On March 3, 2024 my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Kacper Wierzchos was asteroid hunting with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he spotted a fuzzy object in the constellation of Draco. After Kacper reported his discovery to the Minor Planet Center, observers in Arizona, New Mexico, and Tenerife confirmed it to be a comet and it was given the name C/2024 E1 (Wierzchos). Kacper’s discovery has a hyperbolic orbit indicating that after coming slightly closer to the Sun than the planet Venus on January 21, 2026 it will be ejected from the solar system never to return.
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335E-354-Returnee
On May 5, 2014 when I discovered 2014 JO25 with the Catalina Sky Survey's 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona it was the brightest, fastest asteroid I had ever seen. In April of 2017, 2014 JO25 returned to come within 1.1 million miles of us at 21 mi/s. This rare, very close approach by an asteroid, of 2014 JO25's size allowed scientists at NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar in California and the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to obtain radar images of it. Amazingly these images showed that what we had observed as a solitary moving point of light and had assumed to be a single asteroid is actually two asteroids in contact with each other. This tight pair rotates about a common center of gravity about every 5 hours which in turn orbits the Sun in about three years. 41 days before its encounter with Earth, this tight pair was closer to the Sun than the planet Mercury.
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847-Ultra Distant Comet
My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Gröller was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major with the University of Arizona 90 inch Bok telescope on Kitt Peak when he discovered a faint moving object surrounded by a tiny gas and dust cloud called a coma. May 19, 2028 comet C/2025 D1 (Groeller) reaches its closest point to the Sun some 14.1 times the Earth-Sun distance and thus sets the record for the comet which stays furtherest from the Sun.After rounding the Sun comet C/2025 D1 (Groeller) will head back into truly deep space perhaps never to return.
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334E-353-Backwards
Using the University of Arizona's Large Binocular Telescope atop Mt. Graham in southern Arizona, Dr. Paul Wiegert of Western University in Canada, led a team of astronomers who have determined that a 2 mile diameter object bucks the solar system traffic by traveling in a direction backwards to all of the planets. In their March 30, 2017 article in the journal Nature, these astronomers confirm that 2015 BZ509, travels about Jupiter on a path in a direction opposite to nearly every other member of our solar system. Amazingly it has avoided a collision with Jupiter by using the giant planet's gravity to maintain a path that has been stable for a million years or so. This astounding trick is performed as 2015 BZ509 passes once inside and once outside of Jupiter's orbit as they both travel about the Sun. The resulting effect of Jupiter's timely gravitational pulls on this small asteroid are exactly right to keep it from having a collision or from being ejected from the solar system.
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846-Bright Nights
One little known and infrequently observed phenomenon in the natural night sky are “bright nights” during which observers have reported being able to read a book when both the Sun and Moon are both well below the horizon.
A real "Science Snack" for anyone who is interested in the extraterrestrial.Dr. Al Grauer is a member of the Catalina Sky Survey which has led the world in near Earth asteroid discoveries for 17 of the past 19 years.The music is "Eternity" by John Lyell.Astronomy Asteroids Space NASA Comets Earth Impact Aliens
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