Travelers In The Night

Elon Musk decided not to use a traditional mundane concrete block dummy payload for the first launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle to test his rockets lifting capabilities. After orbiting the Earth for 5 hours a third burn by the Falcon second stage placed a 2,750 pound payload consisting of a 2008 Tesla Roadster, Starman mannequin, Hot Wheels toy model roadster, electronic copy of Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, and plaque etched with the names of more than 6,000 Space X employees into orbit around the Sun. Surrealistic video from a camera mounted ahead of this unusual spacecraft showed the red roadster and its dummy pilot with the Earth in the background. My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard joined with astronomers around the world in tracking starman and his booster rocket. The JPL Horizons Software system used 269 such ground-based optical astrometric observations spanning Feb 8 through 13 of 2018 to determine that Tesla and Starman will cross the orbit of Mars on July 31, 2018 and reach it's furthest distance from the Sun on November 9, 2018 before coming back to it's closest point about the Sun near the Earth's orbit on August 14, 2019. After that Starman and Tesla will continue to orbit the Sun for millions of years to come as a physical testament to human ingenuity and our sense of humor.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammates  Josh Hogan and Alessandra Serrano were asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major when they discovered a fast moving point of light in the night sky. My team the Catalina Sky Survey operates 5 telescopes on top of mountains near Tucson, Arizona except for the 3 nights per month when the moon is too bright.  Our goal is to detect an impacting object like 2026 JH2 in advance to warn people in the effected area to stay away from doors and windows.

Using our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski was searching for Earth approaching asteroids in the constellation of Virgo when he discovered a moving point of light which had suddenly appeared and was about 40 times brighter than is typical for a near Earth asteroid. 75 hours later, scientists at the Minor Planet Center used data from 17 different observatories around the globe to calculate it's orbit around the Sun, estimate it's size to be 630 feet in diameter, and give it the name 2018 BT6. Three weeks before Richard discovered 2018 BT6, it was very dim with less than 1% of it's illuminated side facing us as it came from the direction of the Sun giving humans little advance notice as it approached us at a speedy 16.4 mi/s. In 2018 this relatively large space rock came to about 18 times the Moon's distance from us. In the future it's orbit can bring it to about 0.6 of the Moon's distance from us. According to the Purdue University and Imperial College of London's impact calculator, one it's size impacts the Earth every 300,000 years or so creating a crater in sedimentary rock 7 miles in diameter and 2,000 feet deep. Fortunately 2018 BT6 will not strike the Earth in the foreseeable future, however, it's discovery presents us with the fact that currently humans would have little advance warning of the impact of a relatively large space rock if it approached us from the direction of our Sun.

Asteroid hunters find asteroids by looking for objects which change their position relative to the stars.  If an asteroid happened to match the Earth’s motion it might appear stationary and thus be virtually undetectable until it is right on top of us. The trick is finding potentially dangerous asteroids at some other point in their orbit so we know about them before they have a chance to approach Earth. 

Most of the humans on planet Earth have never witnessed that the natural night sky is not dark; but rather it is alive with it's own lights. To see for yourself, pick a dark sky place near you like the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary from the International Dark Sky Association's website, darksky.org, and recruit a friend. Do a bit of research on how to achieve and sustain your night vision. Bring a red filtered flashlight, reclining lawn chair, star maps, binoculars, warm clothes, a telescope if you have one, and snacks. Keep on the look out for special events. The American Meteor Society's website will let you know when to expect meteor showers. Most humans have never seen the glowing light pyramid called the Zodiacal light which is produced by ice particles and dust in the solar system. In the northern hemisphere it is prominent in the evening sky in February, March and April. During the same months it lights up the predawn sky in the southern hemisphere. Star clusters scattered around the sky can be enjoyed with binoculars or a small telescope. New Moon's from May through October will provide you opportunities to explore the Milky Way with your naked eye or pair of binoculars. This adventure will fill you with wonder at what might be out there. Last but not least Mars will dominate the night sky during much of 2018 as it and the Earth come near to each other. For a time in late July of 2018 Mars will even outshine the giant planet Jupiter in the night sky.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Josh Hogan was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major with our small but mighty Schmidt telescope when he spotted a fast moving point of light in a set of his images and posted his observations on the  Near Earth Object Confirmation Page or NEOCP for short. The NASA Sentry software system automatically scans the NEOCP and from the initial observations of Josh’s discovery predicted there was a tiny minuscule but non zero chance that it could impact our home planet in the next 100 years. Asteroid hunters were able to show that 2026 GB is not a threat only after they had accumulated enough data to accurately determine its orbit which demonstrates that planetary defense is by necessity an international effort.

