Travelers in the Night - Eps. 263 & 264: Catching Shadows & Tough Guy

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. Today's 2 topics: - On Jun 29, 2015, Pluto occulted a star, UCAC4 347-165728 showing us that it had an atmosphere. Now high school students can join in the hunt for TNO occultations. - The Earth-approaching asteroid 3200 Phaethon and its debris trail gives us the Geminid meteor shower each December. 2016 LV47 was discovered by Eric Christensen of the Catalina Sky Survey, but it's a 1,000' diameter solid body instead of a rubble pile like Phaethon. Enter the code for this week into this site: https://cosmoquest.org/achievements/code for a chance to win. This week's code is Ns2pDu Do go visit http://astrogear.spreadshirt.com/ for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations. Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Astrosphere New Media. http://www.astrosphere.org/ Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. While you're at it, do support our Learning Space educator training program by going to this site: https://www.patreon.com/LearningSpace Please help us keep training the trainers! Learning Space is a weekly G+ Hangout on Air about topics in astronomy education, outreach and other ways to share science both in the school setting and outside it. We bring you interviews, hands-on demonstrations, lists of our favorite educational resources and more!