Travelers In The Night

Comets Travel Between Stars. An interstellar traveler visits our neighborhood on its tour of the Milky Way. Comet Lemmon will continue on a hyperbolic path into deep space. In 2043 it will be further than the average distance that Pluto is from our Sun. Eons from now comet C/2018 U1 (Lemmon) may enter another solar system and be tracked by intelligent beings as it continues its tour of the Milky Way.

Asteroids are part of our environment.An SUV sized space rock has spent eons traveling through the silent vacuum of space. In the past 50 years, without humans being aware of its existence, it has made 29 close approaches to planet Earth and 11 visits to the vicinity our sister planet Venus. In the relatively near future asteroid hunters will be able to find more dspace rocks like this one before they impact Earth and thus be able to issue a warning for a space rock which is about to explode over a populated area.

The discovery of a Jupiter family comet whose fate is to become a garden variety main belt asteroid.

Aten asteroids pose a threat as well as an economic opportunity for humans.

On Halloween night while observing with the Catalina Sky Survey's 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona I discovered 21 space rocks streaking through the night sky. The most interesting one could be the destination of asteroid miners.

Every year asteroid hunters discover about a hundred objects which are larger than 450 feet in diameter and come closer than 20 times the Moon's distance from us. We call these potentially hazardous asteroids. In 2015 my group the Catalina Sky Survey discovered 21 of them. It was thus exciting news to our team, when, recently, our newest team member Greg Leonard discovered three of them in rapid succession.

As asteroid hunters equipment and skills continue to improve we will be able to find and track some of these tiny impactors and perhaps be able to suggest where to find pieces of one of them on the ground.

In 2013 my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Steve Larson discovered a space rock streaking through the night sky. For the next 3 days this object was observed by telescopes in California, England, Chile, and New Mexico and given the name 2013 TX68. About 10 days after being discovered, this small asteroid became invisible to human telescopes as it moved towards the Sun with increasing amounts of its dark side facing towards us. Hopefully asteroid hunters will come across 2013 TX68 during its 2016 encounter with Earth. The data obtained will allow us to predict when and how close it will approach our to home planet in future years.

Space is not all that far away. If a powerful solar eruption in 2012 had happened a week earlier, the blast of radiation would have caused wide spread power blackouts disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket as well as the water and sewer systems which rely on electric pumps.

On consecutive nights my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski discovered two very close approaching asteroids. One of Richard's discoveries, 2016 BY14 must be made out of pretty tough stuff since when it was closest to the Sun it received more than twice the solar energy which heats the surface of Mercury to 800 F. Asteroid hunter's continue to need to track 2016 BY14 to make sure that its orbit does not change to make it a threat as it passes near the paths of Mercury, Venus, Earth, our Moon, Mars, and Jupiter.

In a dance of unequal partners the Earth and Moon orbit a common center of gravity which itself travels about the Sun. Leading and trailing the moon's twisted path by 60 degrees, are the L4 and L5 Lagrange points, where gravitational forces create a bowl in space time in which an object will remain until it is disturbed.The discovery of two large ghostly neighbors approximately 65,000 by 45,000 miles in size at the L4 and L5 sites approximately 250,000 miles from both the Earth and Moon verifies theoretical predictions.

Humans are searching the Universe to discover life outside of our Planet.
You could wake up any morning to the news that humans have found life beyond our planet. It could be fossils of ancient life on Mars. It could be the discovery of micro organisms in one of the salty oceans on the asteroid Ceres, the moons of Jupiter, Europa and Ganymede, and/or Enceladus the strange little moon of Saturn. It could be the reception of electromagnetic signals from a distant advanced civilization. Lacking hard evidence many of us continue to look into the night sky and wonder what is out there

Since 1900 there have been 11 close approaches by asteroids larger than 300 feet in diameter. One of them, the Tunguska Object was about 400 feet in diameter. It entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded with such force that it blew down trees over an 800 square mile area in 1908. Hopefully that will not happen again anytime soon.

Astronomers are searching the solar system for new planets. Calculations based on the orbits of the distant objects out near Pluto suggest the existence of a 10 Earth mass planet twenty times farther from the Sun than the planet Neptune. At its great distance the hypothetical new "Planet 9" would take 20,000 years or so to make a single orbit about the Sun. The search for "Planet 9" has begun. Until we have images of it moving through the night sky it will continue to be a theoretical curiosity.

My team, the Catalina Sky Survey, would not find a single asteroid without Steward Observatory's Mountain Lemmon Operations, or Mtn Ops for short. Bottom line is that Mtn Ops does whatever it takes to make our Asteroid Hunting facilities continue to function.

The Cosmic Campground is one of the last places where one can experience the natural night sky in the lower 48.

Aten Asteroids are stealthy space rocks which can be dim and hard to detect since for most of their path about the Sun their illuminated side is facing away from us.

My Catalina Sky Survey team mate Greg Leonard finds an interesting potentially hazardous asteroid.Since asteroid hunter's main concern are the large space rocks which we don't know about, my team the Catalina Sky Survey continues to scan the skies 24 nights per month using two telescopes located in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona.

Ten hours and 46 minutes after my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard discovered a Toyota RAV4 sized space rock, now named 2018 UA, streaking through the constellation of Pegasus at 8.8 miles/second, this tiny asteroid passed less than 1/2 the distance of the communications satellites to the surface of planet Earth

Aten asteroids spend most of their time inside the Earth's orbit, come close to us, travel at speeds our rockets can match, and may be an economical source of raw materials for space exploration.

Until recently the discovery of very close approaching asteroids was rare, however, due to improvements in telescopes, cameras, and computers asteroid hunters are now finding a significant number of these small celestial visitors to our neighborhood every month

A mysterious piece of space hardware comes back to Earth.

Asteroid hunters are developing the equipment and skills which enable them to predict the impact of tiny space rocks. Thus in the future you may have the opportunity to witness the light show an impactor creates and perhaps even obtain clues which will enable you to find a piece of it on the ground.

Humans are creating a new geological epoch

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Pegasus with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when he discovered a 2,000 foot diameter space rock streaking through the night sky. The extremely remote possibility that a big one might have our number on it keeps asteroid hunters going to their telescopes.

A pair of comet discoveries are reported in the space of 31 hours

To give you an idea of the celestial traffic in our neighborhood, on a recent clear night, using our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groller posted 20 new objects on the Minor Planet Center's Near Earth Object Confirmation Page. In the future five of these asteroids may become a valuable source of raw materials for Martian colonists.

A small asteroid's path around the Sun very nearly crosses that of Earth.

In the fictional Star Trek series, Vulcan, Spock's home planet was imagined to orbit the A component of the triple star system 40 Eridani [Eri-dani ]. Recently astronomers using the Dharma Planet Survey 50 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona have discovered that there is indeed an actual planet, named HD26965 b, with mass of 8.5 times that of Earth orbiting the star 40 Eridani A once every 42.38 days.

Unknown large dangerous Earth approaching asteroids are still out there

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered his third comet, Comet C/2018 R4 (Fuls). It is now on its way back into deep space. Given the climate change Earth is experiencing it is hard to predict the state of our planet and humanity when Comet Fuls returns in 7,500 AD.

Earth approaching asteroids are found by their motion in the sky.

Asteroid Hunters keep careful track of nearly 2,000 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids [PHAs] to make sure that they are no threat to humanity. The recent discovery of two new PHAs reminds us that there are many still out there to be discovered and followed.

An Earth approaching asteroid is found to triple in brightness every 9 minutes.

A small space rock is spotted 4 days before it came very close to the Earth and our Moon.

A rapidly spinning asteroid comes close to both the Earth and our Moon.

What asteroid hunters fear is that a small space rock capable of injuring people and damaging buildings is heading our way and that we will not find it in time to give a warning for people in the impact area to seek cover.

The giant planet Jupiter has its own family of comets orbiting our Sun.

The NASA Mars Opportunity Rover, nicked named Oppy by those who operate and love it ,was designed to last 90 days on the Martian surface but has continued to explore the surface of the red planet for 14 years.

A dozen Earth approaching asteroid candidates are discovered in a single night.

Although small space rocks pose no threat to humans, they are an interesting part of our environment, offer a chance for asteroid hunters to develop their tracking skills, and occasionally provide an opportunity for a meteorite hunter to touch an object from outer space.

A potentially hazardous dead comet makes a close approach to Earth

Asteroid hunters were able to discover a small Earth approaching asteroid after 57 nights of continuous rain and clouds.

Humans have discovered oceans of liquid salty water on four small worlds in our solar system. Could living things be flourishing in these alien environments?

The fireball meteor streaking across the sky the early evening of January 17, 2018, witnessed by 700 observers in 11 States and Canada was also recorded by infrasonic microphones and seismometers. Scientific studies of this event gives researchers the ability to assess the risks presented by the 2,000 large fireball meteor explosions which occur each year world wide and will allow scientists to detect any secret nuclear tests being conducted by rogue individuals or governments.

All life has a common core which can guide our search for life outside of our planet.

Asteroid Mining Is Possible. It might be possible to catch an asteroid, place it into Earth orbit, and thus provide a ready source of precious metals and water for space colonists to use.

Mars is in the process of turning a moon into a ring

In 2018, July and August were cloudy and rainy in both Arizona and Hawaii sidelining the worlds two most productive asteroid hunting surveys. A cost effective way to make the Earth's planetary defense system more weather proof is to put a network of asteroid hunting telescopes around the world to discover and track potentially dangerous nearby neighbors.

My team the Catalina Sky Survey discovers 89 new Earth approaching objects in 24 nights.

Even though humans have been aware of the planet Saturn from from the dawn of history this beautiful object still offers mysteries for us to explore.

Comets may have brought the life enabling element Carbon to our planet.

From the time 3 million years ago that our ancestor Lucy walked in what is now Ethiopia until the widespread use of electric lighting began in the 1880s the changing panorama and awe inspiring beauty of the natural night sky was available to most human beings.

The NASA NEOWISE satellite has discovered a family of dark, stealthy asteroids some of which make close approaches to planet Earth.

