Travelers In The Night

Very small fast moving asteroids pass through our solar system.About once a month an object like 2023 KU4 enters our atmosphere, releases the energy of approximately 2.4 tons of TNT, explodes at an altitude of about 280,000 feet, creates a spectacular light show, produces a sonic boom that is barely audible, and rains pieces of itself on the ground for meteorite hunters to discover. Check out the fireball log on the American Meteor Society website for examples.

We will probably never know the details of the collision that put my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls' recent discovery, 2016 HD3, on its current path. What we do know is that Carson's new space rock is about 25 feet in diameter and in the next 100 years will make 53 close approaches to planet Earth and 12 to our sister planet Venus. In 2016 this small object passed to near both the Earth and our Moon. It's 322 day orbit around the Sun can someday bring it to about a quarter of the Moon's distance from where we live.

Very small fast moving asteroids pass through our solar system.About once a month an object like 2023 KU4 enters our atmosphere, releases the energy of approximately 2.4 tons of TNT, explodes at an altitude of about 280,000 feet, creates a spectacular light show, produces a sonic boom that is barely audible, and rains pieces of itself on the ground for meteorite hunters to discover. Check out the fireball log on the American Meteor Society website for examples.

Blinded by inappropriate outdoor night lighting, much of humanity is now unaware of the rich beauty of the Universe which surrounds them. To see sights which have inspired countless generations of lovers, poets, scientists, authors, artists, mathematicians, and dreamers people must travel out of their artificial light domes to one of the few remote locations which offer the opportunity to view the natural night sky.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Jacqueline Fazekas was asteroid hunting , in the evening twilight, with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when she discovered a very large object in an unusual orbit. Rest assured that astronomers will continue to track Jacqueline's discovery to make sure that its orbit does not change to make it a threat as it passes near Jupiter, Earth, and Venus.

Covered by a blanket of lunar soil to protect it from BB sized meteoroids arriving a gunshot speeds, a village is nestled in a large crater on our moon. The individual structures are connected together by tunnels. The site was chosen to access the water and metals which were brought to the site by asteroid impacts.

To the amazement of NASA scientists, when the NASA OSIRIS-Rex touched down on the surface of Bennu to obtain a sample, the sample collecting arm continued to sink into Bennu until rocket thrusters reversed its downward motion and allowing it to escape.

Jupiter protects us as well as directs some objects our way.Jupiter, the king of our solar system, has provided us with a place to stand and air to breathe.

Humans are slamming projectiles into space rocks. These experiments will give us the know how to deal with a dangerous space rock which has our number on it

The moon is being hit by objects in the present epoch.Fresh lunar craters tell us about objects which enter the Earth-Moon system.

Jupiter and Saturn helped to produce where we live.Our home planet was formed after a period of chaos in the solar systemToday our solar system is a pretty calm place. However, meteorites we find on Earth as well as the cratering we observe on our Moon, Mercury, Mars, and other bodies suggest that our solar system was born wild and stayed that way for a while. There is also the puzzling fact that our sparsely packed inner solar system is very different from the densely packed, close in, planetary systems which have formed about nearby stars.

In 1972 Apollo 16 astronauts took an ultraviolet image of the Earth from the Moon which shows that like the Sun ,the Earth too, has a faint corona of gas surrounding it. Scientists are just beginning to explore how Earth's glow relates to our weather and climate.

Traveling an additional billion miles beyond Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft is now sending back data on 2014 MU69, a strange snow man shaped object which orbits the Sun once every 298 years. The New Horizons is spacecraft is likely to continue its lonely odyssey until the end of time.

Rocky metallic asteroid can stand the heat.A block and a half sized asteroid makes visits to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.

In our Milky Way Galaxy alone there are probably 25 billion planets located within the habitable zone of its star where there could be air to breathe and liquid water on its surface. The search is on for advanced civilizations .

What happens when an asteroid is heading in our direction.A close approaching asteroid was observed as it passed between the Earth and our Moon.

Without followup data, many if not most of the Earth approaching objects would be lost as they move away from us leaving us with no idea when they might return to near Earth space or perhaps even strike our home planet.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammates have discovered an asteroid which could be a potential mining target. Mining asteroids may be a much cheaper way to get the raw materials that space colonists need when compared to the cost of lugging supplies up from the surface of our planet. Using the abundant solar energy in space, water ice from asteroids can be turned into hydrogen and oxygen which is ideal rocket fuel. The metals which many asteroids contain can be turned into the items space explorers need.

A small telescope makes a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the celestial visitors to our neighborhood

By drilling into a crater rim, researchers hope to discover how the Earth and it's life forms recovered from an asteroid impact.