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. Comet P/2017 Y3 (Leonard) orbits the Sun once every 31 years on a highly elliptical path which takes it from between the orbits of Earth and Mars out to almost the planet Uranus's average distance from the Sun. Since it has been observed for only a very short piece of it's path about the Sun, it is not possible to accurately predict Comet Leonard's location very far into the future. In 2017 and 2018 it appeared as a faint fuzzy point of light in the night sky and never came came closer than about 150 million miles from Earth. Comet Leonard's next visit to our neighborhood will be in 2033 or 2034. At some point in the future it's orbit could bring much closer to Earth as it comes into the inner solar system about twice every human lifetime. Greg's comet is classified as a Halley family comet and although it is difficult to predict how a comet will brighten as it approaches the Sun, it is unlikely that it will ever become as bright as it's famous cousin. That situation could change when Comet Leonard comes near the giant planet Jupiter. In the past Jupiter has sent Comets in our direction or ejected them from the solar system. Only time will tell.For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.

The visually stunning Lunar Crater Pierazzo, named for the late Planetary Scientist Elizabeth “Betty” Pierazzo was observed by the Artemis II Crew as they passed over the Moon’s far side.  It is a 5.9 mile diameter crater with white streaks or rays which extend more than 50 miles in all directions.

Most asteroids are located in the lonely space between Mars and Jupiter where the average distance between two asteroids is about 600,000 miles. Even though there is a tremendous space between asteroids they occasionally collide and pieces of them become Earth approaching objects. Most of them remain close to the plane of the solar system, however, a few are sent on paths which take them into the extremely lonely space high above and far below the orbits of the planets about the Sun. In 2017, my team, the Catalina Sky Survey, discovered 13 of these loneliest asteroids whose paths are tilted more than 45 degrees to the plane of the solar system. They have an average diameter about 4 times larger than that of the 987 asteroids we discovered in 2017. Even though 13 is a small sample it is interesting to speculate what this size difference could mean. In 2013, astronomers used the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to discover that main belt asteroids with orbits which are highly inclined to the plane of the solar system tend to be larger and made of stronger materials than those asteroids which reside in the plane of the solar system. They attribute these differences to the collisions which must have occurred to send asteroids into highly inclined orbits about the Sun. If this result applies to the lonely near Earth asteroids we discovered then perhaps they are made of very strong materials and could be of particular interest to asteroid miners.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Josh Hogan has discovered a 2 football field diameter asteroid that was placed on NASA’s Sentry list because it has a tiny minuscule but non-zero chance of impacting our home planet. With this motivation my team the Catalina Sky Survey, the Pan STARRS group in Hawaii,  the ATLAS group with telescopes Hawaii, Chile, and South Africa , the Vera C. Rubin telescope in Chile, will be soon joined NASA’s NEO Surveyor and groups world wide in a planet wide defense network.