Fuzzy, spread out, asteroid images due to atmospheric and or equipment produced distortions can cause important objects to slip through an asteroid hunter's discovery images undetected. A careful monitoring of the temperature at a number of different locations in the observatory environment and using fans and other techniques to minimize temperature differences restores the power of a telescope so that it can detect possible asteroid threats to planet Earth.

An asteroid small enough to fit under a basketball hoop makes frequent approaches to Earth, our Moon, and Mars

There are likely to be hundreds smaller than softball sized and perhaps several dozen football to beachball sized, natural Earth mini moons, which are so small and fast moving that they are able to slip through asteroid hunters images without being detected.

An asteroid hunter wishes for a birthday comet but instead the Universe gave her an asteroid.

Exciting new research indicates that there could be a lake of liquid water beneath the south Martian polar cap. Further research will be required to determine if this briny pool could be the home of martian creatures.

A rare very large Earth approaching object is discovered in an unusual place in the sky.

It has been 20 years since the world woke up to the news that a half mile diameter asteroid, 1997 XF11, discovered by Space Watch on Kitt Peak, had a slight chance of impacting the Earth in 2028. The NASA and JPL's Center for Near Earth Object Studies or CNEOS (see-neos) for short maps space rocks orbits, predicts when they will come close to us, and reliably determines each one's chance of impacting Earth.

Humans must be very careful not to introduce any of Earth's organisms into the Martian environment.]

Imagine a spacecraft traveling at a speed that would take it from New York to Tokyo in less than a minute, a mere 4 million miles from the surface of our Sun, where it would be exposed to about 500 times the solar radiation we receive here on Earth. Not science fiction but science fact for the NASA Parker Solar Probe on one of its final laps around our star.

A small asteroid about the size of a U-Haul moving truck makes frequent visits to our part of the solar system.

In a few weeks ,as Earth and Mars moved closer together, a dust storm engulfed most of the red planet making it impossible to see its surface features.

It is possible that showers of comets changed the course of life on Earth.

A huge Earth approaching asteroid is discovered right before the 2018 monsoon rains settled into the American Southwest. This weather imposed break from observing provides the opportunity for asteroid hunters to make major equipment upgrades and perform routine maintenance.

A space boomerang meets its fate in a collision with the Earth about 60 miles off of the coast of Sri Lanka producing a bright, but harmless light show in the noon sky.

Most Astronomers find it hard to believe that given perhaps a trillion planets in the Milky Way alone that our Earth is the only one which hosts living organisms. It is both exciting and terrifying to realize we have no concept of what living forms may exist outside Earth in the Milky Way.

Our Moon is the nearest and most likely place for humans to colonize in the near future. It has a hostile environment where air and liquid water as we know them on Earth are not to be found. In the past astronomers hypothesized that comets are the source of water on the Earth and Moon. However, calculations by Svetsov and Shuvalov published in Planetary and Space Science indicate that when a comet impacts the Moon it is likely that 99% of its water evaporates into space and is lost. On the other hand their work indicates that asteroids have been hauling water to our Moon and depositing it in places which are very handy for future human colonists. Specifically it appears probable that 2 to 4.5 % of lunar craters are likely to contain substantial amounts of water in the form of hydrated minerals. These asteroid impact craters are a convenient source of water and solar energy for lunar bases and are likely to be the home of human lunar colonists.

Asteroid hunters have discovered a strange asteroid pair. How they came to be together and what humans would do if such a large double trouble object is heading for us remains a mystery.

During his last official observing run before retiring, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate, Rik Hill knocked two out of the park. On successive nights he discovered two new potentially hazardous asteroids 2015 TD323 and 2015 TK238. Not to worry, neither of these asteroids are a threat to Earth in the foreseeable future. However, they are large enough and can come close enough to prompt asteroid hunters to keep careful track of them.

An object is tracked in outer space, seen to explode in our atmosphere, and had a fragment of it discovered on the ground. Its analysis will help humans to prepare for and defend against a much larger object with our number on it.

The Great Galaxy in Andromeda or M31 as it is also known is one of the furtherest objects that can be seen with the unaided human eye. It is about two and a half million light years away. More than a thousand years ago the a Persian astronomer named Al-Sufi described the Great Galaxy in Andromeda as a "small cloud" in his Book of Fixed Stars. Now there are few places on planet Earth like the Cosmic Campground where one can see it with the naked eye due to inappropriate night time lighting.

Statistically, asteroid hunters are thought to have discovered 90% of our potentially dangerous celestial neighbors greater than 1 KM in diameter. Thus my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was surprised to discover an unknown very large asteroid moving through the constellation of Persus.

In spite of the shape of the Earth's shadow on the Moon, sailing ships disappearing below the horizon, satellite photographs, orbiting objects, and a mountain of other information about the size and shape of the Earth there are still people who belong a flat Earth Society and even have websites. The number of believers has diminished from 3,500 twenty years ago to less than a few hundred today. Not to worry the Flat Earth Society is being replaced by the Climate Change Deniers.

Comet C/2018 M1 (Catalina) is eternal in the sense that it will likely wander the vast space between the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy until the end of time.

From the dawn of history, humans have longed to wander amongst the stars. Now we know that comets are able to make such a voyage giving us paths to follow.NASA scientists have suggested that the first interstellar robotic spacecraft could be propelled by a solar sail as large as the state of Texas. Such a mission, perhaps two or three hundred years into the future could follow a comet's path. In this flight of fantasy the spaceship would be inclosed in a reflective spherical heat shield, placed into a Sun grazing orbit, and flung by the Sun's gravity onto a path which will cause it to be ejected from the solar system. After getting to a safe distance from the Sun the robotic spacecraft would deploy its solar sail and use light pressure to accelerate towards its destination. It could be further helped along using a powerful laser projected from the far side of the Moon. In a few decades or maybe even a few centuries it would arrive in a nearby solar system. After that it would be on its own to try to make sense of what is there and to beam information back to its human creators.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard knew he had bagged his third comet when he spotted an unknown fuzzy object with a broad tail moving through the constellation of Pisces. Eventually when it looses its volatile materials Comet Leonard will become one of the countless millions of main belt asteroids circling our Sun.

Thirty six hours before my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rik Hill discovered it, a space rock about size of a Toyota Prius passed about 14,000 miles above the Earth's surface. When Rik first spotted it this small asteroid was about a million miles from us and was moving away from the Earth at 12.6 miles per second. Its orbit had been changed by a narrow escape from the Earth's gravity and it was on a new path around the Sun This small space rock was subsequently observed by telescopes in Russia and Arizona. The Minor Planet Center used these observations to calculate an orbit and give it the name 2015 SK7.2015 SK7 survived it's 2015 encounter with planet Earth. It may not be so lucky the next time.

A 2000 foot diameter space rock has stories to tell about violent events long ago. Asteroid hunters are eager to track this huge collision fragment and look for members of its family as it passes near Earth in 2026.

When the NASA WISE spacecraft ran out of frozen hydrogen, its detectors warmed up, and it was no longer able to conduct its primary mission. It was placed in a hibernation mode and left to orbit the Earth in silence. A couple of years ago NASA engineers figured out that the spacecraft, even with warm detectors, could find some interesting asteroids and decided to wake it up. The WISE spacecraft in turn has produced data on more than15,000 solar system objects including more than 350 Earth approaching asteroids and 60 comets.

A 100 foot diameter asteroid is spotted on one of its regular trips between the orbits of Venus and Earth. Its ultimate fate is to collide with one of these planets producing a spectacular light show.

Two quite different Earth approaching asteroids were discovered in a clear hole in the sky between storms.

A strange asteroid plays hide and seek with frustrated astronomers.

For a week or so after its discovery by the 3.5 meter Space Surveillance Telescope, 2015 PU228 was thought to be the asteroid most likely to collide with Earth in this century. Calculations based on limited data indicated that this asteroid had a one in 23,000 chance of colliding with our planet in January of 2081. As the length of 2015 PU228's observed path in the sky grew its chances of a collision with Earth decreased. More than a month's observations has made us sure that it will completely miss planet the Earth in 2081.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After being lost for ten years, the asteroid 2010 WC9 was re-discovered about a week before it came very close to Earth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 monologues and not dialogs since it will take 9 million years for radio waves from the closest one to reach us and another 9 million years for our answer to make the trip back.

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.

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.

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.

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 of time to deflect it if that becomes necessary. Serious scientific and engineering studies are currently underway to investigate various asteroid impact mitigation strategies. These range from using a solar sail to give the problem asteroid a gentle push to setting off a buried nuclear weapon to create a rocket type thrust which will cause the potential impactor to miss planet Earth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 system never to return. Its path is not in the direction of any known star making it likely that it will continue its cold lonely journey till the end of time.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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 with each other giving the object a peanut shape. Strangely enough 1 in 6 Earth approaching objects are like 1999 JD6 in that they are really two separate objects whose tiny forces of gravity keep them in contact as they orbit the Sun.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the future one can envision a space mining family boarding a descendent of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Vehicle for a trip into low Earth orbit. A few hundred miles above the Earth's surface they would rendezvous with their asteroid mining spacecraft which will be their home for the next five years or so.

You can spot Europa with almost any small telescope as a moving point of light orbiting the planet Jupiter just like Galileo Galilei did 400 years ago. Of the 4 moons which you will see Europa is the one second closest to Jupiter.

On December 25, 2017, while searching for Earth approaching asteroids in the constellation of Virgo, the Universe gave my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard a Christmas present in the form of a comet which now bears his name.

Since the dawn of our race, it is likely that humans have looked into the night sky and wondered if they are alone in the Universe on a unique planet. The NASA Kepler spacecraft has discovered more than a thousand planets orbiting distant stars. A newly discovered planet, Kepler-452b has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star. In the 4.5 billion years of the Earth's history the parade of more than 5 billion species has included single cell organisms, various multi cellular life forms, land plants, dinosaurs, mammals, birds, flowers, and humans to name a few. It is mind blowing to consider what kind of life forms might exist on a planet which is 1.5 billion years older than mother Earth.

