Martian Trojan asteroids have stable orbits around the Sun, leading and trailing the red planet by 60 degrees, where the Sun's and Mars's gravity are balanced. The impact more than 4 billion years or so ago which blasted loose the Trojan asteroids and gave them the 3mi/s required to escape the red planet gives us an insight into the level of violence which occurred before our solar system came into it's present relatively calm state.
Recently my NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered an approaching asteroid about the same size as the one whose high altitude disintegration injured nearly 1500 people in Chelyabinsk Russia in February of 2013. Fortunately this new one missed planet Earth. There is more good news. Carson spotted this small space rock about 40 hours before its closest approach to planet Earth. This means that if it had been on a collision path with our home planet we would have had time t...
Recently there were four fireball meteors, brighter than the planet Venus, which exploded over Germany, France, Ohio, and Arizona within the space of only 10 hours. There are likely to be on the order of 1,000 fireball events over the Earth every day.
How would you like to know more about a particular star than anyone else on Earth?
On Earth, human life is enabled by plants which provide us with calories, vitamins, fuel, medicines, and oxygen to breathe. In addition, recent scientific studies indicate that plant cultivation reduces anxiety and depression and has a positive influence on diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and longevity. It is likely that when humans travel to Mars they will continue this practice. The plants that Mars explorers take with them will provide a source of fresh fruits and vegetables , fresh air to ...
An asteroid hunter literally has to sort through millions of objects to find an unknown Earth approaching asteroid.
The largest asteroid to come near the Earth in 100 years has two moons.
In the space of less than ten nights, my Catalina Sky Survey teammates discovered 8 new Earth approaching objects. One of them can pass closer to us than our communication satellites.
Finding a meteorite that has traveled billions of miles through space to reach it's present location is exciting. It might even be worth real money.
For some people the full Moon is for howling. For asteroid hunters it is time to regroup and make improvements in the process of finding Earth approaching objects.
Experience the wonders of the Universe first hand using your night vision.
Soon it will be possible to study changes in the Universe which have occurred over the past 100 years. Photo: By Harvard College Observatory - Harvard College Observatory, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5280391
China has built and is operating the world's largest Radio telescope.
The most likely alien invaders are viruses or other bits of living materials that humans have exported from or imported to Earth's biosphere. Currently there are international efforts, like the outer space treaty and the Committee on Space Research, to keep the human exploration of space from spreading Earth's life forms to other places or to contaminate our own biosphere with extraterrestrial organisms if they exist.
My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard discovered, 2016 WJ1, a relatively large asteroid which can come close but will not hit the Earth. Once in every million years or so an asteroid impact by an object of this size could cause global climate change disrupting human agriculture and plunge our society into a real crisis.
n the space of a couple of days the Catalina Sky Survey found 3 potentially dangerous asteroids.
Large asteroids which impact the Earth can cause global change.
Jupiter has been observed throughout human history and is so bright that you can even spot it under the artificial light dome of one of our cities. Even so it is less than 40 years ago that we were first able to view Jupiter in detail as the Voyagers streaked by it. Jupiter contains more than twice the mass of all of the other planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets in our solar system combined.
Asteroids are moving points of light in the night sky, which shine by reflected Sun light. The asteroid hunting community determines a new object's orbit around the Sun by continuing to measure its changing position in the sky. The next time you hear someone state the size of an asteroid it is a safe bet that it based on Dr. Landolt's Standard Star measurements.
During a recent 30 day period asteroid hunters spotted 88 small space rocks passing through our neighborhood. Their diameters ranged from the length of a Uhaul Van to one that would occupy the majority of a city block. None of them pose a threat to Earth in the foreseeable Future.
About a month before my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rik Hill spotted it, a 5 football field diameter asteroid had been almost as near to the Sun as the planet Venus. His discovery images showed it about to cross the Earth's orbit at a speed of 21 miles per second coming towards us. Additional observations by telescopes in Illinois, New Mexico, and Arizona showed that its 7.6 year path around the Sun will take it out to well past the planet Jupiter. This object's orbit is highly elliptical and i...
Until recently smoky nights at the observatory were rare. Now they have become more common place as wild fires continue to devastate portions of the western United States. The consequences of expanded fire prone areas goes far beyond missing a few nights data at the telescope. Potentially millions of people will be at increased risk of respiratory aliments. Further the burn scars left behind will adversely affect the quality and quantity of the precious water these high altitude areas provide to...
If you woke up tomorrow morning with radio eyes your surroundings would look very different. Invisible to us, are the radio waves occupying a vast region of other wavelengths.These invisible radio waves are produced by a number of very interesting physical processes in the Universe. In fact how things look would depend on the part of the radio spectrum that you could see.
A break in the weather provides the opportunity to discover an Earth approaching object.
Francesco Manca of the Sormano Astronomical Observatory is doing some of the important work of keeping track of the asteroids which can make close approaches to our Earth, our Moon, and other objects in space. He has compiled the fact that the asteroid hunting community has found more than 2000 small asteroids, of less than several football fields in diameter, which can make close approaches to us. Nearly 700 have orbits which allow them to come closer to the Earth than our Moon. So far more tha...
Relatively recent volcanic activity observed on Mars suggests that where subsurface martian magma and frozen water meet is where microbial life could flourish in the current era.
Evidence from comets and meteorites has brought many scientists to believe that the basic building blocks of life were brought to Earth by small bodies which impacted our home planet early in its history. When and where did the substances, including water and organic materials required for life as we know it, appear in our solar system?
As a result of human caused increases in green house gases the troposphere is expanding and the stratosphere is shrinking. Between 1980 and 2018 the stratosphere has become a quarter of a mile thinner and is projected to contract in total by nearly a mile by 2080 if the present human increases in green house gases continues. Find out why buckle up for safety has more than one meaning in the era of climate change we are moving into.
Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate, Rose Matheny discovered a tiny asteroid that passed 115,000 miles from Earth and 104,000 miles from our Moon. Rose's discovery demonstrates the fact that the asteroid hunting community is beginning to have the ability to discover small space rocks before they make their closest approach to Earth.
