Travelers In The Night

In 2020 the asteroid hunting community discovered 2,946 Earth approaching space rocks orbiting our Sun. My team, the Catalina Sky Survey, led the pack with 1,542 to our credit. Fortunately we have yet to find an asteroid large enough to do damage that is on a collision course with our home planet.

Asteroid 2004 BL86 was discovered more than 10 years ago by the LINEAR program in New Mexico.Until recently, we knew asteroid 2004 BL86 only as a faint moving point of light in the night sky. Early in 2015 it came close to planet Earth. RADAR images obtained with the 230 foot wide NASA Deep Space Network show that it is about 1100 feet in diameter and has a small moon about 230 feet across.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was asteroid hunting with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted a moving point of light streaking at 6.9 mi/sec through the constellation of Canis Minor. Greg's discovery will not impact Earth in the foreseeable future, however, rest assured that asteroid hunters will continue to track it as it passes near Earth and Mars to make sure that 2020 XU6's path does not change to put it on a collision course with Earth.

On the first night an Earth approaching asteroid candidate is discovered, one is lucky to obtain observations for a few hours along its path in the sky. Since a typical near Earth asteroid takes from a few hundred days to several years to complete a trip around the Sun, it takes more than a few hours of data to be able to predict where it will go. Peter Birtwhistle of the Great Shefford Observatory in England is one of unsung heroes of the asteroid hunting community. On a recent observing run he helped to determine the orbits of several objects which I discovered with the NASA funded, Catalina Sky Survey, 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon. Without his efforts they would have likely been lost. These are only the most recent results of his work. Over the years, his data have helped to establish the orbits of more than 4000 Earth approaching objects

The National Science Foundation has announced that it will close and decommission the giant RADAR telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Whip lashing cables during an unpredictable catastrophic collapse of the entire structure make it life threatening for crews to try to shore up the support structure. We all will miss this scientific treasure.

I was observing with the NASA funded, Catalina Sky Survey, 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, when I found an interesting moving point of light in the night sky. It appeared to be on the path of an Earth approaching asteroid. I submitted my observations to the Minor Planet Center. Telescopes in Germany, New Mexico, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and England observed it. The Minor Planet Center used these data to calculate an orbit. This orbit revealed the asteroid to be large enough and close enough to classify it as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. It was given the name 2015 BY310. A few days later the Minor Planet Center connected the observations of the object that they had been calling 2015 BY310 with an asteroid 2000 BK19. It had been discovered 15 years previously by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research Program in New Mexico. These new data confirm that it is is an Earth approaching asteroid but that it is slightly smaller than is required to give it the potentially hazardous label.

On some nights an asteroid hunter searches for Earth approaching objects near the ecliptic plane where the planets and most of the asteroids are located. During these busy times the telescope takes images of many interesting moving objects. On other long lonely nights the search takes the telescope to the far north portion of the sky where it is rare to spot any moving objects traveling through fields of millions of unblinking stars. The reward is when you find a moving object it will be interesting.

Unlike Halley's [h AE - l ee ] comet which returns to our neighborhood once about every 76 years, Comet C2013 US10/Catalina will pass this way once never to return. In 2028 Kowalski's comet will pass Pluto's average distance from the Sun. After that it will continue to move away from the Sun, become an interstellar traveler in the night, and perhaps some day a countless number of human lifetimes from now become a comet in another solar system.

Although the orbit of an Aten asteroid crosses our path in space on its travel about the Sun it stays mostly inside the Earth's orbit making it difficult to discover. Since the Aten asteroid 2020 VZ5 is likely to eventually collide with Earth, Venus, or our Moon asteroid hunters will continue to observe it to make sure its path does not change and become a threat to our home planet.

Within a time span of one and a half hours, the two telescopes of the NASA funded, University of Arizona, Catalina Sky Survey, discovered three asteroids whose orbits are similar enough to grab one's attention. However, they different enough to keep us from jumping to the conclusion that they are part of an asteroid collision fragment family. There has been some speculation about the possibility of killer asteroid swarms which threaten the Earth. There is no evidence to support these ideas.

For millennia humans have gazed into the night sky and have dreamed of traveling to the stars. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that one of the objects astronomers discover passing through our solar system was created and is operated by an advanced technological life form in the Milky Way. Until then we can look into a natural night sky such as one can find at the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary in New Mexico and wonder what is out there.

Unfortunately, after spending many years of my life observing the sky at night I have not observed any alien spacecraft. I too have been waiting for Scotty to beam me up.

Currently scientists, governments, and private citizens are preparing to mitigate a disaster caused by a large incoming space rock. To test techniques for characterizing a newly discovered potentially threatening asteroid, scientists are planning to treat Apophis as an unknown object when it becomes detectable to Earth bound telescopes in 2020-2021.

Indisputable proof that life existed or currently exists on the planet Mars has yet to be found. However, tantalizing pieces to this mystery continue to be discovered. It appears that conditions on Mars, 3.8 billion years ago, were similar to those on Earth at the time when we know that life developed here. The mystery of life continues to pull us towards the red planet.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin searched for asteroids, as close to the Sun as possible with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. His efforts were rewarded when he discovered 2020 UP3, illuminated like a thin crescent moon, trying to sneak by asteroid hunters in the evening twilight. This was a tremendous find since 2020 UP3 is more than 1 Km in diameter and is thus large enough to create significant damage if it entered our atmosphere.

In the distant future, an asteroid, with the diameter of the height of the One Worldwide Plaza skyscraper building in New York City, will likely make a close approach to planet Earth. This asteroid, 2014 XL7 makes close approaches to Venus, Earth, and Mars. Each such encounter can cause its orbit to change. It has been classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid which means that the asteroid hunting community will be keeping special track of it.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne was observing in the constellation Lacerta with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted an unknown point of light streaking through the night sky. With only 5 days of data its path remains uncertain. Typically as asteroid hunters continue to track an object the chances it will strike the Earth decrease to essentially zero. Teddy's object is no threat now and will be monitored as it travels between Venus and Mars to make sure it continues to pose no danger to humanity.

I was observing with the Catalina Sky Survey, NASA funded, University of Arizona, 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon when a bright fast moving point of light caught my attention. It seemed much too bright not to be known, but when I checked with the Minor Planet Center, it was not in any of their catalogues. It was was subsequently observed by more than a dozen telescopes scattered around the world and given the name 2014 YE42. The asteroid hunting community will be keeping track of 2014 YE42,in the extremely unlikely event that its path is changed, to make it a threat, as it passes other objects in space.

In western Australia, rock samples and maps of the local geology obtained while exploring for gold show evidence of a 3 mile diameter meteor crater which features a small central pucker like protrusion.

In less than three and one half hours, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate, Rose Matheny, discovered three Potentially Hazardous Asteroids with the NASA funded, University of Arizona, Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow. As far as I know, this string of catches should go into the Asteroid Hunting Guinness book of records.