Travelers In The Night
1,072 episodes - English - Latest episode: 1 day ago - ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsA real "Science Snack" for anyone who is interested in the extraterrestrial.
Dr. Al Grauer is a member of the Catalina Sky Survey which has led the world in near Earth asteroid discoveries for 17 of the past 19 years.
The music is "Eternity" by John Lyell.
Astronomy Asteroids Space NASA Comets Earth Impact Aliens
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Episodes
281E-295-Close Passes
April 23, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesDuring a recent 3 night observing run my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rose Matheny discovered 4 asteroids which can come to less than one half the Moon's distance from us. Interestingly one of them passed about 25,000 miles over the South Pole 2 days after Rose discovered it. Rose's four close approaching asteroids are small ranging in size from 15 to 60 feet in diameter. None of them are big enough to reach the Earth's surface and make a crater. However, the largest is about the size of the ...
793 Close Space Rock
April 19, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBPerhaps the most dangerous Amor asteroid is 2006 HZ51 .It was discovered by my team the Catalina Sky Survey. Fortunately the closest 2006 HZ51 will come to our home planet is June 11 of 2116 when it will pass us harmlessly 26 times the distance to our moon away from us.
280E-294-Dangerous Duo
April 16, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesRecently in the space of 28 hours my Catalina Sky Survey teammates Rose Matheny and Carson Fuls discovered two Potentially Hazardous Asteroids to add to the list of the more than 1700 which asteroid hunters have discovered. Fortunately, none of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids are currently on a collision course with planet Earth.
792-Closest Approaching Comet
April 12, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBP/1999 J6 (SOHO) was discovered 10 May 1995 by Mike Oates as part of the Citizen Science Sun Grazer Project in which volunteers from all over the world have the chance to discover a comet in images taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or SOHO for short.RADAR studies of the daytime Arietid ( AIR-ee-uh-tids) meteor shower stream which peaks every June 7 indicates that P/1999 J6 (SOHO) could be one of the potential parent objects.
279E-293-From Luna
April 09, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesMore than 240 Lunar meteorites have been found in the Dhofar region of Oman, on the LaPaz Icefield of Antartica, and other locations on the Earth's surface. These space traveling rocks were blasted from the Moon's surface by the impact of asteroids and comets which accelerated them to speeds greater than the lunar escape velocity of 1.5 miles per second. Subsequently these interplanetary travelers in the night orbited the Sun for an extended period of time before entering our atmosphere and f...
791-A Fireball and It’s Gifts
April 05, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBIt all started when Krisztián Sárneczky at the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest, Hungary reported the position and brightness of an unknown asteroid rapidly moving through the constellation of Lynx. Three hours later , the object, now called 2024 BX1 exploded harmlessly in our atmosphere
278E-292-Disintegrating Comet
April 02, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesComets are made up of organic materials and ices of various substance which are left over from the formation of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago. When the gravity of a nearby star or other object changes one of these dirty snowball's orbit, its path can bring it into the inner solar system and thus near enough for the Sun to affect it and for us to study what is going on.
790-Vivian's Debut
March 29, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBMy new Catalina Sky Survey Teammate Vivian Carjaval was scheduled for three 13h long winter nights for her first solo observing run on our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona. As luck would have it she couldn’t observe the first night because of high winds and blowing snow, while on the second night she was treated to lots of clouds under a bright moon, however, on the third night the Universe treated her to a clear night and sent two unknown Earth Approaching asteroids her way.
277E-291-Rose Rules
March 26, 2024 16:01 - 2 minutesAnyone who thinks women can't do computers and science needs to meet my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rose Matheny. On a recent 3 night observing run at the 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Rose took over the world of asteroid hunting when she posted 82 new potentially Earth approaching objects on the Minor Planet Center's NEO Confirmation Page. For the next several days telescopes around the world obtained additional data on Rose's discoveries. When the dust settled 29 of Rose's discoveries w...
789-Asteroid With A Tail
March 22, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBMy Catalina Sky Survey teammate Josh Hogan was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Taurus with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he came across a very curious object. It has an orbit like an ordinary main belt asteroid. However, amazingly it has a tail extending some 19,000 miles out from a few mile diameter central object.
