The 365 Days Of Astronomy, The Daily Podcast Of The International Year Of Astronomy 2009

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org From July, 2024. Today's 2 topics: - During a recent 60 day period asteroid hunters observed 23 asteroids which came closer to us than our Moon. Six of them passed closer to the Earth’s surface than 22,236 miles which is the distance to our communication satellites.   - It is hard to obtain time on the 8m Gemini South Observatory telescope on Cerro Pachon in Chile and the Large Binocular Telescope with its twin 8m mirrors on Mt. Graham, Arizona since they are among the largest telescopes in the world. My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos wrote a scientifically competitive proposal to obtain the time to track the potentially hazardous asteroid 2016 PR38 on both of these telescopes when it was near its furthest point from our Sun and thus much too faint for the telescopes asteroid hunters routinely