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Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer

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Title: Travelers in the Night 297E & 298E: Weird Centaur & Psyche Water

Organization: Travelers in The Night

Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus

Description: Today’s two stroy:

  • Richard Kowalski of Mt. Lemmon discovered 2016 WM48, a centaur. Part asteroid and part comet. In May it started to show cometary traits as was re-designated as a comet.
  • The asteroid (16) Psyche is likely composed of approximately 95% iron & 5% nickel like many meteorites. A study by Driss Takir, Vishnu Reddy and others, shows there appears to be a coating of water ice or hydroxyl on the surface! A mission may go to Psyche in 2020, and arrive in 2026.

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:

297E – Weird Centaur

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski was surprised to find a moving point of light on some his images which was more than 50 times brighter than a typical Earth approaching object he observes . He was even more amazed when it was not cataloged as a known object and he reported his observations to the Minor Planet Center. A couple of hours before Richard spotted it, scientists using the Space Surveillance Telescope in New Mexico had picked up this unknown object on some of their images but did not immediately report their observations. For the next 67 hours the new object was tracked by telescopes at 24 different observatories around the world. These observations allowed the Minor Planet Center to calculate an orbit, give it the name 2016 WM48, and classify it as a Centaur. Centaurs are named after the mythical beasts which were half human and half horse perhaps because they have characteristics of both asteroids and comets.

Richard’s object, 2016 WM48, is about a mile in diameter. We don’t know if it has rings, tiny moons, or a gas cloud surrounding it as some other Centaurs do. 2016 WM48 must have had a catastrophic collision in the past few million years which put it on a very elliptical path which is tipped at 60 degrees or so to the solar system’s plane. Centaurs do not have stable orbits. Their paths are changed as they come near to the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. A Centaur’s fate is to likely collide with the Sun or a planet or perhaps even be ejected from the solar system

298E – Psyche Water

The asteroid Psyche may be one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the solar system. It is a small world about 116 miles in diameter and is composed of almost pure nickel-iron metal. It is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists find evidence that Psyche may be the exposed core of a planet which was destroyed by collisions as it was trying to form long ago.

Recently Dr. Driss Takir of the USGS Astrogeology Science Center and Dr. Vishnu Reddy of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory were the leaders of a team which used the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility to study the asteroid Psyche. To their surprise, the pattern of colors in the radiation which the surface of Psyche reflects reveals it to be similar to the surface of water rich asteroids. Reddy suspects that the water on Psyche’s surface may have been brought there by the impact of asteroids in a way similar to the way Earth received it’s water early in the history of the solar system.

Earth’s core strongly influences our weather and climate and is very similar to the asteroid Psyche. Since we can’t visit our home planet’s core Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University is leading a team which seeks to send a space craft to Psyche. If selected by NASA for flight, the Psyche mission will be launched in 2020 and will use solar electric propulsion to arrive at this unique little world six years later. A visit to Psyche would allow us to directly study a naked planet’s core and provide clues as to the nature of what is beneath our feet.

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

365 Days of Astronomy
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