Travelers In The Night

Images of the quiet Sun during a solar minimum make it look like a relatively static peaceful place. Occasionally during solar minimum, at the Cosmic Campground, in New Mexico, on a clear moonless night, you can easily see to walk around without a flashlight and with a DSLR camera photograph the sky which to the camera appears to be covered with orange and green cirrus clouds through which you can see the Milky Way.

India's Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM has made the 10 month journey from Earth to Mars. India joins the United States, Russia, and the European Space Agency in the exploration of the red planet by placing its Mangalyann [Mangle Yarn] spacecraft into orbit around Mars.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was observing in the constellation of Ursae Major with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted a rare fast moving point of light far north of the area in the sky which contains the planets and most of the asteroids.

Recently a semi-trailer trailer truck sized asteroid passed only 20,800 miles above the Earth's surface. It reached its closest distance to us about 6 days after it was discovered by team member, Richard Kowalski, of the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey. Fortunately it did not enter our atmosphere.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammates Kacper Wierzchos and Teddy Pruyne were asteroid hunting in the constellation of Virgo with our 60 inch telescope when they spotted a second natural Moon. Scientists predict there are hundreds smaller than softball sized and perhaps several dozen football to beachball sized, natural Earth mini moons, which have so far evaded detection. Stay tuned.

Imagine a world where people are never able to see the Milky Way or a meteor streaking like a falling star in the night sky. For most of the people living in the Earth's cities this has already happened. In the United States most people live in artificial light domes and in 10 years there will only a few places left at which to experience the natural wonders of the night sky.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Virgo when he spotted a fuzzy ball with a tail moving through the night sky. The small possibility that such frozen gas ball could come near Earth at a speed of more than 30 miles per second producing a bright naked eye comet gives us a sense of wonder as to what else could literally pop up out of nowhere .

Recently, Dr. Stephanie C. Werner of the University of Oslo in Norway and her colleagues have discovered the source of some of the Martian meteorites found on Earth. It is the 34 mile diameter Mojave Crater on Mars. The debris ejected from this impact event about 5 million years ago, orbited the Sun until one of the pieces fell to Earth and was discovered by humans in Antarctica.

Elizabeth William graduated from MIT in 1903 as one of the top students in physics and mathematics. As the head "human computer" at Lowell Observatory She used the motions of Uranus and Neptune to predict the location of Planet X. Elizabeth Williams died penniless at the age of 102 years. In 2020 a graduate student at Lowell Observatory, Catherine A. Clark, is finally giving Elizabeth Williams some of the recognition she deserves.

The NASA funded, University of Arizona, Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, AZ was used to discover two close approaching space rocks on the same night.Rest assured that the asteroid hunting community will keep track of these two new space rocks to make sure that neither of them become on a collision course with planet Earth as they pass other objects in space.

Asteroids which approach Earth from inside of our orbit about the Sun are often difficult to discover and may represent a unique threat to our home planet. My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered one of these stealthy asteroids with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow AZ as it streaked through the constellation of Libra at 13 miles/second. Fortunately it will not strike the Earth in the foreseeable future.

In the cold deserts of Antarctica nature collects meteorites as ice sheets carrying space rocks are pushed up against mountains. High speed winds remove the ice leaving dozens to hundreds of meteorites stranded in an area often as small as a football field.

The hunt is on for Earth like planets which are close enough for us to study in detail. The NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS for short, is observing nearby stars looking for planet revealing dips in brightness, which occurs when a planet passes between its star and our line of sight. Recently TESS discovered a planet, now named TOI 700 d , orbiting a red dwarf star in the constellation of Dorado about 100 light years away. What is it like?

Before artificial lighting many people knew the night sky the way humans of today know their favorite TV channels. There are still places where you can view the naturally appearing sky. There is a new accessible night sky viewing area in the Gila National Forest about 75 miles north and west of Silver City, New Mexico. It is called the Cosmic Campground. Check it out at cosmiccampground.org. It is one of the best places in the world to view the night sky in all of its beauty with the naked eye, a pair of binoculars or a telescope.

On his first night of solo observing with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos discovered 8 new Earth approaching objects. Theoretically Kacper's smallest discovery, a 20 foot diameter space rock, can pass close enough to Earth that it might enter our atmosphere producing a light show in the night sky and perhaps a few fragments for meteorite hunters to discover.

The history of our part of the Universe is written with a fine point in the space rocks which orbit our Sun. Some of them carry small grains of material from the cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system formed. They also carry clocks. Naturally occurring radio active potassium in space rocks decays into argon gas atoms which are trapped until the rock becomes molten. By measuring the potassium to argon ratio, Dr. Tim Swindle of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is able to determine the length of time since meteorites have solidified after an impact event.

SpaceX's new rockets fuel the dream of visiting some of the planet Mars' unique and spectacular wonders. Today you can visit the NASA Mars Curiosity Rover and/or the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter website and participate in the exploration of our next door neighbor. You could amaze yourself by discovering something new on one of the images of the surface of Mars. It happens.

About one out of a thousand meteorites that you find on Earth started out on the Moon. They were given escape velocity from the Moon as a result of the impact of an asteroid or comet. These lunar space rocks orbit the Sun or Earth and most of them eventually end on our planet.

Assuming the first potentially hazardous asteroid of 2020 has a chemical composition similar to the stony meteorites we find on Earth, it could contain about a million metric tons of metals like iron, nickel, platinum, gold, and other rare minerals and be worth 2.6 billion dollars on the terrestrial metals market.

From the dawn of recorded history, comets have been viewed as the bringers of everything from gloom and doom to water and life. In reality, comets are a sample of material which was present in the cloud of gas and dust which condensed to form our Sun and its planetary system. Until recently a comet's nucleus has remained a mystery enveloped in a veil of gas and dust.