Recent scientific studies have begun to shed light on the interesting mystery of how the small number of what we now call electrophonic meteors produce simultaneous light and sound. If you are lucky you could hear a meteor's dying whispers and could even be the first person to record these sounds on your cell phone.

The one thousand six hundred and second potentially hazardous asteroid was discovered by the Pan-STARRS group in Hawaii. Followup observations were made by telescopes in Hawaii, France, Australia, Italy, Germany, and Pennsylvania. The Minor Planet Center used these vital observations to calculate an orbit and gave it the name 2015 OC22.

Long Winter nights with good seeing, from start to finish, are those on which the asteroid hunter makes new discoveries while being treated to views of millions of stars, gas clouds, and galaxies which inspire a child like sense of wonder.

At the few remaining natural night sky viewing locations on Earth the horizon has a faint glow in every direction. Near the magnetic poles, this night glow appears to join with the relatively bright higher altitude aurora which covers larger portions of the sky and exhibits beautiful colors including green and red. Green light is the strongest component of the Earth' airglow and comes from oxygen atoms which have become energized by our Sun.

When we find a planet which appears to have the chemical signs of living organisms in its atmosphere, the desire to take a close up look at it will be hard to contain. Laser propelled ultra light space probes could be sent to explore nearby worlds. The cost of investigating our planetary life hosting neighbors is likely to be less than what the US is planning to spend upgrading its nuclear weapons.

After 9 years, 3 billion miles, and 18 sleeping periods NASA gave a wake up call to the New Horizons when it was 135 million miles from the Pluto system. After more than 8 hours of waiting, NASA engineers were ecstatic to receive a message from the New Horizons stating that "I am fine and ready to go forward with an encounter with Pluto".

When a fleet of interstellar spaceships leaves our solar system for a planet circling a nearby star the most important of all of the riches that human explorers will carry with them will be libraries of our planet's DNA and the seeds of plants. They are the connection between past life, the inorganic world, and future life.

Confronted with the deluge of new possible planets, in 2006, The International Astronomical Union voted to categorize Pluto as a Dwarf Planet and not the 9th planet in our solar system as most school children had learned.

Intriguing features which change with the Martian seasons mimic flows of liquid water on the Earth's surface.

In 1933 Fritz Zwicky suggested that the high speeds of galaxies in the relatively distant Coma Cluster are indicative of some type of invisible material which is pulling on them. In the 1970's Dr. Vera Rubin began to measure the speeds of stars in galaxies using the Doppler shift. She expected stars orbiting at different distances from the centers of spiral galaxies to behave like the planets in our solar system since for these giant star systems the luminous mass that we observe is concentrated towards their centers. To her amazement the stars near the edge of the great galaxy in Andromeda and many other spiral galaxies are moving at speeds which indicate that these galaxies contain ten times the amount of mass that emits radiation which is visible to us. It was at this point that Dr. Rubin realized that she had discovered compelling evidence to support Zwicky's dark matter hypothesis.

The first alien object to observed visiting our solar system arrives from truly deep space and leaves us with the mystery of what it is and how it got that way.

Being night sky friendly means that you only use outdoor lighting fixtures which direct light onto the ground where humans need it and not up into the sky where it obscures the natural wonders of the Universe. Currently more than 2/3 of the US population and more than 1/2 of the those people living in Europe cannot see the Milky Way or a meteor streaking through the night sky because of inappropriate outdoor lighting. Amazingly enough being night sky friendly saves money and is good for business.

Earth like planets are being discovered circling the most common type of star in our neighborhood of the Milky Way galaxy.

Did you know that asteroids can bring diamonds to Earth and that asteroids sometimes create diamonds when they collide with our planet?

A small asteroid soars into the lonely space high above and below the plane of our solar system.

About 35 million years ago the Earth was impacted by two large asteroids creating the more than 50 mile diameter Popigai [pop a gay i] Crater in Russia and a similar crater in Chesapeake Bay in the USA. Analysis of fragments indicate that the impacting objects were not made of the same material. This finding has led scientists to speculate that there may be an astronomical process which changes conditions in the inner asteroid belt and causes the Earth's orbit to change slightly. This combination could have triggered the ice age which caused the first significant ice sheet in Antarctica to form and led to the last major extinction event in the Earth's history.

Perhaps the reason that we have not detected alien civilizations on distant worlds is because they exist in oceans covered by miles of radiation absorbing ice and rocks.

In February 2013 a space rock about 59 feet in diameter entered the Earth's atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia making a fire ball 30 times brighter than our Sun. It came without warning and nearly 1,500 people were injured primarily by flying glass from broken windows. In the end spending a billion dollars a year on asteroid damage prevention is like purchasing expensive insurance for an extremely unlikely event. However, it has a side benefit that it will employ people and may stimulate science and technology.

A rock from another solar system is likely to have streaked by Earth before heading back into interstellar space.

There are more than 20,000 pieces of space junk larger than 4 inches in diameter and millions of tiny ones in orbit around the Earth. At orbital speed a flake of paint carries as much energy as a 550 pound object traveling at 60 miles per hour. Eventually all of this stuff will fall back to Earth. So far no injuries or property damage has been confirmed. Heads up.

On it's gravitational leash, Earth's pet space rock, 2016 HO3, accompanies us at a distance of between 38 and 100 times the Moon's distance from Earth as we both travel about the Sun.

For 43 years after its discovery in 1949, the Earth approaching asteroid Icarus, was known as the object which passes closest to our Sun. It is named for a boy in Greek mythology whose wings of feathers and wax melted when he ignored his father's advice and flew too close to the Sun.

To survive on Venus where the temperature is 864F and the surface air pressure is 90 times that of Earth, NASA and JPL engineers are exploring the concept of avoiding the use of modern temperature sensitive electronics by creating a fully mechanical rover.

Using the long arm of the internet, astronomers in Russia are observing with a telescope located near Mayhill, New Mexico to discover solar system objects. The New Mexico Skies Observatory, near the village of Mayhill, is located 7,300 feet above sea level and has world class, clear dark skies, ideal for astronomical viewing. In addition to discovering new objects the ISON-NM telescope is being used to determine the size and shape of asteroids by carefully measuring the light they reflect as they spin on their axis of rotation and move about the Sun. The size, shape, and rate of spin of an asteroid is the kind of information which humans need to prepare for the unlikely situation that a small body is found to be on a collision course with planet Earth.

What at first appeared to be an asteroid turned out to be a double comet.

Juno was found by German astronomer Karl L. Harding in 1804 who noticed that to the human eye it appeared to be a star like moving point of light in the night sky. The light that Juno reflects suggests that it could be the source of stony meteorites called chondrites that we find on Earth.

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 to warn people to seek shelter before it created a potentially destructive sonic boom in our atmosphere.

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 breathe, and perhaps a psychological benefit that is crucial to the success of their mission.

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 inclined so that it moves above and below the plane where the planets and nearly all of the other solar system objects exist. It had crossed the Earth's orbital path moving towards the Sun about 6 weeks before it was discovered but nobody noticed it since it was faint and far away from Earth.

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 a a dry and thirsty west.

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 than 250 of these small asteroids have come or are predicted to come less a lunar distance from our home planet.

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.

A team of astronomers find that as many as 14 comets which came to less than 4 times the Moon's distance from us as long as 4,000 years ago are detectable as meteor showers in the present era. These results make us aware of potentially hazardous comets from the past which could come into our space again in the future.

Recently I was observing with the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon when the computer identified a faint fast moving object in the night sky. Not being sure it was real I scheduled followup observations. About an hour later the second set of observations showed that it is a real object. On the next two nights this small space rock was observed by telescopes near Westfield, Illinois and on Kitt Peak in Arizona. These observations allowed the Minor Planet Center to determine an orbit and a tentative size. It was given the name 2015 GB.

New Rocket engines will revolutionize space travel to the Moon and Mars.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rik Hill discovered an asteroid about the size of a luxury sedan which cruises about the inner solar system.

An impacting object hit the asteroid Vesta making a 10 mile diameter crater and in the process blasted loose fragments which have been orbiting the Sun for 22 million years or so. In June of 2018 my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski discovered one of them streaking towards Earth with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon , AZ. This small space rock crashed into Earth raining fragments upon the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana.

Recently people from all over the world met in Italy to discuss ways that humans can prepare for the unlikely, but not impossible, situation that an object is on an impact trajectory with planet Earth. They were were presented with a hypothetical asteroid threat. A month after its discovery the hypothetical asteroid comes about 18 million miles from us . It continues to be observed for another month with every new observation making it appear to have a greater chance of colliding with mother Earth about 7 years hence. This is where the participants are left. At this point they don't know its exact size, chemical composition, if it will collide with us or not, and if it does the spot of impact on Earth. They are then charged with the task of obtaining needed observations and to develop a strategy to deal with the potential impact.

In March and April every year amateur astronomers, around the world, in Messier Marathons, attempt to view all of 110 objects in the Messier catalogue in a single night. In a more leisurely approach you can visit a dark sky location like the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky and view spectacular Messier Objects with your naked eye, binoculars, or a small telescope.

The first human use of the wind to power boats most likely occurred in about 3,000 BC. This was a major improvement in travel over walking and animal drawn carts. Three or four hundred years from now humans may send a robotic space probe to a nearby star using a light sail as big as the state of Texas. Ideally it would deploy its giant solar sail near the Sun perhaps as close to it as the planet Mercury. This would give it maximum initial thrust. After it gets far from the Sun it could be pushed along by a powerful pinpoint laser beam. Theoretically it is possible to achieve a fraction of the speed of light through this means.

Asteroid hunters have discovered a curious object. It appears likely to be either a rock ejected from the Moon or a piece of space junk from a human designed mission to the Moon. Observations which reveal how this tiny object is effected by Sun light could tells us if it is a natural or man made object.

The vast majority of asteroids orbiting the Sun do so on a path that is pretty much
in the same plane as the planets. There is a lot of empty space in the solar system,
however, we see asteroids with craters on them so we know collisions have occurred.
It seems likely that an asteroid whose path is highly inclined to the plane of the
solar system was involved in a collision with another object causing a radical change
in its orbit.

