Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer

Title: Travelers in the Night Eps.  107E & 108E: Signs Of Life On Mars & Finally A Good Night

Organization: Travelers in The Night

Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus

Description: Today’s 2 topics:

• Indisputable proof that life existed or currently exists on the planet Mars has yet to be found. However, tantalizing pieces to this mystery continue to be discovered.
• About 2:30AM a very bright, rapidly, moving object came through a set of images.  The Minor Planet Center was unable to identify it.

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:

107E: Signs Of Life On Mars

Indisputable proof that life existed or currently exists on the planet Mars has yet to be found. However, tantalizing pieces to this mystery continue to be discovered.

Water is essential to life on Earth. The surface of Mars is dry now, but, several discoveries point to the possible existence of an ocean that covered about a third of the red planet in the distant past. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken images which suggest that a large delta was formed by an ancient Martian river. It has also imaged large fields of rocks similar to what have been produced on Earth by underwater landslides. On the Martian surface, the NASA Curiosity Rover has photographed layered rocks similar to what are found on lake bottoms on Earth. It has also imaged sedimentary rocks which look like they are the result of small deltas which are stacked upon each other. 

On a different tack, the NASA Mars Curiosity Rover has discovered that methane and organic molecules currently exist on Mars.  

Methane is an organic molecule which is generated by life forms like cows and humans on Earth. It has been found on Mars before but the bursts that Curiosity discovered suggest the existence of a current local source. Although these data do not prove that life exists on Mars they do reveal current activity of some sort is occurring under the Martian surface.

It appears that conditions on Mars, 3.8 billion years ago, were similar to those on Earth at the time when we know that life developed here. The mystery of life continues to pull us towards the red planet.

108E: Finally A Good Night

An Earth bound asteroid hunter needs clear skies and small steady images to discover faint asteroids.  I usually come up to the telescope  a day early to get on the night schedule and to catch up on all of the latest improvements in computer programming.  This time I enjoyed visiting with my Catalina Sky Survey teammate, Richard Kowalski.  Unfortunately he was having to deal with high winds which shook the telescope and images which were so fuzzy that the faint objects he was looking for blended into the darkness of the night sky.  I slept throughout the next day and when I awoke I was treated to the first good night our group has had in more than two weeks. I was able to find 10 candidates for Earth approaching asteroids. Subsequent data show that five of them can come close enough to be classified as Near Earth Objects.   One of these is about 30 feet in diameter and can come within 6 Earth Diameters of our home planet.  Another is about a quarter mile in diameter and never gets closer than 19 million miles to Earth.

About 2:30AM a very bright, rapidly, moving object came through a set of images.  The Minor Planet Center was unable to identify it. It is likely to have been a human made object of some sort.  The various military establishments around the world that have their own satellites don’t want to tell us about them or have us identify them in any way.  We see things like this in our images but do not keep track of them.

After spending many years of my life observing the sky at night I have not observed any alien spacecraft.    I too have been waiting for Scotty to beam me up.

For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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