In 1972 Apollo 16 astronauts took an ultraviolet image of the Earth from the Moon which shows that like the Sun ,the Earth too, has a faint corona of gas surrounding it. Scientists are just beginning to explore how Earth's glow relates to our weather and climate.
Jupiter and Saturn helped to produce where we live. Our home planet was formed after a period of chaos in the solar system Today our solar system is a pretty calm place. However, meteorites we find on Earth as well as the cratering we observe on our Moon, Mercury, Mars, and other bodies suggest that our solar system was born wild and stayed that way for a while. There is also the puzzling fact that our sparsely packed inner solar system is very different from the densely packed, close in, planet...
Traveling an additional billion miles beyond Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft is now sending back data on 2014 MU69, a strange snow man shaped object which orbits the Sun once every 298 years. The New Horizons is spacecraft is likely to continue its lonely odyssey until the end of time.
Rocky metallic asteroid can stand the heat. A block and a half sized asteroid makes visits to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.
In our Milky Way Galaxy alone there are probably 25 billion planets located within the habitable zone of its star where there could be air to breathe and liquid water on its surface. The search is on for advanced civilizations .
What happens when an asteroid is heading in our direction. A close approaching asteroid was observed as it passed between the Earth and our Moon.
Without followup data, many if not most of the Earth approaching objects would be lost as they move away from us leaving us with no idea when they might return to near Earth space or perhaps even strike our home planet.
My Catalina Sky Survey teammates have discovered an asteroid which could be a potential mining target. Mining asteroids may be a much cheaper way to get the raw materials that space colonists need when compared to the cost of lugging supplies up from the surface of our planet. Using the abundant solar energy in space, water ice from asteroids can be turned into hydrogen and oxygen which is ideal rocket fuel. The metals which many asteroids contain can be turned into the items space explorers nee...
A small telescope makes a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the celestial visitors to our neighborhood
By drilling into a crater rim, researchers hope to discover how the Earth and it's life forms recovered from an asteroid impact.
On a recent training night with Teddy Pruyne at the controls of our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, this duo discovered six new Earth Approaching Objects, an inner main belt asteroid, and rediscovered an inner main belt asteroid which had been lost.
You are less likely to be injured by a space rock than you might think Recently in response to a question from a reader of the "Asteroid Day" blog, my Catalina Sky Survey team captain Eric Christensen, wrote a blog piece entitled "Is It Just Me, Or Are Asteroids More Dangerous They Used To Be?".
On a cold windy night, with clouds frustrating his search, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Alex Gibbs discovered 8 new celestial visitors while observing with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona
A careful study of the Earth's motion in space is a key to understanding past climate change and enables us to predict future patterns of flooding and drought.Wobbles tell all.
A large fireball meteor which exploded over Cuba produced a number of interesting results.
Recently a relatively dim object, Comet P/2016 BA14 flew past Earth at about 9 times the distance to our Moon from us. It was the third closest comet approach in recorded history. This situation allowed NASA scientists to use the Goldstone Solar System Radar located in California to obtain detailed RADAR images. These revealed the nucleus of P/2016 BA14 to be about 3000 feet in diameter. It slowly spins once very 35 to 40 hours as it travels on its 5.26 year orbital path around the Sun. Observat...
My Catalina Sky Survey Teammate Brian Africano discovered his 4th comet while asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona. Observers with small telescopes equipped with electronic cameras are able to track Brian's 4th comet as it comes to near the orbit of Mars before it retreats into the cold dark region of our solar system not to return until 3000 AD.
A gentle method of causing an asteroid to miss planet Earth. Will spray paint save the world? Recently, NASA scientists using the giant RADAR telescope in Puerto Rico measured changes in the orbit of the asteroid Bennu. They found that a tiny sunlight pressure of 1/2 oz on this 68 million ton object has changed it's orbit about a hundred miles over a 12 year period of time. These NASA astronomers thus measured the Yarkovsky force which was first suggested by a Russian engineer more than a hundre...
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART for short will test methods to make a dangerous asteroid miss Earth
A pair of possibly related comets pass unusually close to Earth. It is hard to have a personal feel for the microgravity of a comet since it is only a few ten thousandths of the pull of gravity we experience on Earth. When a comet comes near Jupiter or perhaps the Earth the tiny gravity which holds it together can be overwhelmed by gravity of the larger object and the comet's structure disrupted. Astronomers have observed comets breaking up into smaller pieces as they orbit the Sun. In a spectac...
My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groller was asteroid hunting with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when he discovered his first comet. After the Sun bakes out all of the frozen gasses, Hannes's Comet, will lose its coma and tail and become indistinguishable from one of the millions of main belt asteroids orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
What motivates asteroid hunters? Large dangerous asteroids are still out there to find.
A tiny space rock passes through the cloud of communications satellites surrounding the Earth.
We may be able to learn about the possibilities of life on Mars by studying land forms on the Tibetan Plateau here on Earth.
I was asteroid hunting with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Steve Larson sent me an email requesting that I obtain some images of the asteroid 6478 Gault. Several days earlier, using mountain top telescopes in the Hawaiian islands , astronomers working with the ATLAS project reported that the perviously normally appearing asteroid 6478 Gault now has a 250,000 mile long straight tail. I added together four 60 second images which revealed a point o...
The Catalina Sky Survey now operates three telescopes, 24 nights per month, in the Catalina mountains north of Tucson, Arizona. The Catalina Sky Survey began with the University of Arizona's 30 inch Schmidt Telescope on Mt. Bigelow. This telescope became the world leader when it was used to discover 148 Earth approaching objects in 2005. It found the most Potentially Hazardous Asteroids for the next three years running. In 2006 the University of Arizona's 60 inch telescope on nearby Mt. Lemmon r...
The extremely remote chance that a dangerous mountain sized space rock has our number on it is what keeps my team going to our four telescopes in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Arizona.
The asteroid named for Mildred Shapley Matthews was lost in the solar system for 75 years. In 1916 the 60 inch Hale telescope on Mt. Wilson, California was the largest telescope in the world. Seth Nicholson and Harlow Shapley used it to discover a 2 mile diameter asteroid. They only observed their new asteroid twice on their discovery night. Shapley named the asteroid Mildred for his one year old daughter. Nicholson and Shapley were able to find asteroid Mildred a couple of times during the mont...
For the first time in history, an asteroid hunting team, the Catalina Sky Survey, has discovered more than 1,000 Earth approaching asteroids in a single year. They are an interesting part of our environment.
Pound for pound Saturn's moon Enceladus is the brightest object in our solar system. It is so shiny that it reflects most of the sunlight that strikes it. Since Enceladus absorbs little sunlight it's surface is 330 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Below its icy exterior the story is very different. It appears that Enceladus has an ocean of liquid water. What Next?