During a recent 60 day period asteroid hunters discovered 29 space rocks as they passed closer to us than the Moon. These small asteroids averaged 30 feet in diameter and ranged in size from one that could fit under a basketball hoop to one the would fill the whole basketball court. Several times every year a small space rock bursts into fragments some of which strike human structures.

A trip to our Moon is one of the great human adventures of all time. However,
such a voyage is but a small step of about 30 Earth diameters into the vastness of space.
NASA is proposing the next step on the path to Mars to be a mission to an asteroid or a
boulder taken from the surface of an asteroid.

How ET could know there is life on Earth.

Recently an inter-planetary visitor made a close approach to planet Earth. It is about the same size as the object which entered our atmosphere in February of 2013 injuring nearly 1500 people in Chelyabinsk, Russia. It can come to within 20,000 miles of us which is closer than our communications satellites.

After sunset in the spring and before sunrise in the fall, at a natural night sky location like the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary in New Mexico, you will see a triangle of faint glow of light that extends from its broad base on the horizon to a point almost overhead. New scientific evidence suggests that this phenomenon is caused by sunlight reflecting from a Mars produced dust cloud between Earth and Jupiter.

Looking at the Universe from the Earth's surface is a bit like a scuba diver viewing our world from the bottom of a swimming pool. Don't get me wrong. I love our atmosphere. It gives us air to breath, keeps our body's fluids liquid, protects us from cosmic rays as well as space rocks, and performs many other functions which make life on our planet possible. That being said the blanket of air which surrounds us makes it difficult to view objects in the Universe.

On Kitt Peak in Arizona, the Steward Observatory's Bok telescope's 90 inch light collecting mirror enables the discovery, study, and tracking of space rocks 3 or 4 times fainter then possible with any of our other telescopes. Over all our team, the Catalina Sky Survey, has used the 90 inch Bok telescope to discover 36 Earth approaching asteroids.

Ganymede was discovered by Galileo Galilei using his new telescope in 1610. He observed it to be a faint point of light orbiting the planet Jupiter. This discovery along with 3 of Jupiter's moons was the first instance of objects being observed to be orbiting another planet. Now that we know that Ganymede has a substantial salty ocean one has to wonder if some type of microbes might be living there.

We are lucky to be alive in an age when anyone with an internet connection can participate in the exploration of Mars. Your unique brain-eye combination may very well enable you to notice a previously unknown meteorite on the surface of Mars. Give it a try.

Recently, three asteroids were discovered which have very slight probabilities of impact with planet Earth between 2065 and 2117. My team, the Catalina Sky Survey found two of them and the Pan-STARRS group in Hawaii found the other one. These three asteroids are some of the most recent objects to be listed on the NASA Sentry Risk Table. So far so good.
Maybe against the most incredible odds a small asteroid has our number on it.
Maybe we will find it tonight.

On 28 February 2021 at 9:54PM a large slow moving fireball meteor was observed over England, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. The Wichcombe meteorite which this meteor produced is particularly valuable since it was found less than 12 hours after it fell leaving its interior untouched by contamination from its terrestrial surroundings.

In the early days of space exploration when a flight component failed the mission was over. In recent history, there have been a few times when astronauts have repaired satellites and a number of instances of Earth bound engineers reprogramming malfunctioning spacecraft so that they could continue their scientific work. Since the cost of developing and launching spacecraft far exceeds the cost of operating them for extended periods of time, our ability to recover from malfunctions allows scientists to make the best use of available funds.

The situation that asteroid hunters both train for and dread is the discovery of a large space rock on a collision course with planet Earth. Recently we got a chance to practice on a small harmless space rock named 2020 XK1 that eventually zipped past us. About once a month a small space rock like 2020 XK1 enters the Earth's atmosphere, creates a super fireball meteor, bursts into a cloud of fragments at 135,000 feet, and rains fragments of itself onto the ground for meteorite hunters to discover.

Slightly more than a day apart, my NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey teammates Richard Kowalski and Carson Fuls found two small asteroids. Both of them can travel to much closer than the distance to our Moon from planet Earth. It is possible that either of these tiny asteroids could enter the Earth's atmosphere in the distant future and release the energy of a small nuclear weapon. We might expect such an event every 27 years or so. There are likely to be several million space rocks of this size which come close to planet Earth. We now know more about two of them.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski is the first person in our group and perhaps the first person in the world to discover a potentially hazardous asteroid while sitting on his living room couch.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski has an instinct for discovering interesting objects. Recently he spotted a fuzzy looking moving faint light in the night sky. It was then observed by telescopes in Italy, New Mexico, and Texas and given the name C/2015 D5 (Kowalski). When Kowalski first spotted this comet it was traveling about 12 miles per second away from the Sun and was about 344 million miles from planet Earth. Comet C/2015 D5 (Kowalski) is likely to continue its cold lonely journey between stars till the end of time.

My Catalina Survey Teammate Greg Leonard was asteroid hunting with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted a fuzzy object with a short tail moving through the constellation Canes Venatici. That Greg spotted his comet discovery some 472 million miles from the Sun leads us to believe that it may brighten to the point that C2021 A1 (Leonard) will be visible in binoculars and perhaps even to the naked eye.

More than 50 years of searching for signals from other civilizations in the Universe has produced a deafening silence. There is no evidence that aliens have visited the Earth or exist anywhere. There are many hints that life might exist in other places but there is no conclusive proof that it does.
My money is on the concept that there are many planets which host living organisms. Recent discoveries indicate that there may be as many as 40 billion habitable planets in the Milky way alone. On some of them civilizations like are ours are likely to be emerging. The physics of the Universe requires large allocations of energy and resources to become spacefaring. Humans have so far dabbled in a few baby steps beyond our planet and made some attempts to listen for other beings. What else is out there remains to be discovered.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Hercules when he spotted a fast moving point of light streaking through the night sky 159 million miles from Earth. David's discovery is only one of three Earth approaching asteroids discovered in 2020 which is larger than 1 km in diameter. NASA is especially interested in these very large asteroids since the impact of a 1 km or greater diameter asteroid is likely to produce global climate change.

Objects in the Universe that brighten rapidly grab our attention. One of the most spectacular examples is Kepler's supernova. In 1604 this star was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye in the daytime for over three weeks. Another occurred in 1843 when a comet became almost as bright as the limb of the Sun. Over the centuries there have been many suddenly appearing objects in both the day and night sky. Possibly as the result of this history, most of the surveys which look for time variable objects in the sky are set to trigger on increases in brightness. On the other hand perhaps solar systems in formation dim instead of brighten. Stay tuned.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Canes Venatici with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, AZ when he found our teams loneliest asteroid of 2020. The possibility of a tough lonely unknown asteroid with our number on it keeps asteroid hunters scanning the sky.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammates Carson Fuls and Jess Johnson discovered an asteroid which comes close enough and is large enough be be classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. It was subsequently observed by telescopes in New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Illinois and given the name 2015 DH155. Fortunately, its orbit never brings it closer than about 16 times the Moon's distance from planet Earth.

In 2020 my team the Catalina Sky Survey discovered 171 asteroids which can occasionally come closer to us than our Moon. In fact 21 of them, averaging 25 feet in diameter can come close enough to our home planet to pass through the cloud of communications satellites which surround Earth.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammates Carson Fuls and Jess Johnson discovered a rapidly moving point of light in the sky. It was subsequently observed by telescopes in Italy, Arizona, New Zealand, and Australia. Twenty six hours before humans spotted it, this 10 foot diameter space rock came within two and a half Earth diameters of our planets surface and was traveling at 8 miles per second. At that point it was bright enough to be seen in a small telescope had anyone been looking. In the future its orbit allows it to come to about 2,000 miles of the Earth's surface.

In 2020, my team the Catalina Sky Survey discovered 14 extremely tough asteroids which regularly travel closer to the Sun than the planet Mercury. They are likely to contain at least as much iron, nickel, platinum, gold, and other valuable metals as a stony meteorite and may be worth billions of dollars on the used metal markets. In the future they may become an important source of raw materials for future asteroid mining space colonists

The appearance of a naked eye comet is one of natures most impressive displays. Humans have regarded these suddenly appearing objects as everything from a sign of an upcoming disaster, to the bringers of water and organic materials to Earth. Not all comets are discovered with large telescopes and sophisticated electronic cameras. They sometimes sneak up on our planet by brightening suddenly. David Levy discovered 8 comets visually with small backyard telescopes. Perhaps, with persistence you too could discover a comet.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne was observing in the constellation of Pisces with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, AZ when he discovered a small space rock on a path which takes it near the moon on its 2.3 year long orbit about the Sun. On this trip Teddy's small space rock missed the Moon. Other tiny asteroids are not so lucky. Imagine the excitement which will occur when scientists are able invite the people to go outside to witness the impact of a small boulder on the Moon.

Carl Sagan said that "The Universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space". It is hard to look into the sky on a clear dark night and not share this feeling.

In 2020 the asteroid hunting community discovered 2,946 Earth approaching space rocks orbiting our Sun. My team, the Catalina Sky Survey, led the pack with 1,542 to our credit. Fortunately we have yet to find an asteroid large enough to do damage that is on a collision course with our home planet.

Asteroid 2004 BL86 was discovered more than 10 years ago by the LINEAR program in New Mexico.Until recently, we knew asteroid 2004 BL86 only as a faint moving point of light in the night sky. Early in 2015 it came close to planet Earth. RADAR images obtained with the 230 foot wide NASA Deep Space Network show that it is about 1100 feet in diameter and has a small moon about 230 feet across.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was asteroid hunting with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted a moving point of light streaking at 6.9 mi/sec through the constellation of Canis Minor. Greg's discovery will not impact Earth in the foreseeable future, however, rest assured that asteroid hunters will continue to track it as it passes near Earth and Mars to make sure that 2020 XU6's path does not change to put it on a collision course with Earth.

