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820-4015 Wilson-Harrington (1979 VA)
4015 Wilson-Harrington (1979 VA) was discovered as a comet by Wilson and Harrington in 1949, lost to astronomers for 30 years, and rediscovered in 1979 as an asteroid named 1979 VA. In 1992 with more…
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago
307E-326-Asteroids 2016
2016 was another record year for asteroid hunters during which we discovered 1,894 new Earth approaching objects. My team, the NASA funded, Catalina Sky Survey, led the pack with 931 Near Earth Aster…
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago
819-Binary Asteroids
Binary asteroids are important since they enable astronomers to study how objects interact in space and in some cases the data can even yield their sizes and shapes.
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago
306E-325-Marrakech
A location 9,000 feet above sea level in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco is ideal for an asteroid hunter since the weather is often clear and the skies are dark. It was thus intriguing for me to see t…
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago
818-Historical Near Earth Comets
Approximately once every 45 million years a long period comet strikes the Earth with catastrophic results. Astronomers have identified and calculated orbits for more than 25 comets which have passed…
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago
305E-324-Newborn Planets
The ALMA radio telescope located in the Atacama desert of northern Chile is able to see the faint millimeter wave length glow emitted by gas molecules and dust particles in the disk of material surro…
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago
817-Interstellar Travelers In The Night
As astronomers learned to measure the distance to the stars and how the laws of Physics works with rockets, it seemed that travel between the stars would take so much energy and time to get there tha…
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago
304E-323-Big Splash
To discover what would happen if an asteroid were to strike a large body of water, Dr. Galen Gisler led a team of scientists who used high performance computing facilities at Los Alamos National Labo…
Published on 1 year, 2 months ago
816-David's Close Approaching Comet
My Catalina Sky Survey Teammate David Rankin was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Pegasus with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, AZ when he spotted a faint fuzzy object moving through a se…
Published on 1 year, 3 months ago
303E-322-Dust Stories
Collect your own beautiful micro-meteorite sample.
It is estimated that several hundred thousand pounds of left over particles from the formation of our solar system enters the Earth's atmosphere eve…
Published on 1 year, 3 months ago