Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Digest: 301 & 302 : Visitors From Afar & Sensing A Comet
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- Rose Matheny discovered two asteroid within a 4 day period of time. Both of them C/2016 T1 (Matheny) and C/2016 T2 (Matheny) are likely to be first time visitors to the inner solar system
- Ekaterina Smirnova has employed the spectroscopy, magnetometry, and molecular data collected by the Rosetta spacecraft to create watercolor paintings, sculptures, a musical collaboration, and an augmented reality project to create the smell of comet
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Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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Transcript:
301 – Visitors From Afar
One of the perks of being an asteroid hunter is having a comet named for you. To do this you must be the first to discover it as a moving point of light in the night sky and at the same time recognize that it is a comet by observing the coma and tail which are names for the clouds of gas and dust that surrounds it.
After being on the lookout for a comet for sometime, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rose Matheny discovered two of them within a 4 day period of time. Both of them C/2016 T1 (Matheny) and C/2016 T2 (Matheny) are likely to be first time visitors to the inner solar system. These two comets have quite different paths which are both inclined at large angles to the paths of the planets about the Sun. In addition, both of them are traveling at very close to the escape velocity from our solar system and have uncertain orbital periods around the Sun which are likely to be thousands of times the age of the Universe.
Both of Roses’s new comets will come closest to the Sun in 2017 and not be closer to us than about 1.5 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun. Roses’s two new travelers in the night most likely came from the Oort cloud of distant frozen objects located some 10,000 to 50,000 times further from the Sun than we are. They were probably nudged out of their previous distant orbits by the gravity of a nearby star. Roses’s two new comets are about as eternal as any material that we know about and will be so far away that they will be untouched when the Sun turns into a red giant and incinerates the Earth billions of years from now. Perhaps one of our descendants will pass one of them on their way to a nearby by star.
302 – Sensing a Comet
More than 400 years ago Galileo Galilei expanded human vision using a telescope to view the cosmos. Since then humans have extended their senses to view the Universe in x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, radio, and other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum not accessible to our senses.
In a pioneering effort, Ekaterina Smirnova has employed the spectroscopy, magnetometry, and molecular data collected by the Rosetta spacecraft to create watercolor paintings, sculptures, a musical collaboration, and an augmented reality project to create new art forms. She has also taken Rosetta data obtained from it’s close up observations of comet 67P to create interactive art which uses a smart phone app to experience scientific results in a completely new way.
Using the chemical composition of comet 67P obtained with Rosetta’s mass spectrometer Ekaterina and her collaborators have produced the smell of the comet. In addition she collaborated with musicians and sound engineers using Rosetta data to produce a musical composition which tells the story of how comets travel through the solar system on their own cycles releasing dust, water vapor, and organic molecules into space. The piece uses 67P’s magnetic field oscillation frequencies, the human heart beat, and the sounds of the ocean to stimulate the ways in which comets transport and deposit life’s ingredients through out the Universe.
Ekaterina Smirnova is connecting real scientific results with the senses to explore new dimensions in which to experience the wonders of the Universe.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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