On the first night an Earth approaching asteroid candidate is discovered, one is lucky to obtain observations for a few hours along its path in the sky. Since a typical near Earth asteroid takes from a few hundred days to several years to complete a trip around the Sun, it takes more than a few hours of data to be able to predict where it will go. Peter Birtwhistle of the Great Shefford Observatory in England is one of unsung heroes of the asteroid hunting community. On a recent observing run he helped to determine the orbits of several objects which I discovered with the NASA funded, Catalina Sky Survey, 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon. Without his efforts they would have likely been lost. These are only the most recent results of his work. Over the years, his data have helped to establish the orbits of more than 4000 Earth approaching objects

The National Science Foundation has announced that it will close and decommission the giant RADAR telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Whip lashing cables during an unpredictable catastrophic collapse of the entire structure make it life threatening for crews to try to shore up the support structure. We all will miss this scientific treasure.

I was observing with the NASA funded, Catalina Sky Survey, 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, when I found an interesting moving point of light in the night sky. It appeared to be on the path of an Earth approaching asteroid. I submitted my observations to the Minor Planet Center. Telescopes in Germany, New Mexico, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and England observed it. The Minor Planet Center used these data to calculate an orbit. This orbit revealed the asteroid to be large enough and close enough to classify it as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. It was given the name 2015 BY310. A few days later the Minor Planet Center connected the observations of the object that they had been calling 2015 BY310 with an asteroid 2000 BK19. It had been discovered 15 years previously by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research Program in New Mexico. These new data confirm that it is is an Earth approaching asteroid but that it is slightly smaller than is required to give it the potentially hazardous label.

On some nights an asteroid hunter searches for Earth approaching objects near the ecliptic plane where the planets and most of the asteroids are located. During these busy times the telescope takes images of many interesting moving objects. On other long lonely nights the search takes the telescope to the far north portion of the sky where it is rare to spot any moving objects traveling through fields of millions of unblinking stars. The reward is when you find a moving object it will be interesting.

Unlike Halley's [h AE - l ee ] comet which returns to our neighborhood once about every 76 years, Comet C2013 US10/Catalina will pass this way once never to return. In 2028 Kowalski's comet will pass Pluto's average distance from the Sun. After that it will continue to move away from the Sun, become an interstellar traveler in the night, and perhaps some day a countless number of human lifetimes from now become a comet in another solar system.

Although the orbit of an Aten asteroid crosses our path in space on its travel about the Sun it stays mostly inside the Earth's orbit making it difficult to discover. Since the Aten asteroid 2020 VZ5 is likely to eventually collide with Earth, Venus, or our Moon asteroid hunters will continue to observe it to make sure its path does not change and become a threat to our home planet.

Within a time span of one and a half hours, the two telescopes of the NASA funded, University of Arizona, Catalina Sky Survey, discovered three asteroids whose orbits are similar enough to grab one's attention. However, they different enough to keep us from jumping to the conclusion that they are part of an asteroid collision fragment family. There has been some speculation about the possibility of killer asteroid swarms which threaten the Earth. There is no evidence to support these ideas.

For millennia humans have gazed into the night sky and have dreamed of traveling to the stars. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that one of the objects astronomers discover passing through our solar system was created and is operated by an advanced technological life form in the Milky Way. Until then we can look into a natural night sky such as one can find at the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary in New Mexico and wonder what is out there.

Unfortunately, after spending many years of my life observing the sky at night I have not observed any alien spacecraft. I too have been waiting for Scotty to beam me up.

Currently scientists, governments, and private citizens are preparing to mitigate a disaster caused by a large incoming space rock. To test techniques for characterizing a newly discovered potentially threatening asteroid, scientists are planning to treat Apophis as an unknown object when it becomes detectable to Earth bound telescopes in 2020-2021.

Indisputable proof that life existed or currently exists on the planet Mars has yet to be found. However, tantalizing pieces to this mystery continue to be discovered. It appears that conditions on Mars, 3.8 billion years ago, were similar to those on Earth at the time when we know that life developed here. The mystery of life continues to pull us towards the red planet.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin searched for asteroids, as close to the Sun as possible with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. His efforts were rewarded when he discovered 2020 UP3, illuminated like a thin crescent moon, trying to sneak by asteroid hunters in the evening twilight. This was a tremendous find since 2020 UP3 is more than 1 Km in diameter and is thus large enough to create significant damage if it entered our atmosphere.

In the distant future, an asteroid, with the diameter of the height of the One Worldwide Plaza skyscraper building in New York City, will likely make a close approach to planet Earth. This asteroid, 2014 XL7 makes close approaches to Venus, Earth, and Mars. Each such encounter can cause its orbit to change. It has been classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid which means that the asteroid hunting community will be keeping special track of it.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne was observing in the constellation Lacerta with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted an unknown point of light streaking through the night sky. With only 5 days of data its path remains uncertain. Typically as asteroid hunters continue to track an object the chances it will strike the Earth decrease to essentially zero. Teddy's object is no threat now and will be monitored as it travels between Venus and Mars to make sure it continues to pose no danger to humanity.

I was observing with the Catalina Sky Survey, NASA funded, University of Arizona, 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon when a bright fast moving point of light caught my attention. It seemed much too bright not to be known, but when I checked with the Minor Planet Center, it was not in any of their catalogues. It was was subsequently observed by more than a dozen telescopes scattered around the world and given the name 2014 YE42. The asteroid hunting community will be keeping track of 2014 YE42,in the extremely unlikely event that its path is changed, to make it a threat, as it passes other objects in space.

In western Australia, rock samples and maps of the local geology obtained while exploring for gold show evidence of a 3 mile diameter meteor crater which features a small central pucker like protrusion.

In less than three and one half hours, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate, Rose Matheny, discovered three Potentially Hazardous Asteroids with the NASA funded, University of Arizona, Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow. As far as I know, this string of catches should go into the Asteroid Hunting Guinness book of records.

A large solar coronal mass ejection could put astronauts, airline passengers, power grids, electronic devices, and satellites at risk. Participants in the Solar Stormwatch citizen science project estimate the size and shape of coronal mass ejections using pictures taken by the NASA STEREO Spacecraft. So far in addition to having the thrill of discovery these citizen scientists have contributed to 7 scientific papers. To learn how to do this exciting research and become a member of a world wide community of solar storm watchers go to the Solar Stormwatch II website.

Spacecraft destined for Mars have so far used the Hohmann transfer to achieve an orbit about the red planet. This approach requires the launch from Earth orbit to be in a small window in time which becomes possible every 26 months. When the spacecraft gets near Mars retro rockets, which require hundreds of pounds of fuel, must be fired to slow it so that the spacecraft so that it does not exceed orbital speed. To make the trip to Mars orbit cheaper and more reliable a new technique has been theorized and then tested on Moon flights. It is called ballistic capture.

The Atira class of Earth approaching asteroids are ones whose orbit is entirely within that of the Earth's path about the Sun. Less than 3 dozen of the approximately 24,000 known near Earth asteroids fall into this category of near Sun objects. The largest one, Atira itself, is actually two asteroids orbiting each other once every 15.5 hours. One is about 3 miles in diameter and the other is perhaps 1/6th its size.

Rose Matheny's third solo night of asteroid hunting, using the University of Arizona Schmidt telescope, on Mt. Bigelow, was one of the longest of the year. She had prepared for this night over the past several months by mastering the unique set of observing skills required of an asteroid hunter with the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey. After searching the night sky for about 6 hours a bright fast moving object caught Rose's attention. She gave it the unofficial name of "zippy", Over the next 20 hours this new object was observed by telescopes in Arizona, Japan, and France. These data were used to calculate this small asteroid's orbit around the Sun and it was given the name 2014 YW14.

Recently, in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team of astronomers led by Dr. Faustine Cantalloube of the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy released data from their study of the effects of climate change on the future of astronomical research. Climate change will continue degrade human's ability to learn from the Universe.

The dwarf planet Ceres may be a place in our solar system where life could have developed. At 590 miles in diameter it is the largest asteroid and only dwarf planet orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Ceres appears to have rocky core surrounded by a thick mantle of water ice which accounts for up to 40% of its volume. How much of Ceres's water, if any, is in liquid form remains to be seen. The mystery of Ceres has deepened by the recent discovery of water emissions coming from this small world.

Most life on Earth is synchronized to the regular cycles of day and night. Until about a hundred years ago, the natural night sky was familiar to all humans. Most people could identify a few constellations and had experienced walking by starlight. Now all but a few are denied the privilege of seeing the Milky Way or a meteor streaking across the sky. To gaze into a star filled sky and wonder about other life which may exist in the Universe is worth preserving for future generations.

The goal of the NASA Near Earth Object Program is to discover any objects on a collision course with planet Earth. We now know of more than 90% of objects whose impact could cause global climate change. None of them is a current threat. A more likely problem are the millions of small space rocks which come near to us. We are working on creating the ability to give a tornado like warning for people to stay away from doors and windows should one of them be about to enter our atmosphere.

Auroral displays have been observed and reported on throughout human history. Data from NASA's 5 Themis (Themm us) satellites analyzed by powerful supercomputers is giving us new insight into how our magnetic shield protects us from the harsh radiation of space and blobs of material ejected from the Sun as well as to how to protect the GPS satellites we have learned to rely upon.

Recently, my wife and I saw a beautiful, bright, green, meteor fireball streaking across the western New Mexico night sky. Such sightings by some UFO enthusiasts , have been advanced as the best observations of alien spacecraft. Other observers have explained this phenomena as being sightings of secret American or Russian spy devices.

Atmospheric gravity waves can be powerful. In September of 2018 two glider pilots surfed an atmospheric gravity wave created by high speed polar winds as they encounter the Andes mountains. Amazingly their unpowered aircraft reached an altitude of more than 76,000 feet on a wave which itself can travel to more than 100,000 feet above sea level . By studying atmospheric gravity waves generated by tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis scientists hope we may be able to mitigate the disasters that these events can cause.

So far humans have discovered about 100 asteroids which could be visited by astronauts with current rocket capability. My group, the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona has discovered 65% of these Earth approaching space rocks.

Statistically asteroid hunters have found more than 90% of the asteroids whose impact could cause global climate change. However, recently, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was observing in the constellation of Pegasus with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted a large, unknown, fast moving asteriod in the night sky.