276E-290-Screaming Aten
March 19, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesI knew from the short regularly space streaks on the four images I had just obtained with the Catalina Sky Survey's 60 inch on Mount Lemmon, Arizona, I was looking at the path of an Earth approaching object. Turns out, this previously unknown object, is an unusual Aten astrtoid in that its orbit is inclined 38 degrees to the path of the Earth around the Sun. It's high relative speed is caused by the fact that our paths intersect at a large angle making it similar to two vehicles coming toget...
788-!00 Years of Wilderness
March 15, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBIn 1924 the Aldo Leopold Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico became the first designated wilderness and is an island from which to view the natural night sky. Today, because of inappropriate night lighting, the vast majority of children will never see the Milky Way, a meteor streaking across the sky, or have the opportunity to walk around at night by the light of the stars.
275E-289-Strange Comet
March 12, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesC/2016 Q4 (Kowalski) is my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski's 14th comet discovery. It orbits the Sun once every 68 years on a cold path between Saturn and Neptune.
787-Far Out
March 08, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBIn 2024, Voyager I is 163 times further from the Sun than we are and is the most distant, human made, traveler in the night.
274E-288-Coming Out Of Monsoon
March 05, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesIn the southwest, the life giving monsoon rains occur in July and August, divide the observing year into two halves, and give asteroid hunters a chance to do major equipment maintenance and upgrades. My Catalina Sky Survey teammates Richard Kowalski and Rose Matheny started the new observing season after the monsoon weather began to taper off using our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon and 30 inch Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow respectively. Richard and Rose were given a three night clear bre...
786-Comet 31
March 01, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBMy Catalina Sky Survey teammate Alex Gibbs discovered his 31st comet while asteroid hunting in Leo with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. It orbits the Sun once every 6 years on a path between Mars and Jupiter. Comet P/2023/Y1 (Gibbs) is one on the 600 plus known members of the Jupiter family of comets.
273E-286-Neighboring World
February 27, 2024 07:00 - 2 minutesAstronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile have discovered a rocky Earth like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to our Sun. The planet named Proxima b is about 1.3 times more massive than Earth, orbits it's dim red star every 11 days, and may always keep the same side towards it's sun. Attention grabbing is the fact that Proxima b is at the right distance from it's sun to allow for liquid water on it's surface.
785-Secret Asteroid Mission
February 23, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBUnlike other space missions which are conducted out in the open the asteroid mining company AstroForge’s first mission to a potentially valuable nearby rocky M type asteroid is being planned in secret so that some other company doesn’t have the chance to grab it before they do.
272E-285-Mars Impactors
February 20, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesIn 2015 the Earth was struck by at least 43 meteoroids which created bright fireballs. Their arrival does not seem to be correlated with the position of the Earth in it's orbit about the Sun.Overall a given piece of ground on Mars is several times more likely to be hit by a space rock than is a similar sized area on Earth.
784-Josh's Two PHAs
February 16, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBSo far asteroid hunters have discovered approximately half of the 5,000 PHAs which are likely to exist. Asteroid hunters will continue to search the sky to discover dangerous asteroids 50 years before impact so that humans can either deflect or pulverize them.
271E-284-Dark Trails
February 13, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesA faint shooting star or meteor streaking across the sky is produced when a tiny bit of rock or dust enters the Earth's atmosphere and burns up some 60 miles above us. NASA scientist Dr. Marc Fries and his collaborators have used Doppler Weather Radar to track twenty meteor's dark trails through the sky. In the past year or so they have used this technique to direct searchers on the ground to the probable location of freshly fallen meteorites.
783--Kacper's Centaur
February 09, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBCentaurs have long puzzled astronomers since they have traits in common with both asteroids and comets.
270E-283-Micro-Astronomy
February 06, 2024 19:10 - 2 minutesThe history of our spot in the Universe is written in the composition of meteorites and other samples of materials we have obtained from space. Even the smallest speck has a story to tell.
782-Probing The Cosmic Web
February 02, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBIn the past two decades astronomers have discovered that galaxies are not randomly distributed in space but rather occur along filaments of mass with huge empty voids between them. How objects and structures in the early Universe became nearby clusters of galaxies and third generation stars like our Sun is an evolving picture we are beginning to understand.
