Play

Podcaster: Beth Johnson, Franck Marchis, and Simon Steel (alternate hosts); Guest: Dr. Ariel Graykowski

Title: SETI Live –  A Celestial Collaboration: Unistellar Citizen Scientists Track Comets

Organization: SETI Institute

Link: https://sites.libsyn.com/462636

Description:

Throughout human history, comets have fascinated us. They have gone from signs and portents of bad things to come to well-studied and even visited “dirty snowballs”. Every year, observers search the skies, hoping to discover the Next Big Comet – Halley, Hyakutake, Hale–Bopp, McNaught. From SOHO and LINEAR to ATLAS and IRAS, numerous observatories have continued to add to the count of discovered comets. 

But it doesn’t require expensive hardware or spacecraft to make similar observations from your own backyard; telescopes and even binoculars will work – at least for the brightest objects. For members of Unistellar’s Citizen Science Network, however, comets can be seen at faint magnitudes under a range of night sky conditions.

Join Beth Johnson as she welcomes SETI Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Ariel Graykowski to this week’s SETI Live to discuss the results of citizen scientist observations of comets 12P/Pons-Brooks and C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS).

Unistellar’s comet activity program: https://www.unistellar.com/citizen-science/comets/

Bio: Beth Johnson is a communications specialist and social media manager with a degree in physics and master’s work in planetary science. She specializes in meteor showers, icy moons, and anything with volcanoes.

Franck Marchis is a senior planetary astronomer and chair of the exoplanet group at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and Chief Scientific Officer and Founder at Unistellar. He has dedicated his work to the study of our solar system, specifically the search for asteroids with moons, using mainly ground-based telescopes equipped with adaptive optics.

Simon Steel is Deputy Director of the Carl Sagan Center for Research at the SETI Institute. As an observational astrophysicist, he specialized in optical spectrophotometry, with an interest in the star formation histories of galaxies.

Dr. Ariel Graykowski is SETI Institute Postdoctoral Fellow 

Today’s sponsor:  Big thanks to our Patreon supporters this month:  Paul M. Sutter, Chris Nealen, Frank Frankovic, Frank Tippin, Jako Danar, Michael Freedman, Nik Whitehead, Rani Bush, Ron Diehl, Steven Emert, Brett Duane, Don Swartwout, Vladimir Bogdanov, Steven Kluth, Steve Nerlich, Phyllis Foster, Michael W, James K Wood, Katrina Ince, Cherry Wood.

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.

Please visit our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy

or you can consider to sponsor a day of our podcast : https://cosmoquest.org/x/365daysofastronomy/product/sponsor-an-episode-of-365-days-of-astronomy/

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!