Afleveringen
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A pair of comets visiting our neighborhood are discovered in a matter of 4 days.
One of the perks of being an asteroid hunter is having a comet named for you. To do this you must be the first to discover it as a moving point of light in the night sky and at the same time recognize that it is a comet by observing the coma and tail which are names for the clouds of gas and dust that surrounds it. After being on the lookout for a comet for sometime, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rose Matheny discovered two of them within a 4 day period of time. Both of them C/2016 T1 (Matheny) and C/2016 T2 (Matheny) are likely to be first time visitors to the inner solar system. These two comets have quite different paths which are both inclined at large angles to the paths of the planets about the Sun. In addition, both of them are traveling at very close to the escape velocity from our solar system and have uncertain orbital periods around the Sun which are likely to be thousands of times the age of the Universe. -
Life on Earth appears to have formed in our oceans. Scientists are thus on the hunt for other worlds which have oceans of liquid water and thus potentially could be the home of fellow living creatures.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Using a small telescope or a set of binoculars you can see Europa for yourself as a small moving point of light circling the giant planet Jupiter. More than 400 years after Galileo Galilei discovered this seemingly small dead world the Hubble Space Telescope spotted geysers erupting from its south polar regions. Recently, over a 15 month period, the Hubble was able to observe 10 transits of Europa across the face of Jupiter. On three such occasions plumes were seen to be erupting from this small moon.
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It is essential that asteroid hunters keep track of potentially dangerous asteroids to make sure that their orbits haven’t changed as they encounter other objects in space to make them a threat to our home planet.
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The Rosetta Spacecraft left planet Earth in 2004. During its twelve year lifetime this robotic emissary traveled 5 billion miles on 6 trips around the Sun, flew by Earth three times, visited Mars, and cruised by two asteroids. Rosetta needed to take such a long path to use the gravity of Earth and Mars to accelerate it to a speed which would allow it to rendezvous with a comet. Upon arrival, Rosetta successfully spent two years studying the comet at close range and sent a probe to it's surface. It's life ended when its human masters put it on a collision course with Comet 67P's nucleus.
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On the 3rd of March 2024 while asteroid hunting with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon , Arizona my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos discovered a comet moving through the constellation of Draco.Since we don’t know Kacper’s comet’s chemical composition it is impossible to accurately predict how. bright it will be as it crosses the Earth’s orbit December 12, 2025, rounds the sun January 20, 2026, and crosses our orbit again February 27, 2026.
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Inappropriate night time outside lighting causes accidents and does not deter crime. However, it blinds you from the beauty of the Universe which surrounds you.
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Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks comes near the Sun once every 71 years. It was discovered in 1812 by Jean Louis Pons at Marseilles, France and then rediscovered by American Astronomer William Robert Brooks in 1883. Electronic cameras reveal this comet's nucleus has jets of gas that produce a spiral structure not unlike water jets from a lawn sprinkler.
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Seasons are created by the fact that the Earth's axis of rotation is currently tilted 23 1/2 degrees relative to our path around the Sun. The slight out of roundness of the Earth's orbit combined with a 41,000 year cycle in its 3 degree axis of rotation wobble can cause the Earth's climate to change on very long time scales. Turns out that these astronomical cycles are likely to be the drivers of where you are from and where you live.
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Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Vivian Carjaval was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Minor with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow when she discovered, 2024 BR4, a two football field diameter Earth approaching asteroid.Vivian’s Apollo asteroid discovery poses no threat to humans since 2024 is as close as it will come to Earth in the next few hundred years.
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During 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 one whose air blast shock wave injured nearly 1500 people when it exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 .
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Perhaps 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.
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Recently 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.
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P/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.
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More 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 falling to Earth. We know these meteorites are from the Moon because they contain mixtures of atoms which are found on the Moon but not in Earthly rocks.
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It 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
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Comets 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.
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My 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.
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Anyone 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 were proved to be Earth approaching objects, 32 are other asteroids which don't come near enough our home planet to be interesting, and the rest need more data to figure out what they are.
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My 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.
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