Asteroids appear as moving points of light in an asteroid hunter's images so that when my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Alex Gibbs spotted a fuzzy moving object he immediately suspected it to be a comet. The data obtained by astronomers over the next 8 days enabled scientists at the Minor Planet Center to verify Alex's 31st comet discovery and give it the name C/2018 A6 (Gibbs). In January of 2018 it was in the constellation of Leo traveling from the vast empty space above the Sun's north pole toward the plane of the solar system which contains all of the planets and most of the asteroids. In March of 2018 Comet C/2018 A6 (Gibbs) will cross the plane of the solar system a bit farther from the Sun than the giant planet Jupiter's orbit. After that it will continue on a wide arcing parabolic path, pass under the Sun's south pole in the summer of 2019, and once again cross the plane of the solar system in February of 2021. After that it will continue into the vast empty space above the Sun's north pole from whence it came. How a comet brightens as it approaches the Sun is difficult to predict. With luck humans will be able to spot Comet C/2018 A6 (Gibbs) with their naked eye, binoculars, or a small telescope as it pays a rare visit to our planet's neighborhood.

On St. Patrick’s day 2026 a fireball meteor brighter than the full moon streaked across the daytime sky.  The American Meteor Society received 223 eyewitness reports from observers in 15 states, the District of Columbia, and Ontario Canada as well as 5 videos and 6 photos.  NASA reported that the incoming object was approximately 6 feet in diameter, weighed about 7 tons, released the energy of 250 tons of TNT, created a sonic boom heard over a wide area , and rained bits of itself onto the ground in Medina county Ohio. 

Most small asteroids are likely to be rubble piles of small rocks and dust loosely held together by their weak force of gravity while others may be made of ices of various substances. A few are solid objects which may contain metals like iron and nickel as well as gold, silver, and platinum. As they whiz by us it is hard to tell much about them from their overall brightness and distance from us. In 2017 my team the Catalina Sky Survey found 21 asteroids having an average diameter of 750 feet which pass closer to the Sun than the planet Mercury. They must be made of very tough rocky material since they regularly receive more solar energy than heats the surface of Mercury to 800F. Over the centuries this repeated baking has likely removed all of their water and other volatile materials leaving only rocky metallic minerals. The largest of this group of tough guys is the half mile in diameter asteroid 2017 VV14 which orbits the Sun once every 3.4 years and can come to about 20 times the Moon's distance from us. The smallest is the 30 foot diameter tiny asteroid 2017 RQ17 which orbits the Sun once every 214 days on a path that brings it close to Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Our Moon. Based on known terrestrial deposits many of the key elements required for modern industry and food production such as phosphorus, antimony, silver, gold, and copper could be exhausted on Earth in the next 50 to 60 years. Perhaps in the future humans will mine tough asteroids for the materials they need.

My team the Catalina Sky Survey has pioneered searching for asteroids coming from the direction of the dark side of the moon. 

The beautiful star cluster the Pleiades in the constellation of Tauris is about 100 million years old making it one of the youngest objects that you can see in the natural night sky. Data obtained by observing Oumuamua (“Oh-moo-ah-moo-ah”), the first object humans have identified which is definitely from outside of our solar system suggests that it is an icy body with a red, rock appearing shell, of carbon rich organic material. By tracing Omuamua's path for millions of years into the past, Dr. Fabo Feng of the University of Hertfordshire , found that it's slow speed in the vicinity of 5 stars in the Pleiades suggests that it was ejected from one of them. Check out the Pleiades with your unaided eye, binoculars or a small telescope and contemplate the messengers it might be sending our way.

A start up company Reflect Orbital is proposing to launch 50,000 satellite mirrors by 2035 to illuminate solar panels on Earth all night long. This would be devastating for human sleep cycles, birds, insects, plants  and many of the biological systems of organisms on which we all depend. 

The mysterious Earth approaching object Phaethon (FAY-eh-thon) does not fit neatly into our definition of either an asteroid or a comet. Further it appears to be like the Peanuts character Pigpen in that it leaves a trail of dust and other fine debris in it's wake which in the case of Phaethon produces the Geminid Meteor Shower to delight us every year around Christmas time. Phaethon is amazing in that every 524 days it makes a death defying flight to a point less than one of half of the planet Mercury's distance from the Sun, where it's surface temperature reaches a mind boggling 1,200 Fahrenheit. During one of these events the NASA Stereo Spacecraft A discovered that Phaethon had rock dust tail.

