Travelers in the Night Eps. 351E & 352E: Active Asteroid & Flying Mud Balls

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


From August & September 2025.


Today's 2 topics:


- When it was first spotted by astronomers at Space Watch on Kitt
Peak, 2008 GO98 appeared to be one of many outer main belt
asteroids moving through the night sky. 9 years later when my
Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard observed it with our 60
inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon it had a coma and a tail like a
comet. Active asteroids like 2008 GO98 have asteroid orbits but
sometimes show cometary activity which could be caused by a
collision with another object and/or by thermal fracturing and
ice sublimation caused by the slight warming they obtain from
sunlight.


 


- 75% of asteroid hunter's discoveries are called C type
asteroids. They are dark, have a high abundance of carbon,
consist of clay and silicate rocks, and may have a composition
which is up to 22% water. Recently Dr. Phillip A. Bland of Curtin
University in Australia and Dr. Bryan Travis of the Planetary
Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona published an article in the
on line journal Science Advances describing their numerical
simulations of the evolution of the progenitors of the C type
asteroids.


 


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