269E-281-Starlight Walking
January 30, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesWe don't know much about our Ethiopian ancestor Lucy who walked the Earth some 3 million years ago, however, it is likely that she made her way around at night but the light of the stars, air glow, and the Moon. In modern humans, the Rod receptors in our eyes become amazingly sensitive when they are not exposed to bright light for some 30 to 45 minutes. At this point things look black and white even though your eye's maximum sensitivity is close to the color of the green light given off by at...
781-Comet C.2023 V5 (Leonard)
January 26, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBMy Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Aquarius with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when he discovered his 19th comet. Turns out Greg's new comet is a member of a family of comets orbiting the Sun like a string of cosmic pearls across the vast distances in our solar system.
268E-280-Ice Volcanos
January 23, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesScientists have spotted icy plumes coming from below the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus but have yet to witness such events on Ceres. Even so there is significant evidence which points to the possibility of a liquid water ocean layer below Ceres icy crust which could provide an environment suitable for microorganisms.
780-Scary Space Rock
January 19, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBMy Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was being filmed and interviewed by the NASA 360 crew at our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he discovered a scary space rock moving through the constellation of Aquarius at 13 mi/s.Rest assured that asteroid hunters will carefully keep track of 2023 VS3 to make sure that its orbit does not change to make it a threat in the distant future as it passes near to Earth, Mars, and other asteroids.
267E-279-Hottest
January 16, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesThe warming that is happening is having a variety of consequences. In the American midwest and northeast extreme heat, heavy rain storms, and flooding will impact agriculture, forestry, infrastructure, and air as well as water quality. In the southwest increased heat, insect outbreaks, and declining water supplies will increase the possibility of wild fires and other threats. Costal regions regions are experiencing sea level rises and storm surges which effect ports, tourism, and the fishing ...
779-What If An Asteroid is About To Impact Earth?
January 12, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBA research project whoes goal is to explore if it would be possible, on short notice, to pulverize a small asteroid so that it would not enter the Earth’s atmosphere as a single object perhaps saving humanity from an very expensive sonic boom.
266E-278-Nope
January 09, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesThis is the story of the big one that got away. It illustrates the problem that there are a number of possible orbits which may fit a short arc of an object in the night sky. There may be scores of kilometer sized objects out there but 2016 NA39 is not one of them.
778-Two Comets
January 05, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBMatching his wife’s discovery of two comets on the same observing run seven years previously my Catalina Sky Survey team caption Carson Fuls discovered two comets on consecutive nights. They have very different origins and ultimater fates.
265E-277-Old Girl
January 02, 2024 16:00 - 2 minutesImagine a telescope old enough for Senior Citizen discounts, which has traveled between mountains, and started life with a metal mirror measuring one thing at time being equipped with a camera with 100 million pixels. This is the story of the "old girl", the 60 inch Catalina Sky Survey telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona.
777-Psyche Bound
December 29, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBThe NASA Psyche Spacecraft will use a multispectral imager, gamma and neutron spectrometers, and other instruments to map, measure, and characterize an unknown weird world.
264E-276-Big 3
December 26, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutesDuring a 6 night observing run with the 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered three new Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. They range in size from 600 to 1500 feet in diameter. Fortunately, none of them comes closer than about 14 times the Moon's distance from us.
776-Naming Asteroids and Comets
December 22, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBHistorically explorers in many fields of human endeavor have been granted the privilege to name their discovery. If you find a new comet and it receives enough followup observations it will carry your last name. Every year a significant number of comets and asteroids are discovered by amateur astronomers with modest equipment.Their reward is satisfaction and the right to name their discovery.
263E-275-No Place Like Home
December 19, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutesRobotic spacecraft from Earth have been traveling around the solar system for decades. What they have found is that there may be a few places on which the toughest terrestrial life forms could exist but nowhere that you could survive without a space suit. A striking by product of these missions are the photographs of our home planet that these robots have sent back to Earth.
