By Tom BealARIZONA DAILY STAR

Asteroid hunters with the Catalina Sky Survey were very excited on a re-cent Saturday when they discovered an orbiting object that would whiz by Earth two days later.

The discovery generated headlines about a “surprise” asteroid coming very close to Earth at half the distance to the moon, but that was not the exciting part for observers at the sky survey.

The asteroid itself “was a fairly ordinary object making a fairly ordi-nary close approach,” said Eric Chris-tensen, principal investigator for the survey, which is run by the Universi-ty of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

But it was the first asteroid dis-covered by a custom-made camera on the survey’s 0.9-meter Schmidt telescope near Mount Bigelow in the Santa Catalina Mountains.

A similar camera upgrade on the survey’s 1.6-meter telescope atop Mount Lemmon, completed in Sep-tember, had already tripled the rate at which the telescope finds potentially

hazardous near-Earth objects. Cata-lina Sky Survey has now reclaimed its status as world leader in such discov-eries after lagging slightly behind the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS

Survey for two years.The new cameras, each with a

111-megapixel CCD chip, were de-signed by Steve Larson, co-investi-gator for the sky survey, and built in Tucson.

The optics were designed by Rich-ard Buchroeder and fabricated at the Tucson Optical Research Group. The cameras were made by Spectral In-struments of Tucson, and the other parts were fabricated in the machine shops of the UA’s Steward Observato-ry and the Department of Physics.

The digital camera’s CCD chips were manufactured by Semiconduc-tor Technology Associates of San Juan Capistrano, California.

BIGGEST DISCOVERY YEARLarson said he knew the cameras

would make a difference, but said he was surprised at how well everything worked when the first one was com-missioned. “It tripled our average rate of discoveries. It was startling to us that it worked so well.”

In addition to upgrading both cam-

Monday, January 30Rethinking the Rulesof Reality

Monday, February 6The Journey to the Extreme

Monday, February 13Space, Time and Gravity

Monday, February 27A Myriad of Particles

Monday, March 6Domesticating the Quantum

Rethinking RealityBeginning 7PM, Monday, January 30, 2017 at UA Centennial HallA Series of 5 Free Lectures Exploring Our World and OurselvesThe University of Arizona College of Science, Spring 2017

Thanks to our underwritersall lectures are free

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Our intuitive understanding of reality comes fromwhat we see and experience, but modern physicstells us our world is actually stranger than theone we see, hear and touch every day. We mustrely on new ways of thinking and experimentingto probe the principles which underlie everything.Join us as five University of Arizona physicistsexplain their role in rethinking reality. Visituascience.org for more information.

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HOW WILL TRIER FIT IN?

UA has options with return of sophomore SPORTS

Final

• •

Monday, January 23, 2017$1 plus tax • $3 outside Southern Arizona

BE PREPAREDSeven things you should take to the emergency room

PAGE A6

COMING THURSDAY IN CALIENTEGEMPALOOZA: Use our guide to make the most of the Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil Showcase.

LEE ENTERPRISES • Vol. 176, No. 23For home delivery, call 1-800-695-4492email: circulation@tucson.com

INSIDE TODAY’S STARComics/puzzles B8-9Lottery B5Obituaries A11

Sports B1-5TV B9Weather B10

New cameras put Tucson sky hunters on top again

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CATALINA SKY SURVEY

The G96 60-inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon has helped the Catalina Sky Survey regain its lead in near-Earth discoveries.

The new camera atop the 1.6-meter Catalina Sky Survey telescope on Mt. Lemmon.

SEEKING HAZARDOUS NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS

See CATALINA, A4

STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Tucson received a break from the rain on Sunday, but soggy weather will visit one more time on Monday before the area returns to drier con-ditions, according to the National Weather Service

Residents should expect a 30 per-cent chance of showers on Mon-day during the day and a 70 percent chance of numerous showers through the night and into Tuesday morning.

The weather service has issued

a winter weather advisory in effect from noon Monday to 5 a.m. Tues-day for elevations above 6,000 feet, predicting 2-to-5 inches of snow be-tween 6,000 and 7,000 feet and 5-to-9 inches for elevations above 7,000 feet. Mount Lemmon’s elevation is just over 9,000 feet.

Area rain and snow should taper off by Tuesday night with clear skies moving in and remaining through the weekend. Temperatures will stay steady into Saturday, with highs in the

50s and lows in the low-to-mid 30s. Meanwhile, the winter storm is ex-

pected to drop more snow in Northern Arizona and bring rain and colder tem-peratures to the Phoenix metro area.

Meteorologists say Flagstaff could see an additional 8-to-12 inches of snow, while parts of the Phoenix area could see 0.25 of an inch of rain.