The NASA, New Horizons spacecraft woke up from its 18th sleeping period in the last 9 years. Its long space naps have lasted an average 104 days each. It has traveled 9 years from Earth and has crossed the orbit of Neptune. Even though the New Horizons has journeyed nearly 3 billion miles it finds itself more than one and a half times further from its destination, the Pluto system, than the Earth is from the Sun.

Recently amateur astronomer, Worachate Boonplod discovered the 4049th comet recorded in the imaging data produced by SOHO, the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. To discover your very own comet visit the NASA Sungrazer Project website for the data and tips on how to proceed.

The goal of the NASA Near Earth Object Program is to provide an early warning should an asteroid be found to be on a path bringing it close to planet Earth. Look at the Near Earth Object websites and you will know about any close approaches as soon the calculations are made.

Nearly every day during the monsoon rainy season in the American southwest, afternoon thunderstorms require putting mountain top telescopes and cameras into a lightning safe mode. Through holes in the clouds asteroid hunters continue to search the sky for Earth approaching objects.

Science fiction writers have long imagined human space colonies which use the resources they find.It will take major, risky investments over many years to develop the capability to use asteroids to enable humans to explore our neighborhood in space. Asteroid mining may seem far fetched, however, many of the things that we are doing today were science fiction a few years back.

Approximately 100 million metric tons of mostly sand grained sized space dust enters the Earth's atmosphere every day. Occasionally, larger pieces become fireball meteors which can even be seen in the daytime as they streak across the sky. Sometimes one explodes and showers the ground with meteorites. Finding one of them can be fun and rarely a meteorite can be worth more than its weight in gold.

Computers are extremely efficient at processing numbers while humans excel at visualization. NASA and JPL have developed a computer environment, based on game software architecture, which allows you explore the solar system and beyond using real scientific data. It is called Eyes on The Solar System.

Every year the Monsoon summer rains come to the American southwest in July and August. After the threat of wild fires has been rained out, monsoon time continues to be difficult for asteroid hunters. Even so this season is used to find interesting objects and to prepare our equipment for the clear skies we hope for in the fall.

The first unmanned test flight of the new NASA Orion Spacecraft went perfectly. It made two orbits of the Earth traveling as far as 3600 miles above the surface of our planet. Its path took it nearly 15 times higher than the international space station. This is further than any spacecraft designed for humans has flown since the Apollo era.

There may be as many as a trillion small icy objects in the Oort cloud near the outer edge of our solar system. Very rarely one of these frozen ice balls is jostled by the gravity of a nearby star causing its distant path about our Sun to be transformed into one which takes it near the planets we know. Most of these small comets pass unnoticed by humans although occasionally one can become bright enough to be seen with the naked eye.

Humans know of approximately half million main belt asteroids orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. We have also found approximately 11,000 Earth approaching asteroids. Members of these two groups can be recognized by briefly observing their motion since their paths about the Sun are very different. Jupiter Trojans, on the other hand, occupy a point either 60 degrees in front or behind Jupiter as it moves about the Sun. Their orbit around the Sun takes about 5 and a half years so short pieces of one of their orbits can mimic the path of an Earth approaching object. When Jupiter Trojans are opposite to the Sun, their little full moon faces are pointing towards Earth. When they are in this position in the sky we have to sort through a number of them so we can separate them from real near Earth objects.

Our star is only one among hundreds of billions in the Milky Way galaxy which itself is only one of a hundred billion or more galaxies in the known universe. How can it be that humans are the only creatures to look at the night sky and wonder about who else is out there? Perhaps taking a close look at the human race is a way to find extraterrestrials.

Four days after it made its closest approach to Earth, I found a 10 foot diameter asteroid with the NASA funded University of Arizona 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon. At that point it was 838,000 miles from us and was moving away at about 3 miles/second. Previously, It had been about half the distance to the Moon from planet Earth. This small asteroid orbits the Sun every 349 days on a path which crosses our orbit twice a year. Calculations by the NASA - JPL group indicate that it can come within 2 Earth diameters of us.

Some stars can have flares which can cause them to more than double in brightness in a few minutes. Fortunately our Sun does not do that and the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field protect humans from the smaller flares which do occur on our star. In 2020 the Sun is beginning a new solar cycle and by 2024 we should be seeing solar flares with increased frequency. It will be important to put our electronics into a safe mode should a major solar flare occur.

2014 US7 is called an Aten [Ah tin] type of asteroid. The first of its type was discovered by Dr. Eleanor Key Francis "Glo" Helin in 1976. She was an American astronomer who discovered more than 800 asteroids and several comets. During her long career she made the transition from glass plates to the latest electronic detectors. She was a leader in the establishment of the Near-Earth Tracking Project which discovered more than 36,000 asteroids.

Phaethon (Faith on) is a strange, 4 mile diameter, blueish asteroid. It travels on an orbit which comes so close to the Sun that its exterior is heated to 1,500 F. When you go out to view the Geminids in December you might consider what this space rock has to tell you.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groeller was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Pegasus with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he discovered a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid . Rest assured that astronomers will continue to track Hannes' discovery to make sure that it does not become a threat to humanity as it crosses the orbits of Earth and Mars.

Marie Curie's discovery of radioactivity started humans on a path which so far has skirted annihilation and has led to cures for cancer and the exploration of the distant regions of our solar system.If you want to get an idea about what our knowledge of the solar system would be like without Radioisotope Power Systems, go to a used bookstore or the library and find an Astronomy text book from the mid 1970's and well as a current one. Look up the planets in both.

The human thirst for knowledge about our mysterious next door neighbor is about to receive more than a sip from robotic emissaries launched in 2020. Recently a group of scientists point out that by having astronauts fly by Venus on their way to Mars and/or on their way back to Earth would save fuel, weight, and cost and allow humans to return home after only a month long stay on the red planet. Additionally when the crew is near Venus they would be able to pilot drones in the Venusian atmosphere and to study a world where global warming has fundamentally changed our sister planet.

It appears that the human population is at more at risk from smaller rather than larger Earth impacting asteroids.During the past 20 years more than 550 small asteroids ranging in size from 3 to 60 feet in diameter have entered the Earth's atmosphere. They had impact energies ranging from 5 to 500,000 tons of TNT. Newly released data show that most of them exploded high above the ground doing little or no damage at the surface.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groeller was observing in the constellation of Boötes with our 60 telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he discovered a potentially hazardous asteroid which had evaded being spotted by the asteroid hunting community on four previous occasions.

Every month we discover small asteroids which come closer than the Moon. There are probably 20 million asteroids in this size range which come near the Earth. A few of these may eventually impact our planet. Those that do are likely to explode high in the atmosphere producing a supersonic boom. We are not more likely to be hit by a small asteroid than we have in the past. However, we are becoming more likely to be able to provide a tornado like warning for people in the affected area to stay away from doors and windows.

If we don't place some new space weather observing satellites into orbit it is possible that you will wake up one day to no electricity, no cell phone, no way to pump gas, and no way to pay for things with a credit card.

Recently my, University of Arizona, Catalina Sky Survey, teammate, Jess Johnson, was searching for Earth Approaching asteroids when he discovered a faint slow moving object in the night sky. Six nights of followup observations revealed that this new object's path is out near the planet Neptune. It takes approximately 173 years for it to travel once about the Sun so it will take observations over the next few years to pin down its orbit. With a diameter of approximately 43 miles it is much larger than the Earth approaching objects we normally encounter.

If the current trend in 11 year solar cycles for the past 50 years continues, we can expect lower than average solar activity and the Earth will continue to receive less than average amounts of solar energy over the next decade. Don't expect lower levels of solar radiation to save us from global temperature increases caused by humans dumping vast amount of carbon dioxide and other green house gases into our atmosphere.

Many scientists have been started on their career paths by an interest in astronomy and the mysteries of space. As technology has developed it has become more difficult for students to be involved in hands-on scientific research. Target Asteroids provides an opportunity for students to participate in real scientific research and to have a chance to discover and name an asteroid.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Pegasus with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when he discovered an unusually bright new comet. Since astronomers have observed this comet for less than two months it is not possible to know if it will come back in thousands years or continue its lonely journey till the end of time.

Comet Blanpain was discovered in 1819 and was described as having a small confused nucleus. It was lost a few months after its discovery and pronounced dead. It 1956 a meteor outburst was observed by the crew of a Japanese expedition ship on its way to the Antarctic. This intense meteor shower seemed to be unrelated to any other and became known as the phantom meteor shower. More than a decade ago, Catalina Sky Survey observers discovered what appeared to be an unknown Earth approaching asteroid, 2003 WY25. Recently these seemingly unconnected observations have been shown in all likelihood to be manifestations of the same object.

Asteroid hunters have discovered that the Earth encounters many tiny asteroids as it zips around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour. Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Growler discovered an approximately 15 foot diameter space rock, now named 2020 JJ, about 6 hours before it came to within 4,400 miles of the Earth's surface over the Pacific Ocean.

How often do you traveled 5, 10, or more miles on a shopping trip? If instead of traveling on the Earth's surface you were to travel 6 miles straight up, to the realm of the jet airliner, you would likely need oxygen to stay conscious. At an altitude of 12 miles you would need a space suit to stay alive. Several groups have reached an altitude of 24 miles using cameras attached to unmanned weather balloons with budgets of less than $1,000. At this height their cameras were above 99% of the Earth's atmosphere.

It has been traditional for an asteroid to be named by its discoverer. The 1990s were the golden age for private individuals as computerized telescopes and electronic cameras became affordable and readily available. The number of catalogued asteroids increased slowly and by 1999 there were approximately 20,000 of them. During the next 15 years this number has increased nearly 50 times as the large surveys have come into operation. This has made it difficult but not impossible for amateurs and students to discover and name asteroids using their own equipment.

Due to thoughtless outdoor night lighting on the surface and satellites in space the natural night sky is becoming a vanishing treasure. From climate change to saving our natural night sky we must join together to prevent the thoughtless use of technology from damaging our environment.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski has discovered an Earth approaching comet that comes within 18 million miles of our home planet. It orbits the Sun every 5 and a half years on a path that takes it from a point between the Earth and Mars out to near the planet Jupiter. Even though it is unlikely to become a bright naked eye comet or a threat to us, its discovery alerts us to the fact that there are objects like this out there.

