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Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer

travelers-in-the-night

Title: Travelers in the Night Eps.  521 & 522: Lunar Space Rock & Comets Africano

Organization: Travelers in The Night

Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus

Description: Today’s 2 topics:

  • More than 340 lunar meteorites have been found in the Darfur region of Oman, in antarctica and other locations.
  • Brian Africano discovered 2 comets in a 13 night period. C/2018 V4 (Africano) & C/2018 W2 (Africano)

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:

521: Lunar Space Rock

More than 340 Lunar meteorites have been found in the Dhofar region of Oman, on the LaPaz Icefield of Antartica, and other locations on the Earth’s surface. These traveling space rocks were blasted from the Moon’s surface by the impact of an asteroid or comet which accelerated them to speeds greater than the lunar escape velocity of 1.5 miles per second. Subsequently these interplanetary travelers in the night orbited the Sun for an extended period of time before entering our atmosphere and falling to Earth. We know these meteorites are from the Moon because they contain mixtures of atoms which are found on the Moon but not in Earthly rocks. 

Recently, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Growler discovered an Earth approaching asteroid which has a speed consistent with it being ejected from the Moon by the impact of an asteroid or comet long ago. Its name is 2018 WV1. This small space rock is approximately 10 feet in diameter and orbits the Sun once every  387 days. When Hannes first spotted it, 2018 WV1 was about 1.5 times the Moon’s distance from him and was moving at a speed 1.24 miles/second relative to planet Earth.   69 hours after Hannes discovered it,  this small space rock passed closer than the communication satellites are from us.   Given its slow speed relative to Earth a human made rocket could catch 2018 WV1 and discover that it was indeed blasted from our moon by an asteroid or comet  impact. 

522: Comets Africano

Recently, with in a space of only 13 nights, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Brian Africano discovered two comets.  Brian found his first, Comet C/2018 V4 (Africano), while asteroid hunting in the constellation of Orion with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. This frozen ball of primitive solar system material orbits the Sun about once every 4,000 years or so. During Comet C/2018 V4 Africano’s last visit to the inner solar system humans were erecting the outer ring at Stonehenge. At the rate human’s are changing the Earth’s climate who can guess what will be happening on Earth when this comet returns in about 6,000 AD.  

Brian’s second comet was  discovered and reported independently to the Minor Planet Center by my Catalina Sky Survey teammates Brian Africano and Hannes Growler who were at different telescopes on mountain tops 10 miles from each other.   Unaware of each other’s discovery Brian’s report got there first and the comet was named C/2018 W2(Africano).  When this comet was last near Earth 20,000 years ago humans were making pottery vessels in China and leaving artifacts near Canberra, Australia. Although comet magnitudes are difficult to predict, when C/2018 W2 (Africano) comes closest to Earth in late September of 2019 it is likely to be visible as a faint dust cloud in small telescopes in the constellation of Pegasus. After that it will travel into deep space on an orbit that will not bring it back to our neighborhood till 22,000 AD.

For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer

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