Travelers In The Night

In the space of only four days, my Catalina Sky Survey teammates, Brian Africano, Alex Gibbs, and Greg Leonard, discovered three Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. Searching for such a large space rock on an impact trajectory with planet Earth is what keeps my team, the Catalina Sky Survey, going to our four telescopes, 24 nights per month, when the moon isn't too bright, in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson Arizona.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Alessandra Serrano was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Cetus with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when a rapidly moving unknown object streaked through a set of her images on its way to impact 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.

A fascinating research paper suggests the possibility that there is an exchange of chemical elements, organic molecules, and potentially life’s precursors between star systems. Could it be possible that microorganisms or complex organic molecules could hitch a ride inside rocky meteorites ejected from a living planet? If so living organisms in our neighborhood of the Milky Way might be related to each other.

Theoretically, If an asteroid on a collision course with our planet could be slowed sufficiently it could be made to pass behind our planet as it orbits the Sun.