Travelers in the Night - Eps. 273 & 274: Hunt for Planet 9 & New Horizons Continues

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: - The evidence for an unseen planet 9 orbiting our Sun is getting hard to ignore. It could have an elongated orbit with 300-1,000 AU dimensions. Unfortunately it's likely at its most distant part of the 17,000 year orbit. - 2014 MU69 is the next target for the New Horizons spacecraft. It's a small target, though, being only 13-25 miles in diameter. But visiting it and learning about it is a chance for scientists to study pristine 4 billion year old material from the earliest days of the solar system's formation. Enter the code for this week into this site: https://cosmoquest.org/achievements/code for a chance to win. This week's code is FYA1NV 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!