Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Eps. 511&512: Geomagnetic Storms & Aten
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- A Sky Quality Meter installed by Dr. Grauer has confirmed that the Sun has entered a deep solar minimum, which enables strong geomagnetic storms.
- While observing in the constellation of Perseus with the Catalina Sky Survey’s 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon 2018 UY1 appeared in one of my sets of images.
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:
512 – Aten
While observing in the constellation of Persus with the Catalina Sky Survey’s 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon a fast moving point of light appeared in one of my sets of images. It was subsequently tracked by telescopes in Arizona, Croatia, Illinois, Hawaii, Ukraine, and Italy. Scientists at the Minor Planet Center used these data to calculate its 303 day long orbital period about the Sun, estimate its diameter to be 174 feet, and give it the name 2018 UY1. This space rock is classified as an Aten asteroid since it crosses the Earth’s orbit twice a year on a path on which it spends most of its time closer to the Sun than we are.
Atens are relatively rare and account for only 7.4 % of the known Earth approaching asteroids. 15 days after I discovered it, 2018 UY1 came to about seven and half times the Moon’s distance from us traveling at 5 mi/sec. Although, currently, 2018 UY1 can never come closer than about 3.2 lunar distances from the surface of Earth, one of its size strikes the Earth every 540 years or so releasing the energy of 500 kilotons of TNT. Many of the 1,300 Atens are classified as potentially hazardous. Asteroid hunters need to be vigilant so that an Aten asteroid doesn’t sneak up on us. These stealthy space rocks can be dim and hard to detect since for most of their path about the Sun since their illuminated side is facing away from us.
For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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