Travelers in the Night Eps. 297E & 298E: Weird Centaur & Psyche Water

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 2024.

Today's 2 topics:

- Richard Kowalski discovered  2016 WM48, a Centaur. Centaurs are named after the mythical beasts which were half human and half horse perhaps because they have characteristics of both asteroids and comets. 2016 WM48, is about a mile in diameter. We don't know if it has rings, tiny moons, or a gas cloud surrounding it as some other Centaurs do. 2016 WM48 must have had a catastrophic collision in the past few million years which put it on a very elliptical path which is tipped at 60 degrees or so to the solar system's plane.

- The asteroid Psyche may be one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the solar system. It is a small world about 116 miles in diameter and is composed of almost pure nickel-iron metal. It is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists find evidence that Psyche may be the exposed core of a planet which was destroyed by collisions as it was trying to form long ago.

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