One of the perks of being an asteroid hunter is to discover a comet and have it carry your name. Teddy's first comet discovery is a member of a group of approximately 200 such small comets which circle the Sun with orbital periods of less than 20 years and whose paths are ruled by the largest planet in our solar system

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Its not Superman, its a meteoroid. Yes, a volleyball sized stoney meteoroid, which is typically traveling 15 to 60 times faster than a high powered rifle bullet, has 8 times the kinetic energy of a passenger diesel electric locomotive traveling at 100 miles per hour.

See Climate Change! Noctilucent Clouds exist at more than 50 miles above the Earth's surface or about 4 times higher than the tops of the most intense tropical thunder storms. Climate change has caused these once very rare clouds to become a common occurrence.

Recently I was observing with the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey 60 inch on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when I discovered a 200 foot diameter asteroid, 2014 SC324. It is in an orbit around the Sun which takes it from inside our planet's path to 60% of the way to Jupiter. This is an unusual Earth approaching space rock in that it gets bright enough to be imaged with a small telescope equipped with an electronic camera.

The International Asteroid Warning Network, or IWAN (Eye-Whan) for short has been established to link scientists who are discovering, monitoring, and physically characterizing potentially dangerous asteroids. In the future the coordinated efforts of IWAN members will indicate where to search for meteorites giving you a chance to hold a 3 to 5 billion year old traveler in the night.

Recently I discovered a small asteroid with the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon. This space rock is about 200 feet in diameter and will never get closer than 1/4 of the distance to the Moon. A friend asked what it would be like to witness the impact of such an object.

From 1663 to 2011, seven comets had close encounters with Jupiter and two had close encounters with Saturn. In May of 1936, Comet P/2020 F1 Leonard had a close encounter with Saturn. In the distant past, Comet Leonard was captured by Jupiter and is now part of the giant planet's family of comets.

Asteroid 2008 TC3 is the only asteroid which was observed to be hurtling between planets, flying through our atmosphere, and pieces of it found to be lying on the Earth's Surface. NASA funded, Catalina Sky Survey team member, Richard Kowalski discovered it 20 hours before it hit. Airline pilots spotted it flying through the sky. Eventually, searchers were rewarded with pieces of it on the sands of the Sudanese desert.

Images of the quiet Sun during a solar minimum make it look like a relatively static peaceful place. Occasionally during solar minimum, at the Cosmic Campground, in New Mexico, on a clear moonless night, you can easily see to walk around without a flashlight and with a DSLR camera photograph the sky which to the camera appears to be covered with orange and green cirrus clouds through which you can see the Milky Way.

India's Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM has made the 10 month journey from Earth to Mars. India joins the United States, Russia, and the European Space Agency in the exploration of the red planet by placing its Mangalyann [Mangle Yarn] spacecraft into orbit around Mars.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was observing in the constellation of Ursae Major with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted a rare fast moving point of light far north of the area in the sky which contains the planets and most of the asteroids.

Recently a semi-trailer trailer truck sized asteroid passed only 20,800 miles above the Earth's surface. It reached its closest distance to us about 6 days after it was discovered by team member, Richard Kowalski, of the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey. Fortunately it did not enter our atmosphere.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammates Kacper Wierzchos and Teddy Pruyne were asteroid hunting in the constellation of Virgo with our 60 inch telescope when they spotted a second natural Moon. Scientists predict there are hundreds smaller than softball sized and perhaps several dozen football to beachball sized, natural Earth mini moons, which have so far evaded detection. Stay tuned.

Imagine a world where people are never able to see the Milky Way or a meteor streaking like a falling star in the night sky. For most of the people living in the Earth's cities this has already happened. In the United States most people live in artificial light domes and in 10 years there will only a few places left at which to experience the natural wonders of the night sky.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Virgo when he spotted a fuzzy ball with a tail moving through the night sky. The small possibility that such frozen gas ball could come near Earth at a speed of more than 30 miles per second producing a bright naked eye comet gives us a sense of wonder as to what else could literally pop up out of nowhere .

Recently, Dr. Stephanie C. Werner of the University of Oslo in Norway and her colleagues have discovered the source of some of the Martian meteorites found on Earth. It is the 34 mile diameter Mojave Crater on Mars. The debris ejected from this impact event about 5 million years ago, orbited the Sun until one of the pieces fell to Earth and was discovered by humans in Antarctica.

Elizabeth William graduated from MIT in 1903 as one of the top students in physics and mathematics. As the head "human computer" at Lowell Observatory She used the motions of Uranus and Neptune to predict the location of Planet X. Elizabeth Williams died penniless at the age of 102 years. In 2020 a graduate student at Lowell Observatory, Catherine A. Clark, is finally giving Elizabeth Williams some of the recognition she deserves.

The NASA funded, University of Arizona, Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, AZ was used to discover two close approaching space rocks on the same night.Rest assured that the asteroid hunting community will keep track of these two new space rocks to make sure that neither of them become on a collision course with planet Earth as they pass other objects in space.

Asteroids which approach Earth from inside of our orbit about the Sun are often difficult to discover and may represent a unique threat to our home planet. My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered one of these stealthy asteroids with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow AZ as it streaked through the constellation of Libra at 13 miles/second. Fortunately it will not strike the Earth in the foreseeable future.

In the cold deserts of Antarctica nature collects meteorites as ice sheets carrying space rocks are pushed up against mountains. High speed winds remove the ice leaving dozens to hundreds of meteorites stranded in an area often as small as a football field.

The hunt is on for Earth like planets which are close enough for us to study in detail. The NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS for short, is observing nearby stars looking for planet revealing dips in brightness, which occurs when a planet passes between its star and our line of sight. Recently TESS discovered a planet, now named TOI 700 d , orbiting a red dwarf star in the constellation of Dorado about 100 light years away. What is it like?

Before artificial lighting many people knew the night sky the way humans of today know their favorite TV channels. There are still places where you can view the naturally appearing sky. There is a new accessible night sky viewing area in the Gila National Forest about 75 miles north and west of Silver City, New Mexico. It is called the Cosmic Campground. Check it out at cosmiccampground.org. It is one of the best places in the world to view the night sky in all of its beauty with the naked eye, a pair of binoculars or a telescope.

On his first night of solo observing with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos discovered 8 new Earth approaching objects. Theoretically Kacper's smallest discovery, a 20 foot diameter space rock, can pass close enough to Earth that it might enter our atmosphere producing a light show in the night sky and perhaps a few fragments for meteorite hunters to discover.

The history of our part of the Universe is written with a fine point in the space rocks which orbit our Sun. Some of them carry small grains of material from the cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system formed. They also carry clocks. Naturally occurring radio active potassium in space rocks decays into argon gas atoms which are trapped until the rock becomes molten. By measuring the potassium to argon ratio, Dr. Tim Swindle of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is able to determine the length of time since meteorites have solidified after an impact event.

SpaceX's new rockets fuel the dream of visiting some of the planet Mars' unique and spectacular wonders. Today you can visit the NASA Mars Curiosity Rover and/or the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter website and participate in the exploration of our next door neighbor. You could amaze yourself by discovering something new on one of the images of the surface of Mars. It happens.

About one out of a thousand meteorites that you find on Earth started out on the Moon. They were given escape velocity from the Moon as a result of the impact of an asteroid or comet. These lunar space rocks orbit the Sun or Earth and most of them eventually end on our planet.

Assuming the first potentially hazardous asteroid of 2020 has a chemical composition similar to the stony meteorites we find on Earth, it could contain about a million metric tons of metals like iron, nickel, platinum, gold, and other rare minerals and be worth 2.6 billion dollars on the terrestrial metals market.

From the dawn of recorded history, comets have been viewed as the bringers of everything from gloom and doom to water and life. In reality, comets are a sample of material which was present in the cloud of gas and dust which condensed to form our Sun and its planetary system. Until recently a comet's nucleus has remained a mystery enveloped in a veil of gas and dust.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Leo when he spotted a faint fuzzy looking object with a tail moving through the night sky. A recent scientific study suggests that in the next few thousand years, the process creating Carson's discovery could produce a comet 10 to 100 times more active than Halley's comet and be visible, to the humans who survive global warming, every 10 years or so.

Radar beams that are reflected from your car as you travel down a highway reveal your speed and direction. In a similar way, scientists using a telescope in Chile have discovered two planets orbiting a nearby reddish star by measuring the tiny motions they produce in their Sun as they orbit it.

A recently discovered asteroid spends most of its time high above the plane of the solar system far from our Sun. Unknown asteroids on such a path worry asteroid hunters since one could appear from out of nowhere and be on a collision path with planet Earth. Fortunately the odds that this will occur are vanishingly small. The prospect of a suddenly appearing dangerous celestial visitor keeps my team the Catalina Sky Survey going to our telescopes in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Az.

What would your day be like if you woke up and there were no functioning artificial Earth satellites? All of us have become used to finding our way with GPS satellites, watching satellite TV, obtaining up to date satellite weather information, and buying gas with a credit card which is processed with a satellite transaction. The geomagnetic disturbance from a mega solar flare could produce electronic equipment all over the world to fail. If the Carrington event (1859) occurred today, it would probably disable artificial satellites and disrupt power grids.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Teddy Pruyne, discovered a potentially dangerous and perhaps valuable asteroid with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, AZ as it streaked through the constellation of Leo. Though Teddy's discovery is unlikely to ever strike the Earth, someday, 2019 LZ1 may become a valuable source of raw materials for space colonists.

When a distant planet passes in front of its star some of the star's radiation goes through the planet's atmosphere. The pattern of colors or wavelengths which are present and missing tells us what is in the planet's atmosphere. The NASA Kepler Spacecraft has discovered more than a half dozen Earth like planets which pass between their star and the Earth. It appears likely that a way to discover pseudo intelligent life in the Universe is to search for pollution in their planet's atmosphere.

In 2019, asteroid hunters set a new record by discovering 2,433 Earth approaching objects including 85 which could potentially become a threat to planet Earth. Fortunately, none of these 2,433 nearby celestial neighbors, having an average diameter of 300 feet, is on a collision course with humanity.