However, according to a recent research project, the Rubin Observatory will discover but not give an adequate warning time for objects destined to hit the Earth. To provide time to take action to deflect an incoming object we will need to rely on ground based telescopes used by my Catalina Sky Survey teammates and other asteroid hunting groups as well as NASA’s NEO Surveyor satellite when it is launched.

Often observers report hearing a percussive sound, like a sonic boom from an aircraft, minutes after viewing a bright meteor fireball. In addition, in a fewer number of instances, there are many reliable reports of observers hearing popping, hissing, and rustling sounds at the same time they are observing a very bright meteor traveling though the night sky. Professional astronomers have long dismissed these reports saying that what these people hear simultaneously with their visual observations cannot be due to to sound traveling from the meteors path since sound travels 800,000 times slower than light and would take 1.5 to 4 minutes to traverse the distance that the light does in a tiny fraction of a second. 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. One theory is that the flickering bright light produced in the meteor's path is absorbed by by hair or other material near the observer's ears producing acoustic sound waves. An alternate hypothesis is that as the meteor streaks through our atmosphere it ionizes air molecules whose motion in the Earth's magnetic field generates radio waves which travel to objects near to the observer causing them to vibrate and thus produce sound. Either way observers with large amounts of hair or those near metallic objects like barbed wire fences are the most likely to hear these strange unusual sounds. 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. For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.© 2026. A. D. Grauer

Some of the 635,000 impact craters found on Mars are the result of such violent impacts that pieces of Mars are ejected, travel around the solar system, and a few become one of the several hundred Martian meteorites which have been discovered here on Earth. An experiment is described which does not prove we are descendants of martian bacteria however it does improve our ability to protect our planet and understand where life may be possible elsewhere in the universe.

389E-426-Rose Rules Again Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rose Matheny discovered 8 new Earth approaching object candidates on a single night with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona. One of them, 2017 YO is a mile and a half diameter, main belt asteroid, while the other 7 are interesting Earth approaching objects. Another one of Rose's single night discoveries is 2017 YM1. When Rose first spotted it this space rock was moving rapidly north, at 6.9 miles per second, away from the Earth in the constellation of Ursae Major. About 5 days earlier it had passed near both the Earth and Our Moon at which time it was too far south to be seen from Arizona. This space rock is about 92 feet in diameter, orbits the Sun once every 2.25 years, and can come to less than a tenth of the Moon's distance from us. 2017 YM1 is about 1.5 times larger than the Chelyabinsk (Shell ya binsk) meteor which in 2013 broke many thousands of windows and injured 1,200 people. According to Perdue University's impact calculator, a space rock like 2017 YM1 enters the Earth's atmosphere once every hundred years or so with an energy of 250 kilotons of TNT, explodes into a cloud of fragments at about 73,000 feet, rains pieces onto the ground, and produces a sonic boom that would get your attention as it breaks a lot of windows. Asteroid hunter's goal is to discover any such impactor days before it enters the Earth's atmosphere so that people can be warned to stay away from doors and windows. For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.© 2026 A. D. Grauer

