Travelers In The Night

A large asteroid approached Earth from the direction of the Sun with little advanced warning.

Most of the humans on planet Earth have never witnessed that the natural night sky is not dark; but rather it is alive with it's own lights. See for yourself by visiting a natural night sky location near you.

On December 25, 2017, while searching for Earth approaching asteroids in the constellation of Virgo, the Universe gave my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard a Christmas present in the form of a comet which now bears his name.

The lonely asteroids which travel high above and far below most of the other members of our solar system may be made out of very strong materials and could be of particular interest to asteroid miners.

Asteroid Hunter, Alex Gibbs, discovered a comet on one of it's rare visits to our neighborhood.

The largest Earth approaching space rock, found by the Catalina Sky Survey in 2017, is 3,250 feet in diameter. One like it strikes the Earth every 500,000 years or so with devastating consequences

Asteroid hunters have discovered a 4 foot 6 inch diameter, baby space rock, about 478,000 miles away in the constellation of Pisces traveling in our direction at 4.5 miles per second.

In 2017, my team, the Catalina Sky Survey discovered 17 space rocks that can come closer than the communication satellites to the surface of planet Earth. Fortunately none of them will strike the Earth anytime soon.

Some very tough asteroids regularly pass closer to the Sun than the planet Mercury and may contain valuable materials such as phosphorus, antimony, silver, gold, and copper.

An object visits our solar system from the beautiful Pleiades star cluster.

In 2017 my team the Catalina Sky Survey led the world in the discovery of Earth approaching objects by identifying 987 of them as they whizzed by us.

The mysterious Earth approaching object Phaethon does not fit neatly into our definition of either an asteroid or a comet.During it's close approach to Earth in December of 2017 the Arecibo Observatory, having just recovered from hurricane Maria, used the unique combination of it's giant 1,000 foot diameter dish and RADAR transmitting capability to ping Phaethon to obtain images with the RADAR signals it reflected back to us.

Recent scientific studies have begun to shed light on the interesting mystery of how the small number of what we now call electrophonic meteors produce simultaneous light and sound. If you are lucky you could hear a meteor's dying whispers and could even be the first person to record these sounds on your cell phone.

Rose discovers 8 new interesting asteroids in a single night using the Catalina Sky Survey's Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona.

Greg's comet comes into our neighborhood once per human lifetime and spends most of it's time in the lonely space high above or far below the rest of the members of our solar system.

Long Winter nights with good seeing, from start to finish, are those on which the asteroid hunter makes new discoveries while being treated to views of millions of stars, gas clouds, and galaxies which inspire a child like sense of wonder.

The hypothesis that Oumuamua, the interstellar space rock, is an alien probe is pretty farfetched, however, how it came to have it's current shape is almost equally hard to imagine.

A large asteroid barely missies being classified by NASA as potentially hazardous. It may be a good candidate for asteroid miners.

Aten asteroids can make close approaches to Earth. They are difficult to discover because they spend most of their time inside our orbit with their illuminated side facing away from us.

Intriguing features which change with the Martian seasons mimic flows of liquid water on the Earth's surface.