Suppose that a space alien were so far from us that our Sun appears as a tiny point of light in it's night sky. What would the space alien receive if it pointed it's radio antennas at our Sun?

Over the past 50 years, in the interior of Australian meteorites, scientists have discovered a large variety of extraterrestrial organic substances. These include amino acids, sugars, alcohols, and a variety of aromatic hydrocarbons. Other meteorites have been found to contain vitamin B3 and even sugars leading to speculation that meteor bombardments could have brought life's ingredients to a sterile Earth.

In the 50 years that human made Travelers In The Night have been visiting the planet Mars we have discovered a wealth of interesting information about our neighbor in space. Mars has a surface which about the size of the land areas on Earth. It has has a climate which has changed dramatically over the eons. We have literally just begun to scratch its surface. NASA has begun planning for the Mars 2020 Rover which will based on the successful Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity Mars rovers.

Recently, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin's backyard all sky camera in Tucson, Arizona recorded a brilliant fireball meteor which took a leisurely 15 seconds to cross the entire sky. It was last seen by a trucker on Interstate 10 near Wilcox, Arizona as it headed in the direction of southwestern New Mexico.

If a space alien were to peer around the edge of the Moon from its base on the far side it could see our lights at night and perhaps even the smoke from our factories during the day. It could also pick up radio and TV signals created by humans. An interesting question is could a space alien detect planet Earth and learn something about it if it were so far away that our Sun were only a tiny point of light in its night sky?

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groeller was asteroid hunting, in the constellation of Hydra, with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he discovered a rather distant comet. On its current path it cannot get closer than four times the distance to our Sun from us, making it a very faint fuzzy ball with a tail in our night sky. This situation could change when 2019 V2 Groeller comes near to the giant planet Jupiter. Stay Tuned.

Currently, women are exploring the planet Mars. Dr. Joy Crisp is the Deputy Project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory. Nicole Spanovich is the Curiosity Mars Rover Science Operations Team Chief. There is also a whole team of women who have constructed a Mars like garden park in Pasadena California to exercise the rovers so that we know how to operate them on Mars. There are unnamed dozens of other women who are Professors, Graduate Students, Engineers, Computer Programmers, and Managers who are making the exploration of Mars a reality.

Recently a group of high inclination asteroids hiding in Jupiter's shadow have been identified. Encounters with the giant planet's gravity could cause some of them to experience orbital changes making them a threat to Earth. Stay tuned

Robert McNaught discovered a comet as it was traveling northward from under the plane of the Earth's orbit. He was observing at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales Australia. This object was tracked by telescopes all around the world and named Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring). It attracted attention as soon as it was realized that it would pass very close to the planet Mars in October of 2014. We have more to worry about a comets close approach today than humans did in 1910 when the Earth passed through the tail of Halley's comet.

Recent findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research suggests that there is more water locked in the minerals of nearby asteroids, which are easier to reach than the Moon, than could be found in ice deposits near the lunar poles. This asteroidal water combined with solar energy could provide space colonists with water to drink, air to breathe, and hydrogen and oxygen to fuel their rockets.

SpaceShipTwo will carry 6 passengers and two pilots and be launched from the 18,000 acre SpacePort America in New Mexico

At its closest point, a small space rock comes to only 1/3 of Mercury's average distance from the solar surface and receives 9 times the amount of solar energy which heats the planet Mercury to 800F. If it has the chemical composition of a stony meteorite it could contain a sizable amount of iron and in the future could be of interest to space colonists as a valuable source raw materials.

Water is essential to life on our planet. Recently, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was used to study 3 planets orbiting stars similar to our Sun. Astronomers divided the infrared light from these planets into its component colors to see which are present and which are missing. These data provide direct evidence of the amount of water which is present on each planet.

Nine hours after it was discovered a tiny, 4 foot in diameter, space rock streaked less than 4,000 miles above southern Africa as it passed through the cloud of communications satellites which surround our planet. If you are fortunate to witness such an event you would be treated to a spectacular light show and perhaps of a new sense of appreciation for Earth's atmosphere as it protects us from the dangers of space.

NASA's Deep Space Network is celebrating its 50th birthday. Australia, Spain, and California host its three sites. These facilities are spaced nearly evenly around the world to provide continuous communication with any spacecraft.

October of 2019 was a record breaking month for my team the Catalina Sky Survey during which we discovered 240 Earth approaching asteroids. This diverse collection of space rocks ranged in size from one that would fit into the bed of a small pickup truck to one which is more than 1/2 mile in diameter. Three of them can come closer to us than the communication satellites.

The Opportunity Rover has been joined by, a car sized robot, named Curiosity. So far it has found that ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. You can follow its journey on the NASA Curiosity website. What will it find next?

In ancient times, Aboriginal people in southwestern Australia quarried fine grained rock on an ancient hill called Barlangi Rock to make very sharp tools. Dr. Timmons Erickson, a NASA scientist at the Johnson Space Flight Center, led a team which discovered that the rocks the Aborigines used to make tools were formed by the impact which produced the 46 mile diameter Yarrabubba Crater. Over the course of history asteroid impacts have caused mass extinctions of some species while improving the chances of other living forms like mammals to flourish. It is sobering to realize that human caused global warming is causing more extinctions than any asteroid in history.

The NEOShield project is an international group of scientists and engineers from space faring nations. They are doing the detailed analysis and planning required to provide an effective means of dealing with an asteroid which is on a collision course with planet Earth. They are also studying the ways to protect us from falling man made space debris since it is a greater danger than asteroids.

In the space of less than 13 hours four small space rocks zipped through the Earth-Moon neighborhood. All of them were discovered by my team, the NASA funded, Catalina Sky Survey, before they made close approaches to our home planet.

A unique opportunity occurred in January of 2000, when a large meteoroid exploded and rained down pieces onto the frozen surface of Tagish Lake in British Columbia.Dr. Christopher Herd of the University of Alberta said that the first Tagish Lake samples were quickly collected from the frozen surface. They are the best preserved meteorite in the world. Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center commented that they are the closest thing in purity to those collected in a space sample and return mission.

On a clear but windy night, near the fall equinox, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was able to discover and verify 23 new Earth approaching objects as they passed through our celestial neighborhood.

Research indicates that Vitamin B3 can form on ice crystals in deep space. From there asteroids and comets can bring it to Earth. How rocks from space play into life as we know it remains a mystery for us to ponder.

An object the size of this huge space rock enters the Earth's atmosphere every 180,000 years with an energy of 5,800 megatons of TNT. The only place to survive would be in an underground bunker.

About 26 weeks after its discovery, astronomers in Australia were the first to notice that an asteroid was beginning to have a fuzzy appearance. Six weeks later, Damian Peach, in England, took a stunning image showing this object is a beautiful comet with a coma and a long tail. This type of frog to prince transformation shows that the distinction between an asteroid and a comet may change depending on the objects distance from the Sun.

During the monsoon rainy season, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate, Hannes Groeller took a vacation in his native Austria. Returning to begin the fall season of observing with our Schmidt Telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona, Hannes discovered 7 new Earth approaching asteroids in a single night.

Asteroid Hunters have discovered almost 900 Earth Approaching Asteroids whose impact could trigger global climate change. Fortunately none of them are on a collision course with planet Earth. Statistically we expect that there about another 100 out there. There are many more smaller ones whose impact would cause a hurricane sized area of devastation.

One of the most frustrating situations for an asteroid hunter is a night when the stars are shining bright above the mountain but the humidity is so high that it is impossible to open the telescope's dome without damaging sensitive optics and electronics.

Eric Christensen was observing with the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey Telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he discovered a bright fast moving object in the night sky. During the next 25 hours it was observed by telescopes in Arizona and France and given the name 2014 MH6. It orbits the Sun in a bit over 16 months on a path which goes from closer than Venus to out past Mars.2014 MH6 is slightly smaller than the asteroid whose airburst caused more than 1000 flying glass injuries in Russia in February of 2013.

On Earth plants provide us with medicines, food to eat, and oxygen to breathe. In the future, in addition to providing treats like strawberries it turns out that tending to the needs vegetables and watching them grow can help space travelers cope with the psychological stresses produced by the confinement experienced on long space missions.

Travelers In The Night from outer space are closer than you may imagine. If you were to go straight up more than 4 miles you would need supplementary oxygen to stay conscious. At 50 - 70 miles, the realm of meteors, humans require a full space suit to survive.During the year, there are a dozen major meteor showers. Check out the American Meteor Society website for a complete listing.

The race to explore the Moon by robots and eventually human lunar colonists is on. Near the lunar south pole human space colonists could use solar energy to power equipment and keep warm, manufacture needed items, and most importantly have water to drink as well as to use a raw material.

Several years ago the NASA funded Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Program discovered an SUV sized asteroid which comes closer to Earth than about 1/6 of the distance to the Moon. It was2011 MD's mass and size make it a good candidate for NASA's plans to use a robotic space craft to intercept and redirect a small asteroid into an orbit around our Moon.named 2011 MD. It remained a minor curiosity until the Spitzer Space Telescope spotted it again.

In the American southwest we welcome the Monsoon rainy season during which the Earth receives much needed moisture. However, after six weeks of clouds, thunder, rain, hail, and lightning asteroid hunters are glad to be on the sky again.

Imagine holding a rock as old as our solar system that has traveled billions of miles through space to reach its present location. It might even be worth real money. We are talking about a meteorite that you have just discovered.

In a most amazing turn of events, an international team of astronomers have published research in the Journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters which indicates that the a 3.9 Billion year old rock brought back by Apollo 14 astronauts is actually a lunar meteorite which originated on planet Earth.

2014 LJ21 is an asteroid, its brightness suggests that it is about 1 and a quarter miles in diameter. This estimate is based on the assumption that it reflects about 15% of the Sun light which strikes it. The impact of an asteroid this size would likely cause global climate change.

The Phoenicids are a minor meteor shower which was discovered by the first Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition on December 5, 1956. To spot the illusive Phoenicids for yourself plan to observe during their expected peak which occurs around December 5/6 each year.