid hunter's discovery images undetected. A careful monitoring of the temperature at a number of different locations in the observatory environment and using fans and other techniques to minimize temperature differences restores the power of a telescope so that it can detect possible asteroid threats to planet Earth.

An asteroid small enough to fit under a basketball hoop makes frequent approaches to Earth, our Moon, and Mars

There are likely to be hundreds smaller than softball sized and perhaps several dozen football to beachball sized, natural Earth mini moons, which are so small and fast moving that they are able to slip through asteroid hunters images without being detected.

An asteroid hunter wishes for a birthday comet but instead the Universe gave her an asteroid.

Exciting new research indicates that there could be a lake of liquid water beneath the south Martian polar cap. Further research will be required to determine if this briny pool could be the home of martian creatures.

A rare very large Earth approaching object is discovered in an unusual place in the sky.

It has been 20 years since the world woke up to the news that a half mile diameter asteroid, 1997 XF11, discovered by Space Watch on Kitt Peak, had a slight chance of impacting the Earth in 2028. The NASA and JPL's Center for Near Earth Object Studies or CNEOS (see-neos) for short maps space rocks orbits, predicts when they will come close to us, and reliably determines each one's chance of impacting Earth.

Humans must be very careful not to introduce any of Earth's organisms into the Martian environment.]

Imagine a spacecraft traveling at a speed that would take it from New York to Tokyo in less than a minute, a mere 4 million miles from the surface of our Sun, where it would be exposed to about 500 times the solar radiation we receive here on Earth. Not science fiction but science fact for the NASA Parker Solar Probe on one of its final laps around our star.

A small asteroid about the size of a U-Haul moving truck makes frequent visits to our part of the solar system.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 hand their work indicates that asteroids have been hauling water to our Moon and depositing it in places which are very handy for future human colonists. Specifically it appears probable that 2 to 4.5 % of lunar craters are likely to contain substantial amounts of water in the form of hydrated minerals. These asteroid impact craters are a convenient source of water and solar energy for lunar bases and are likely to be the home of human lunar colonists.