The 365 Days of Astronomy

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 September 2025.
Today's 2 topics:
- Dr. Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office reports that on June 26, 2025 shortly after noon a beachball sized meteoroid traveling at approximately 30,000 miles per hour broke up about 27 miles above the town of West Forrest, Georgia.
 
- Astronomers have discovered some 1.4 million asteroids. Approximately 35,000 of these space rocks come near Earth. Less than 40 of them are classified as being Atira asteroids whose orbits lie entirely within the Earth's orbit about the Sun. Only one of these, asteroid number 594913 named 'Ayló'chaxnim (eye-LAW-chax-nim) has an orbit which is entirely within the orbit of the planet Venus. 
[Editor's note: ꞌAylóꞌchaxnim means 'Venus girl' in the indigenous Luiseño language[18] of southern California. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/594913_ꞌAylóꞌchaxnim]
 
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu
Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].

From March 18, 2026.
This episode went through a lot of rewrites as breaking news kept breaking our hearts. Artemis is still on, but there are delays and cancellations. Before we face that, let's look at some pretty pictures and remember the universe is pretty even when our Earthly-timeline is not.
 
JWST Wolf-Rayet stars pix: 
https://science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/wolf-rayet-apep-miri-image/
Exposed Cranium Nebula:
https://science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/exposed-cranium-nebula-nircam-and-miri-images/
 
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Every bit helps! Thank you!
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Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop 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. 
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------------------------------------
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu
Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].

Hosted and sponsored by Andy Poniros.
Veteran of more than 590 days in space on Shuttle, Soyuz, & ISS missions NASA Astronaut, Don Pettit. Don discusses his space missions, the upcoming Artemis II mission, as well as his amazing inventions & photography from space. 
 
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Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! 
Every bit helps! Thank you!
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------------------------------------
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu
Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].

Hosted by Steve Nerlich.
Bringing it home. Cheap Astronomy digs in to asteroid mining.
Dear Cheap Astronomy – Are rubble pile asteroids easier to mine?
Rubble pile asteroids are a collection of rocks that have accreted together under their mutual gravity, but the object they form isn't massive enough for gravity to compress it into one unified object. Instead, the rocks that gather together remain as individual rocks. So, from a mining perspective there's an advantage in that you can just pick up those individual rocks without needing drilling or explosives. 
 
Dear Cheap Astronomy – How do we get mining products back to Earth?
The current narrative on space mining seems to go in two directions. One direction is about in situ resource utilization (ISRU in NASA speak) where there's no doubt it's a lot cheaper to source water from space than to launch it from Earth – and a similar principle applies to most building materials: steel, concrete and glass. Of course, the mathematics of in situ resource utilization makes perfect sense but begs the question of what the economic incentives are to build dwellings in space and source space water to support the people in those dwellings, as well supporting agriculture and making rocket fuel. If we can't identify those incentives, we're just saying that we're going to go into space so we can go into space.
 
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Every bit helps! Thank you!
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Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness!
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Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!)
------------------------------------
The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu
Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].