Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Eps. Eps. 515 & 516: Dust Moons & Space Weather
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- In 1961, a Polish astronomer, Kazimierz Kordylewski, reported the discovery of dust clouds at the Earth-Moon L4 and L5 points.
- The Sun’s surface has bubbles off hot ionized gas which are expelled into space forming the solar wind.
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.
Today’s sponsor: Big thanks to our Patreon supporters this month: Dustin A Ruoff, Brett Duane, Kim Hay, Nik Whitehead, Timo Sievänen, Michael Freedman, Paul Fischer, Rani Bush, Karl Bewley, Joko Danar, Steven Emert, Frank Tippin, Steven Jansen, Barbara Geier, Don Swartwout, James K. Wood, Katrina Ince, Michael Lewinger, Phyllis Simon Foster, Nicolo DePierro.
Please consider sponsoring a day or two. Just click on the “Donate” button on the lower left side of this webpage, or contact us at signup@365daysofastronomy.org.
Or please visit our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy
Transcript:
515: Dust Moons
In a dance of unequal partners the Earth and Moon orbit a common center of gravity which itself travels about the Sun. Leading and trailing the moon’s twisted path by 60 degrees, are the L4 and L5 Lagrange points, where gravitational forces create a bowl in space time in which an object will remain until it is disturbed. In 1961, a Polish astronomer, Kazimierz [kas za meriz] Kordylewski [kor dy lew ski] , reported the discovery of dust clouds at the Earth-Moon L4 and L5 points. These Kordylewski dust moons are exceptionally faint and hard to detect raising skepticism as to their very existence.
In November of 2018 a team of astronomers led by Dr. Judit Sliz-Balogh [Bal oh] of Eötvös [uvos] Loránd University in Hungary published a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society detailing calculations predicting the likely transient existence of the Kordylewski dust moons. To detect these faint extended dust clouds Sliz-Balogh’s team took long exposure images with a polarizing filter system, camera lens, and CCD detector attached to a telescope pointed at the L5 Earth-moon point. What they found and report in a second article in the same Journal are two large ghostly neighbors approximately 65,000 by 45,000 miles in size at the L4 and L5 sites approximately 250,000 miles from both the Earth and Moon.
516 – Space Weather
Space is not all that far away. Traveling straight up, long before you reached an altitude of 20 miles above the Earth’s surface, you would need a pressurized space suit to survive. At an altitude of 70 miles you would find yourself in the realm of meteors and space weather. At first glance, the Sun appears peaceful and constant. In reality its surface has bubbles of hot ionized gas which are expelled into space forming the solar wind. This million tons per second river is a steady stream of particles traveling away from the Sun at from 800,000 to 5 million miles per second.
The Earth’s magnetic field protects us from this potentially lethal radiation, however, occasionally the effects of a solar outburst can reach the surface of our planet. On March 9, 1989, 6 million people lost electric power in Quebec, when a powerful geomagnetic storm was created by a coronal mass ejection following very large flare on the solar surface. If a twice as powerful solar eruption in 2012 had happened a week earlier, the blast of radiation would have caused wide spread power blackouts disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket as well as the water and sewer systems which rely on electric pumps. As luck would have it in 2012 the billions of tons of plasma solar burp tore through the Earth’s orbit when we weren’t there. For the latest in what is happening above you check out spaceweather.com
For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
=====================
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Planetary Science Institute. Audio post-production by Richard Drumm. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes.
This show is made possible thanks to the generous donations of people like you! Please consider supporting to our show on Patreon.com/365DaysofAstronomy and get access to bonus content.
After 10 years, the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast is entering its second decade of sharing important milestone in space exploration and astronomy discoveries. Join us and share your story. Until tomorrow! Goodbye!