A small space rock with a diameter less than the height of an NBA basketball player had just crossed the orbit of our Moon on a collision course with Earth when it was spotted streaking through the constellation of Scorpius by my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski. 8 hours and 37 minutes after Richard's discovery observations, the space rock now known as 2018 LA was seen by security cameras to explode over Botswana in southern Africa just as NASA's scout system predicted.
Apr 22, 2022•2 min
Gennadii Borisov has done it again. In a stretch of less than six weeks this talented observer and telescope maker discovered two interesting Earth approaching objects. In this age of big science it is gratifying to see that an individual with relatively modest equipment can make scientific discoveries. In this case Borisov beat my team the Catalina Sky Survey and the Pan-STARRS group in Hawaii with our large telescopes and powerful computer systems to the discovery of a significant object.
Apr 19, 2022•2 min
The life of an asteroid hunter on Mars will be interesting and exciting. The double planet, our Earth and Moon, in the Martian night sky will be an unforgettable sight and well worth the trip.
Apr 15, 2022•2 min
There is a mind blowing potential for life in the Universe. Humanity's ignorance of any life forms beyond Earth has prompted the Breakthrough Prize Foundation at the Royal Society in London to create a program to award 100 million dollars in grants to fund projects to search for signals from intelligent life.
Apr 12, 2022•2 min
After being lost for ten years, the asteroid 2010 WC9 was re-discovered about a week before it came very close to Earth.
Apr 08, 2022•2 min
You can spot Ganymede orbiting the planet Jupiter with any backyard telescope. It is the largest of the four bright moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. In your telescope Ganymede will be the third farthest moon from Jupiter. This tiny point of light is really a small world composed of ice, water, and rock.
Apr 04, 2022•2 min
The recent discovery of an asteroid, whose orbit lies completely within that of the Earth, reminds asteroid hunters to continue to search near the Sun so that a large dangerous object does not sneak up undetected on the residents of planet Earth.
Apr 01, 2022•2 min
Hunting asteroids by poking around in clear holes between cloud layers can be very tiresome, however, sometimes it has its rewards. A break in the monsoon weather pattern over southern Arizona allowed my Catalina Sky Survey Teammate, Richard Kowalski, to discover four new Earth approaching objects during the part of a night it was clear.
Mar 29, 2022•2 min
An asteroid is exiled to the outer regions of the solar system during Jupiter's rampaging tack away from the Sun long ago. During that process enough material was left in Jupiter's wake to form Venus, Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt as we know them today.
Mar 25, 2022•2 min
The number of possible places in a galaxy for life as we know it to develop depends on the number of stars which have planets, the presence of necessary elements such as iron, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, and the freedom from nearby supernova which could sterilize an otherwise habitable planet. The good news, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in New Mexico has reported the discovery more than 150,000 galaxies which are rich with the three life enabling properties. The bad news is we will get monolog...
Mar 22, 2022•2 min
Modern technology provides us with stunning views of objects in the Universe in wavelengths invisible to our eyes, however, nothing is as moving and thought provoking as looking into deep space with your very own eyes.
Mar 18, 2022•2 min
A number of blogs and postings on the web have been spreading the false rumor that there is an asteroid which is about to strike the Earth producing catastrophic damage. There are also recurrent false rumors that the government or governments are hiding the fact that a catastrophe is about to occur. Neither of these has a shred of evidence to back them up.
Mar 15, 2022•2 min
To find planets close to home NASA has launched TESS the Transiting Exoplanet Satellite which will monitor more than 200,000 nearby, stars over the entire sky to detect the tiny dips in light caused when a planet passes in front of it's star. The TESS era will be a most exciting time as humans discover and are able determine the properties of relatively nearby habitatable worlds and dream about what might be living in our neighborhood of the Milky Way.
Mar 11, 2022•2 min
Recently the 3.5 meter Space Surveillance Telescope located at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico found an an asteroid which has been named 2015 PU228. It is currently the asteroid which is most likely to collide with planet Earth in this century. Don't worry, its closest approach to our home planet will not be untill January 15, 2081. If there is an ideal close approaching asteroid, 2015 PU228 is it. Humans have discovered this object long before it comes near to our home giving plenty...
Mar 08, 2022•2 min
n the early evening of January 17, 2018 six hundred and seventy four observers in 11 States and Canada reported a fireball meteor streaking across the sky to the American Meteor Society. To find freshly fallen meteorites visit the American Meteor Society's website but do not hunt for meteorites on private land without permission.
