Travelers in the Night Eps. 285E & 286E: Sporadic Geysers & Visitors From Afar

The 365 Days of Astronomy

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org

Today's 2 topics:

- Using a small telescope or a set of binoculars you can see Europa for yourself as a small moving point of light circling the giant planet Jupiter. More than 400 years after Galileo Galilei discovered this seemingly small dead world the Hubble Space Telescope spotted geysers erupting from its south polar regions. Recently, over a 15 month period, the Hubble was able to observe 10 transits of Europa across the face of Jupiter. On three such occasions plumes were seen to be erupting from this small moon.

- A pair of comets visiting our neighborhood are discovered in a matter of 4 days.

One of the perks of being an asteroid hunter is having a comet named for you. To do this you must be the first to discover it as a moving point of light in the night sky and at the same time recognize that it is a comet by observing the coma and tail which are names for the clouds of gas and dust that surrounds it. After being on the lookout for a comet for sometime, my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Rose Matheny discovered two of them within a 4 day period of time. Both of them C/2016 T1 (Matheny) and C/2016 T2 (Matheny) are likely to be first time visitors to the inner solar system. These two comets have quite different paths which are both inclined at large angles to the paths of the planets about the Sun. In addition, both of them are traveling at very close to the escape velocity from our solar system and have uncertain orbital periods around the Sun which are likely to be thousands of times the age of the Universe.

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