Travelers In The Night

During the only 3 clears hours of his first night solo as an asteroid hunter, my new Catalina Sky Survey teammate Brian Africano discovered two new Earth approaching asteroids with our Schmidt Telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona. Since one of Brian's discoveries is almost 300 feet in diameter, astronomers at 18 different observatories around the world stayed on it for more than 68 hours, after Brian posted his discovery observations, to determine a reasonable orbit for it.

Comet 220P/McNaught orbits the Sun once every 5.5 years on a path which is between Mars and Jupiter. At that extreme distance, more than 1.5 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun, it still receives a significant amount of solar radiation. In 2026 Comet 220P/McNaught had an outburst which caused it to brighten 600 times in about 13 hours and then to continue to brighten to about 8,000 times brighter than in was in its pre-outburst state.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls was observing, in the constellation Lynx, with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona , when within the space of only 35 minutes, he discovered two small space rocks well before they made very close approaches to Earth. 79 hours after Carson discovered the first, 2018 CB, this approximately 70 foot diameter space rock passed about 1/5 of the Moon's distance from us. Turns out that the second of Carson's duo, an approximately 50 foot diameter space rock got near us first, when 62 hours after Carson discovered 2018 CC, it came to less than 1/2 of the Moon's distance from the surface of planet Earth. Since we didn't have a large enough, properly equipped telescope to measure the pattern of colors each of Carson's discoveries reflects from the Sun we can only estimate their physical sizes and guess at their densities and chemical compositions. In any event, if either of these space rocks were to strike the Earth they would likely explode at an altitude about 100,000 feet above the Earth's surface, releasing the energy of tens of thousands of pounds of TNT, producing a spectacular light show. Both of Carson's discoveries could be similar to the space rock which exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia breaking windows, injuring nearly 1,500 people, and producing numerous fragments which made it to the ground. If either of Carson's discoveries had been on an impact trajectory with Earth, asteroid hunters would have had time to warn people in the effected area to stay away from doors and windows.

In an experiment that will involve all of the residents of planet Earth SpaceX has asked the FCC for permission to launch 1 million satellites into low Earth orbit to create a solar powered data center. Since the agriculture which produces our food is very sensitive to weather and climate it is important to conduct serious research about the effect of a mega constellation of satellites before allowing such a project to produce changes to the environment we don’t understand.

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.