Travelers In The Night

By Albert D. Grauer

A real "Science Snack" for anyone who is interested in the extraterrestrial.
Dr. Al Grauer is a member of the Catalina Sky Survey which has led the world in near Earth asteroid discoveries for 17 o... more

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The podcast currently has 1,322 episodes available.

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Number 1: 916-Past Glory
When accurately recorded historical observations do not agree with what we what we see today it is often very rewarding to find out why. In modern telescopes we see Theta Eridani to a be pair separated by about 425 times our distance from the Sun orbiting a common center of gravity. Detailed observations of the spectrum of one of these show it to be itself a pair of stars orbiting each other every 4.1 days. One of this very close pair, as it is aging, dumps matter onto its companion causing it to brightened significantly. In the past this mass transfer rate was much higher than it is today and the naked eye brightness of Theta Eridani is fainter to us than it was long ago.
September 11, 20263min
Number 2: 405E-446-Asteroid Homestead
In the future one can envision a space mining family boarding a descendent of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch Vehicle for a trip into low Earth orbit. A few hundred miles above the Earth's surface they would rendezvous with their asteroid mining spacecraft which will be their home for the next five years or so.
September 08, 20263min
Number 3: 915-Raining Comets
The comets we observe generally start out as icy dirty snowballs of frozen gases like water and frozen carbon dioxide in the Oort cloud. If recent scientific analysis is correct, we are now witnessing a parade of comets produced by the passage of a star when our first ancestors began to roam the Earth in Africa.
September 04, 20263min
Number 4: 404E-445-Not So Secret
A partnership of humans and computers will help to minimize the damage when asteroid hunters find a space rock with our number on it.
September 01, 20263min
Number 5: 914-Deep Synoptic Array
Looking into the sky at night with radio eyes you would not see the points of starlight forming the constellations instead you would see a very bright, colorful and wildly changing scene. In a desert valley near the Great Basin National Park Caltech is building the world’s largest radio telescope called the Deep Synoptic Array or DSA for short.
August 28, 20263min