Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Eps. 527 & 528: Comet Groeller & Asteroid Billiards
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- Hannes Groeller discovered his first comet: Comet P/2019 B2 (Groeller).
- NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART for short, will slam a projectile into the 525 foot diameter, Didymoon, of the asteroid Didymos when it comes near us in 2022.
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:
527 – Comet Groeller
My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groeller was asteroid hunting with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona when he discovered his first comet. When Hannes first spotted it, this giant dirty snowball, surrounded by gases evaporated by the Sun, was moving in the constellation of Hydra, 153 million miles from Earth. For two weeks after Hannes’ observations were posted on the Minor Planet Center’s Near Earth Object Confirmation Page, his discovery was observed by telescopes at 18 observatories around the world. These data allowed scientists at the Minor Planet Center to determine the details of its 7.55 year long orbit about the Sun and give it the name Comet P/2019 B2 (Groeller). Comet Groeller is classified to be one of the nearly 600 known Jupiter Family comets and is likely to have originated in the Oort cloud far from the Sun.
A collision long ago sent it on a path into the inner solar system. Comet Groeller could have been placed into its current orbit by an interaction with one of the solar systems giant planets Jupiter or Saturn. Comet P/2019 B2 (Groeller) is likely to remain dim, below naked eye visibility, and only be observable with a telescope and an electronic camera. After the Sun bakes out all of the frozen gasses, Hannes’s Comet, will lose its coma and tail and become indistinguishable from one of the millions of main belt asteroids orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
528 – Asteroid Billiards
As the Earth moves about the Sun it covers the distance corresponding to its diameter every 7 minutes. When asteroid hunters discover a large space rock with our number it, a possible way to make it miss humanity is to slow it slightly, delaying the its arrival, and thus giving Earth time move out of the dangerous object’s path before it arrives. A step in that direction came in 2005 when the 820 lb projectile from NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft was purposefully slammed into the 4 mile diameter nucleus of comet Temple 1 at 6.3 miles/second. Even though Temple 1’s speed did not measurably change, the debris from the football stadium sized crater, this collision produced, yielded the surprise that the nucleus has much more dust and much less ice than was expected.
A new experiment, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART for short will take the next step. The plan is for NASA to slam a projectile into the 525 foot diameter, Didymoon, of the asteroid Didymos when it comes near us in 2022. The European Space Agency, or ESA , will send its own Hera Space mission to study the results of the DART impact on the orbit of Didymoon. There are likely to be more than 10,000 Didymoon sized objects which come near humanity. Methods to prevent one of them from devastating a region of our planet are the likely results of the DART and Hera space missions.
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!