387E-424-Long Winter Nights

387E-424-Long Winter Nights

From Travelers In The Night by Albert D. Grauer

May 5, 2026 · 2 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the challenges and experiences of asteroid hunters during long winter nights at the Sixty Inch Telescope.

Winter nights can be exhausting, productive, as well as sometimes frustrating for asteroid hunters. At the Sixty Inch Telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, near winter solstice, the night's observing starts at 6:30 PM and continues till after 6 AM which combined with start up and end tasks makes the asteroid hunter's work "day" more than 13 hours long. On such a recent long winter work night, my Catalina Sky Survey Teammate, Carson Fuls discovered an impressing total of 18 new Earth approaching objects. On the other hand on the next 3 night shift, I was treated to one night which was clear followed by two nights which were dominated by the first big snow storm of the season. The best nights are clear, cold, and calm with asteroid images which are small intense points of light. Such a night is said to have good seeing. Nights which are clear but have bad seeing with fuzzy star and asteroid images due to atmospheric turbulence and high winds makes the discovery of faint objects virtually impossible. High winds can and do shake the telescope producing double images of every object. Nights which consist of sporadic clear holes in the clouds also yield few new discoveries. Fishing what we…

People in this episode

Host: Albert D. Grauer

Topics covered

  • asteroid hunting
  • observing conditions
  • winter nights
  • telescope operations
  • discovery of celestial objects

Keywords

  • asteroid hunters
  • observing nights
  • Earth approaching objects
  • telescope
  • atmospheric turbulence

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Mt. Lemmon, Arizona

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