775-3 Close Approaches
December 15, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBDuring a six hour period three small space rocks passed through the Earth-Moon system. At discovery 2023 TO4 was in Pegasus, 2023 TD7 was in Aries , and 2023 TQ3 was in Eradanus.If 2023 TD7 had been an impactor David’s early discovery would have given some of us a chance to view a spectacular event as well as to provide a place for meteorite hunters to look for fragments. For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer. Stay Tuned.
262E-274-New Horizons Continues
December 12, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutesThe NASA New Horizons spacecraft obtained intriguing images and data during it's trip through the Pluto system which will keep planetary scientists busy for years to come. Now the New Horizons has it's sights set on an object, a billion miles past Pluto, which is called 2014 MU69. It is too faint for all but the most powerful telescopes which is why the Hubble Space Telescope was systematically used to discover it.
774-Loss and Gain
December 08, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBThe Catalina Sky Survey searchs the sky as rapidly as possible in search of Earth approaching objects that could pose a threat to our home planet. The Vera Rubin Observatory will obtain 200,000 images per year to discover things that move or change brightness down to a very faint magnitude.
261E-273-Hunt for Planet9
December 05, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutesEvidence continues to mount that there is an unseen body, Planet 9, orbiting far from our Sun. Ideas of where to look for it are being guided by it's gravitational influence on objects in the distant region of our solar system called the Kuiper Belt.
773- Discovery and Recovery
December 01, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBNew observations linked with discovery observations 10 years earlier provide a significant improvement in the precision of our knowledge of 2013 TG6’s orbital elements and thus its position on the sky well into the future.It is important for asteroid hunters to keep track of small asteroids like this one to make sure sure that their path doesn’t change to make them a threat as they pass other objects in space.
260E-272-Big Eye
November 28, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutesOn a mountain top in the foothills of the Andes in northern Chile a new kind telescope, the LSST, is under construction. It's unique design allows it to image an area of the sky 40 times the size of the full moon and thus record the entire sky twice a week. In 30 seconds the LSST can spot objects 10 million times fainter than we can see with our eyes. It will discover objects which change in brightness and position to enable astronomers to study dark energy, weird stars, Earth approaching obj...
772-M31-Our Neighbor's Surprise
November 28, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBMarcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner, and Yann Sainty’s image of our neighboring galaxy, M31, in Andromeda won the 10,000 British pound Astronomer Photographer of the year award for 2023. Amazingly their image revealed a huge, previously unknown arc of hot doubly ionized Oxygen gas.
259E-271-Race to Mars
November 25, 2023 04:00 - 2 minutesThe red planet may soon need air traffic control. In the next few years China, Europe, India, Japan, United Arab Emirates, United States, and SpaceX are all operating Martian spacecraft or planning to send robotic explorers to Mars.
771-Nice PHA
November 17, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBNASA classifies 2023 SZ1 as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid since it is larger than 140m in diameter and on its current path can come to about 6 times the Moon’s distance from us.Fortunately on its current path 2023 SZ1 will not come any closer than 42 times the Moon’s distance from us until after 2171.
258E-258E-270-Space Opals
November 14, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutesOpal, the national gemstone of Australia, is silica, the most common ingredient of sand, with a number of water molecules attached to it. On Earth Opal forms when water evaporates from a slurry of sand and water which is deposited repeatedly in a crack or fissure in a rock over a long period of time. The resulting opal may contain from 3 to 21% water by weight. Professor Hilary Downes of Birkbeck College London headed up a team which discovered Opal in a meteorite which was found in Antartica...
770-Hycean Worlds
November 10, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBHycean Worlds, with masses between Earth and Neptune which have thin hydrogen rich atmospheres above a liquid water ocean may be very common in our neighborhood of the Milky Way. They could be an abode of life.
257E-269-Gamma Ray Eyes
November 07, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutesIf you woke up tomorrow with gamma ray eyes things would look very different. Geology would come to life as you peered into the Earth and became aware of the various minerals it contains. Gamma rays coming from stars, supernovae, pulsars, and black holes would create a fog extending over all of the sky.
769-Green Comet
November 03, 2023 16:00 - 2 minutes - 3.68 MBGiven the effects of climate change today who can predict what planet Earth will be like when C/2023 P1(Nishimura) comes back near our home planet in approximately 2455 AD.