Asteroids could provide a solution for the serious problem of how to protect astronauts from harmful solar and cosmic radiation during long duration space flights and thus eliminate the need for the spacecraft itself to have heavy shielding material. The idea is for the spacecraft to spend most of the journey inside the asteroid.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was searching for Earth approaching objects with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he discovered an interesting new comet moving through the constellation of Leo. After Greg posted his discovery observations on the Minor Planet Center's Near Earth Confirmation Page it was observed over the next 3 weeks by 10 different observatories around the world. These data were used to calculate the details of the new object's 51 year path around the Sun and give it the name Comet C/2017 W2 (Leonard) . Greg's newly discovered comet's orbital plane is almost at a right angle to paths of the planets and most of the asteroids so that it spends most of it's time in the lonely space high above or far below the rest of the members of our solar system. Riding with Comet C/2017 W2 (Leonard) would bring a space traveler into the inner solar system about once per human lifetime. Greg's comet receives only mild solar heating since at it's closest it is about 3 times further from the Sun than we are making it unlikely to ever be bright for human observers. At it's furthest from the Sun, Comet Leonard is in a very cold region, receives less than 1% solar energy than we do, and and likely to have a surface temperature of about -300 degrees Fahrenheit. Greg's comet is likely to remain as it is for eons since it spends so much of it's time far from the Sun and the gravitational tugs of most of the rest of the members of our solar system.© 2026. A. D. Grauer

Looking into a star filled sky at a place like the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary in New Mexico inspires a person to wonder if our home planet is unique in the Universe. To begin to answer this question, NASA launched the small satellite Pandora on January 11, 2026 . It is on at least a one year long mission to study the chemical composition of more than 20 planets orbiting nearby stars in the Milky Way.The Pandora satellite’s results will hopefully include a list of potentially habitable planets to be observed the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe.

Winter nights can be exhausting, productive, as well as sometimes frustrating for asteroid hunters. At the Sixty Inch Telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, near winter solstice, the night's observing starts at 6:30 PM and continues till after 6 AM which combined with start up and end tasks makes the asteroid hunter's work "day" more than 13 hours long. On such a recent long winter work night, my Catalina Sky Survey Teammate, Carson Fuls discovered an impressing total of 18 new Earth approaching objects. On the other hand on the next 3 night shift, I was treated to one night which was clear followed by two nights which were dominated by the first big snow storm of the season. The best nights are clear, cold, and calm with asteroid images which are small intense points of light. Such a night is said to have good seeing. Nights which are clear but have bad seeing with fuzzy star and asteroid images due to atmospheric turbulence and high winds makes the discovery of faint objects virtually impossible. High winds can and do shake the telescope producing double images of every object. Nights which consist of sporadic clear holes in the clouds also yield few new discoveries. Fishing what we call "sucker holes" in the clouds is very frustrating since it is hard to verify a new discovery under such conditions. Then there are the nights which are perfectly clear but we have to keep the dome closed because of the snow on it. Then there are those nights which are clear with good seeing from start to finish 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. For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.© 2026 A. D. Grauer

In 2007 a small icy object moving in the constellation of Ursa Minor crossed the orbit of Pluto at a speed of approximately 4.2 mi/s starting its journey towards the inner solar system. It was between the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter traveling at some 9 mi/s towards the Sun, when my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Dr. Kacper Wierzchoś discovered it on March 3, 2024, while asteroid hunting, in the constellation of Draco, with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. Kacper studies comets passionately was thus excited to observe that it has a coma and a tail.On its way out of the solar system, in 2045, Kacper's COMET C/2024 E1 (Wierzchos) will cross the orbit of Pluto heading in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major and is destined to wander between stars in the Milky Way till the end of time.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate David Rankin was asteroid hunting in the evening twilight with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon Arizona when he spotted an unknown object in the constellation of Lyra. The largest telescopes on Earth will likely track David's discovery until it becomes too faint to observe in 2027 and catch it again when it again becomes bright enough to track in 2050. Fortunately it is extremely unlikely that it will strike Earth when it again comes close to our home planet in 2052.

It is possible the object creating the Tunguska event in Russia 1908 which knocked down 80 million trees over an area about twice the size of New York City was a fragment of a comet or asteroid. The International Asteroid Warning Network 2025 campaign to track Comet 3L/Atlas prepares the worlds observatories for the eventual time when a comet fragment has our number on it.