Travelers In The Night

Statistically, asteroid hunters are thought to have discovered 90% of our potentially dangerous celestial neighbors greater than 1 KM in diameter. Thus my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was surprised to discover an unknown very large asteroid moving through the constellation of Persus.

In spite of the shape of the Earth's shadow on the Moon, sailing ships disappearing below the horizon, satellite photographs, orbiting objects, and a mountain of other information about the size and shape of the Earth there are still people who belong a flat Earth Society and even have websites. The number of believers has diminished from 3,500 twenty years ago to less than a few hundred today. Not to worry the Flat Earth Society is being replaced by the Climate Change Deniers.

Comet C/2018 M1 (Catalina) is eternal in the sense that it will likely wander the vast space between the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy until the end of time.

From the dawn of history, humans have longed to wander amongst the stars. Now we know that comets are able to make such a voyage giving us paths to follow.NASA scientists have suggested that the first interstellar robotic spacecraft could be propelled by a solar sail as large as the state of Texas. Such a mission, perhaps two or three hundred years into the future could follow a comet's path. In this flight of fantasy the spaceship would be inclosed in a reflective spherical heat shield, placed into a Sun grazing orbit, and flung by the Sun's gravity onto a path which will cause it to be ejected from the solar system. After getting to a safe distance from the Sun the robotic spacecraft would deploy its solar sail and use light pressure to accelerate towards its destination. It could be further helped along using a powerful laser projected from the far side of the Moon. In a few decades or maybe even a few centuries it would arrive in a nearby solar system. After that it would be on its own to try to make sens

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard knew he had bagged his third comet when he spotted an unknown fuzzy object with a broad tail moving through the constellation of Pisces. Eventually when it looses its volatile materials Comet Leonard will become one of the countless millions of main belt asteroids circling our Sun.

Thirty six hours before my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rik Hill discovered it, a space rock about size of a Toyota Prius passed about 14,000 miles above the Earth's surface. When Rik first spotted it this small asteroid was about a million miles from us and was moving away from the Earth at 12.6 miles per second. Its orbit had been changed by a narrow escape from the Earth's gravity and it was on a new path around the Sun This small space rock was subsequently observed by telescopes in Russia and Arizona. The Minor Planet Center used these observations to calculate an orbit and give it the name 2015 SK7.2015 SK7 survived it's 2015 encounter with planet Earth. It may not be so lucky the next time.

A 2000 foot diameter space rock has stories to tell about violent events long ago. Asteroid hunters are eager to track this huge collision fragment and look for members of its family as it passes near Earth in 2026.

When the NASA WISE spacecraft ran out of frozen hydrogen, its detectors warmed up, and it was no longer able to conduct its primary mission. It was placed in a hibernation mode and left to orbit the Earth in silence. A couple of years ago NASA engineers figured out that the spacecraft, even with warm detectors, could find some interesting asteroids and decided to wake it up. The WISE spacecraft in turn has produced data on more than15,000 solar system objects including more than 350 Earth approaching asteroids and 60 comets.

A 100 foot diameter asteroid is spotted on one of its regular trips between the orbits of Venus and Earth. Its ultimate fate is to collide with one of these planets producing a spectacular light show.

Two quite different Earth approaching asteroids were discovered in a clear hole in the sky between storms.

A strange asteroid plays hide and seek with frustrated astronomers.

For a week or so after its discovery by the 3.5 meter Space Surveillance Telescope, 2015 PU228 was thought to be the asteroid most likely to collide with Earth in this century. Calculations based on limited data indicated that this asteroid had a one in 23,000 chance of colliding with our planet in January of 2081. As the length of 2015 PU228's observed path in the sky grew its chances of a collision with Earth decreased. More than a month's observations has made us sure that it will completely miss planet the Earth in 2081.

A small space rock with a diameter less than the height of an NBA basketball player had just crossed the orbit of our Moon on a collision course with Earth when it was spotted streaking through the constellation of Scorpius by my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski. 8 hours and 37 minutes after Richard's discovery observations, the space rock now known as 2018 LA was seen by security cameras to explode over Botswana in southern Africa just as NASA's scout system predicted.

Gennadii Borisov has done it again. In a stretch of less than six weeks this talented observer and telescope maker discovered two interesting Earth approaching objects. In this age of big science it is gratifying to see that an individual with relatively modest equipment can make scientific discoveries. In this case Borisov beat my team the Catalina Sky Survey and the Pan-STARRS group in Hawaii with our large telescopes and powerful computer systems to the discovery of a significant object. 

The life of an asteroid hunter on Mars will be interesting and exciting. The double planet, our Earth and Moon, in the Martian night sky will be an unforgettable sight and well worth the trip.

There is a mind blowing potential for life in the Universe.  Humanity's ignorance of any life forms beyond Earth has prompted the Breakthrough Prize Foundation at the Royal Society in London to create a program to award 100 million dollars in grants to fund projects to search for signals from intelligent life. 

After being lost for ten years, the asteroid 2010 WC9 was re-discovered about a week before it came very close to Earth.

You can spot Ganymede orbiting the planet Jupiter with any backyard telescope. It is the largest of the four bright moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610.  In your telescope Ganymede will be the third farthest moon from Jupiter.  This tiny point of light is really a small world composed of ice, water, and rock.

The recent discovery of an asteroid, whose orbit lies completely within that of the Earth, reminds asteroid hunters to continue to search near the Sun so that a large dangerous object does not sneak up undetected on the residents of planet Earth.

Hunting asteroids by poking around in clear holes between cloud layers can be very tiresome, however, sometimes it has its rewards.  A break in the monsoon weather pattern over southern Arizona allowed my Catalina Sky Survey Teammate, Richard Kowalski, to discover four new Earth approaching objects during the part of a night it was clear.