Travelers In The Night

Hycean Worlds, with masses between Earth and Neptune which have thin hydrogen rich atmospheres above a liquid water ocean may be very common in our neighborhood of the Milky Way. They could be an abode of life.

If you woke up tomorrow with gamma ray eyes things would look very different. Geology would come to life as you peered into the Earth and became aware of the various minerals it contains. Gamma rays coming from stars, supernovae, pulsars, and black holes would create a fog extending over all of the sky.

Given the effects of climate change today who can predict what planet Earth will be like when C/2023 P1(Nishimura) comes back near our home planet in approximately 2455 AD.

Before you pack your bags for a trip to Mars you will want to check out the weather data that NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover has recorded over the past two Martian years.There is no getting around the fact that you will need a space suit and long woolies to survive on Mars.

In 2023 T. Maroti of the Capricornus Observatory, Csokako, Hungary discovered two Earth approaching asteroids which were passing through the night sky unnoticed by other observers. His equipment is an 11 inch telescope, electronic camera, and computer.

The more we learn about 322P/SOHO the stranger it becomes.

The Catalina Sky Survey and the Korean teams of asteroid hunters will discover and track Earth approaching objects making the residents of our home planet safer

Should humans hide from ET or should ET hide from us?

Bright fireball meteors sometimes rain pieces of themselves onto the ground for meteorite hunters to discover.

Collisions between planets, planetesimals, asteroids, and comets have produced the place where we live and breathe.Today scientists are replacing myths with solid evidence that violent impacts between planets, planetesimals, asteroids, and comets are very common in our galaxy. They play a vital role in the formation of solar systems which contain habitable planets.

The natural night sky is alive with its own lights. In addition to celestial sources often there is natural night sky airglow powered by space weather from above and/or tropospheric activity from below. It is not the Aurora Borealis. Amazing images show green airglow waves which are brighter than the Milky Way.The theory behind these beautiful images remains a mystery

The Moon is the Earth's long time dancing partner. This unequal pair revolve about a teeter totter type balance point which in turn orbits the Sun every 365 and a quarter days. A small asteroid has become a third partner in the Earth-Moon dance.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Josh Hogan was asteroid hunting in the constellation Sextans with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he discovered the largest asteroid in nearly a decade

A tough rocky asteroid makes close approaches to the Sun.

An object like 2023 MN5 impacts Earth once every 90,000 years or so creating a crater 5 miles in diameter an 1800 feet deep in sedimentary rock. 50 miles from the impact of such an object observers would feel the effects of a 7.1 Richter scale Earth. Rest assured that asteroid hunters will continue to track 2023 MN5 as it passes near Earth and Jupiter to make sure that its orbit does not change to make it a threat to humanity.

Students and teachers are doing real science by measuring the shadows cast by distant objects in our solar system.For years humans knew Pluto, the first Trans-Neptunian object to be discovered, only as a moving point of light in the night sky. It wasn't until 58 years after it's discovery that astronomers were able to observe a star as Pluto passed in front of it. These data gave an accurate diameter and also proved that Pluto has an atmosphere. There are estimated to be 100,000 Trans-Neptunian bodies larger than 60 miles or so in diameter. They have stories to tell about the beginning of the solar system. Additionally, sometimes, a passing star changes one of their orbits sending it into the inner solar system and perhaps near to us.

In less than two hours my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Allesandra Serrano discovered two small fast moving space rocks. Both of them passed through the Earth-Moon system unimpeded. Other space rocks are not so lucky.

The source of the Geminid Meteor shower each December is a strange little asteroid.

Carson Fuls, one of my Catalina Sky Survey teammates, is leading the effort that will allow you to join our NASA funded adventure in asteroid hunting and discovery. You will learn how to scan our nightly archival images to discover new small solar system worlds.Happy asteroid hunting.

Recently Dr. Michael Gillon of the University of Liege in Belgium and a team of astronomers hypothesized since that approximately 2/3 of the stars in our neighborhood are red dwarf stars some of them might host inhabitable planets. To test this idea the researchers began to carefully monitor some nearby red dwarfs with a robotic telescope in Chile to see if any of them the have regular dips in brightness which indicate the presence of planets orbiting them.This team of astronomers were delighted when a faint star in an infrared star catalogue showed regular dips in brightness indicating the presence of three planets. Followup observations by the European Southern Observatories' 8 meter telescope in Chile confirmed the presence of three Earth sized planets orbiting a star now known as TRAPPIST-1. This extremely faint red star is only slightly larger than the planet Jupiter and puts out 0.05% of the energy of our Sun. Two of its Earth sized planets orbit every 1.5 and 2.4 days receiving four and two times the r