# Travelers in the Night Eps. 897 & 898: Kacper's Comet & Pandora

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-365-days-of-astronomy-500745/travelers-in-the-night-eps-897-898-kacper-s-comet-pandora
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-365-days-of-astronomy-500745/travelers-in-the-night-eps-897-898-kacper-s-comet-pandora.md
Podcast: [The 365 Days of Astronomy](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-365-days-of-astronomy-500745)
Published: 2026-07-12T11:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/astro365/20260712-365DoA.mp3
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/astro365/20260712-365DoA.mp3?dest-id=4378
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Duration seconds: 365

## Resource

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 May 2026. Today's 2 topics: - In 2007 a small icy object moving in the constellation of Ursa Minor crossed the orbit of Pluto at a speed of approximately 4.2 mi/s starting its journey towards the inner solar system. It was between the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter traveling at some 9 mi/s towards the Sun, when my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Dr. Kacper Wierzchoś discovered it on March 3, 2024, while asteroid hunting, in the constellation of Draco, with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. Kacper studies comets passionately was thus excited to observe that it has a coma and a tail. On its way out of the solar system, in 2045, Kacper's COMET C/2024 E1 (Wierzchos) will cross the orbit of Pluto heading in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major and is destined to wander between stars in the Milky Way till the end of time. - Looking into a star filled sky at a place like the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary in New Mexico inspires a person to wonder if our home planet is unique in the Universe. To begin to answer this question, NASA launched the small satellite Pandora on January 11, 2026 . It is on at least a one year long mission to study the chemical composition of more than 20 planets orbiting nearby stars in the Milky Way. The Pandora satellite's results will hopefully include a list of potentially habitable planets to be observed the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production…

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