Travelers In The Night

To give you an idea of the celestial traffic in our neighborhood, on a recent clear night, using our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groller posted 20 new objects on the Minor Planet Center's Near Earth Object Confirmation Page. In the future five of these asteroids may become a valuable source of raw materials for Martian colonists.

In the fictional Star Trek series, Vulcan, Spock's home planet was imagined to orbit the A component of the triple star system 40 Eridani [Eri-dani ]. Recently astronomers using the Dharma Planet Survey 50 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona have discovered that there is indeed an actual planet, named HD26965 b, with mass of 8.5 times that of Earth orbiting the star 40 Eridani A once every 42.38 days.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered his third comet, Comet C/2018 R4 (Fuls). It is now on its way back into deep space. Given the climate change Earth is experiencing it is hard to predict the state of our planet and humanity when Comet Fuls returns in 7,500 AD.

Asteroid Hunters keep careful track of nearly 2,000 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids [PHAs] to make sure that they are no threat to humanity. The recent discovery of two new PHAs reminds us that there are many still out there to be discovered and followed.

A small space rock is spotted 4 days before it came very close to the Earth and our Moon.

What asteroid hunters fear is that a small space rock capable of injuring people and damaging buildings is heading our way and that we will not find it in time to give a warning for people in the impact area to seek cover.

The NASA Mars Opportunity Rover, nicked named Oppy by those who operate and love it ,was designed to last 90 days on the Martian surface but has continued to explore the surface of the red planet for 14 years.

Although small space rocks pose no threat to humans, they are an interesting part of our environment, offer a chance for asteroid hunters to develop their tracking skills, and occasionally provide an opportunity for a meteorite hunter to touch an object from outer space.

Asteroid hunters were able to discover a small Earth approaching asteroid after 57 nights of continuous rain and clouds.

The fireball meteor streaking across the sky the early evening of January 17, 2018, witnessed by 700 observers in 11 States and Canada was also recorded by infrasonic microphones and seismometers. Scientific studies of this event gives researchers the ability to assess the risks presented by the 2,000 large fireball meteor explosions which occur each year world wide and will allow scientists to detect any secret nuclear tests being conducted by rouge individuals or governments.

It might be possible to catch an asteroid, place it into Earth orbit, and thus provide a ready source of precious metals and water for space colonists to use.

In 2018, July and August were cloudy and rainy in both Arizona and Hawaii sidelining the worlds two most productive asteroid hunting surveys. A cost effective way to make the Earth's planetary defense system more weather proof is to put a network of asteroid hunting telescopes around the world to discover and track potentially dangerous nearby neighbors.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 it's final laps around our star.

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.