Mar 04, 2022•2 min
If Earth had a mountain about four times higher than Mt. Everest this hypothetical mountain's summit would have the thin atmosphere, UV radiation from the Sun, and the temperature extremes approaching the hostile environment to be found on the planet Mars.
Mar 01, 2022•2 min
So far asteroid hunters have discovered about 8,000 of the 25,000, large, potentially hazardous asteroids, suspected to exist, leaving 17,000 more to be found. For this reason, NASA has designed and proposed the NEOCam spacecraft to give us the ability to find them before they find us.
Feb 25, 2022•2 min
The relentless pull of the Earth's gravity on the Moon causes it to always point the same side towards us. The Moon's slight wobble has allowed us to catch glimpses of a small sliver of the Moon's far side. In 1968 the first humans to see the far side with their own eyes were the astronauts of Apollo 8. Perhaps someday humans will put a base on the far side of the Moon where powerful telescopes would be unaffected by light and electronic noise from Earth.
Feb 22, 2022•2 min
If you set your mind to it, you can find and hold a sample of an asteroid, called a meteorite, which has landed on the Earth's surface. On the other hand, watching major meteor showers will allow you to see but not touch comet dust as it enters and burns up in the Earth's atmosphere.
Feb 18, 2022•2 min
Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski found a faint moving point of light in the night sky. After his discovery observations were posted on the Minor Planet Center's website it was observed by 10 other telescopes around the world and given the name 2013 US10. It has taken additional observations to reveal that Kowalski's object is not an asteroid but rather a comet which came closest to the Sun on November 15, 2015. After that its speed will be so great that it will leave our solar syste...
Feb 15, 2022•2 min
When Asteroid Hunters find a relatively large asteroid on a collision course with planet Earth, the challenge is to change its path to make it miss our home planet.
Feb 11, 2022•2 min
"I do not know how I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself, in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." "Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things" These are only two of the quotes attributed to Sir Isaac Newton.
Feb 08, 2022•2 min
Greg's comet comes into our neighborhood once per human lifetime and spends most of it's time in the lonely space high above or far below the rest of the members of our solar system.
Feb 04, 2022•2 min
Imagine a monster telescope that can collect 37 million times more light than can enter your eye. A huge telescope with this capability, planned by the European scientific community, will sit atop a 10,000 foot high mountain in the high dry desert of northern Chile.
Feb 01, 2022•2 min
Fireballs are meteors which become brighter than the planet Venus and can sometimes be seen in the daytime. If you are lucky to see a fireball send in your report to the American Meteor Society and become a citizen scientist.
Jan 28, 2022•2 min
For 16 years, since its discovery at Lowell Observatory, humans knew 1999 JD6 only as a strange, spinning, moving point of light in the night sky. It orbits the Sun once every 303 days on a path that brings it relatively close to Mercury, Venus, and Earth. In the far distant future this small world is likely to collide with one of these planets, or the Sun, or be ejected completely from the solar system. A RADAR movie made with a radio telescope reveals 1999 JD6 to be two asteroids in contact wi...
Jan 25, 2022•2 min
To give you an idea of the asteroid traffic in our neighborhood, on a mostly cloudy night, through holes in the clouds, in a space of less than 2 hours, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski posted 7 new close approaching asteroid discoveries on the Minor Planet Center's Near Earth Object Confirmation Page.
Jan 21, 2022•2 min
Our everyday world is in the thin web of life that surrounds our planet. We see living organisms made possible by solar energy, water, air, and nutrients from the Earth. Maybe all living creatures are not in an environment similar to ours. When looking for life in other places in the Universe we can take some clues from living systems in extreme environments on our own planet.
Jan 18, 2022•2 min
Tonight, even though the chances are extremely slim, an asteroid hunter could find a sizable asteroid on a collision course with planet Earth. If we have decades warning, the potential impactor's arrival time could be changed by impacting the dangerous object with a high velocity mass or if we have less time we will need to nuke it which will either blow it to bits or give it a rocket like push.
Jan 14, 2022•2 min
Currently the majority of the Earth Approaching objects are found by my team, the Catalina Sky Survey or the Pan STARRs group in Hawaii. Both employ large telescopes, very expensive electronic cameras, and high powered computer systems. However, an expert observer with a small 12 inch telescope and an electronic detector can still make interesting discoveries.
Jan 11, 2022•2 min