They say gusty winds of 20-30 mph could cause blowing and drifting snow in Northern Arizona, especially on Monday.

Rain returns Monday, clear skies to follow

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHOENIX — The parents of an 18-year-old who was killed in a crash want legis-lation passed that requires drug or alcohol testing for drivers involved in collisions where people are seriously injured or killed.

Steve and Tana Smith say they hope other fami-lies can avoid the agony of not knowing what may have caused crashes that lead to serious injuries or death.

“Had we known whether or not this driver was im-paired, it would make this unbearable situation easi-er to cope with,” Steve told KPHO-TV. “The not know-ing, because no test was done in our case, is agonizing.”

The Smiths are pushing for the bill in their son Joe’s name.

“It’s not going to change our situation, but if we can

help someone else, if we can ease their pain just a little bit for what we are going through, that’s our ultimate goal,” Tana said.

Joe was killed when a semi-truck slammed into traffic on Interstate 10.

Joseph Garcia, 74, in an-other vehicle, was also killed in the crash.

After the collision the truck driver told a De-partment of Public Safety trooper that he was tired, records show.

No drug or alcohol tests were requested. The driver was not charged.

“I assumed that that’s what the law was, and since it’s not, it needs to change,” Tana told The Arizona Re-public in October. “I’ll do whatever I can do to change this because this is some-thing that can affect any-body at any time.”

By Michael A. MemoliTRIBUNE WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON — Pres-ident Donald Trump’s unorthodox quest for the White House was fueled by his disregard for conven-tion and the nagging sense that he — and ultimately his supporters — were underes-timated and disrespected.

Now sworn in as the 45th president, Trump and his team are determined to de-liver quickly on promises — on the economy, health care, tax reform and immi-gration — that critics told him he could not possibly fulfill.

During his campaign, Trump embraced the notion of a first-100-day flurry in which he would quickly put his stamp on Washington. In a major speech in Get-tysburg a few weeks before the election, he articulat-ed three broad priorities:

Ending “corruption and special-interest collusion” in Washington, protecting American workers and re-storing security and “con-stitutional rule of law.”

On his first day in office, he said he would take more than a dozen specific ac-tions to advance priorities: Introducing a constitution-al amendment to impose congressional term limits, starting to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and cancel-ing federal money going to so-called sanctuary cities, among others.

Other legislative priori-ties would require congres-sional support: Simplifica-tion of the tax code, a major infrastructure bill and tax credits for child and elderly care.

“If we follow these steps,

Bill would require drug, alcohol tests in serious crashes

What you can expect in Trump’s 1st 100 days

See TRUMP, A4

http://tucson.com/news/local/education/college/new-cameras-put-tucson-sky-hunters-on-top-again/article_6e8a28aa-e21b-5697-99d0-30abcb1b6152.html

SEEKING HAZARDOUS NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS

New cameras put Tucson sky hunters on top againBy Tom Beal Arizona Daily Star Jan 22, 2017 Updated Jan 22, 2017

Asteroid hunters with the Catalina Sky Survey were very excited

on a recent Saturday when they discovered an orbiting object that

would whiz by Earth two days later.

The discovery generated headlines about a “surprise” asteroid

coming very close to Earth at half the distance to the moon, but

that was not the exciting part for observers at the sky survey.

The asteroid itself “was a fairly ordinary object making a fairly

ordinary close approach,” said Eric Christensen, principal

investigator for the survey, which is run by the University of

Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

But it was the first asteroid discovered by a custom-made camera

on the survey’s 0.9-meter Schmidt telescope near Mount Bigelow

in the Santa Catalina Mountains.

MORE INFORMATION

Sun setting on solar telescope atKitt Peak, southwest of Tucson

Tucson astronomers, studentsreadying for August's solar eclipse

Photos Courtesy of Catalina Sky Survey

The G96 60-inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon has helped the Catalina Sky Survey regain its lead in near-Earth discoveries.

! "

A similar camera upgrade on the survey’s 1.6-meter telescope

atop Mount Lemmon, completed in September, had already

tripled the rate at which the telescope finds potentially hazardous

near-Earth objects. Catalina Sky Survey has now reclaimed its

status as world leader in such discoveries after lagging slightly

behind the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS Survey for two

years.

The new cameras, each with a 111-megapixel CCD chip, were

designed by Steve Larson, co-investigator for the sky survey, and

built in Tucson.

The optics were designed by Richard Buchroeder and fabricated

at the Tucson Optical Research Group. The cameras were made

by Spectral Instruments of Tucson, and the other parts were

fabricated in the machine shops of the UA’s Steward Observatory

and the Department of Physics.

The digital camera’s CCD chips were manufactured by

Semiconductor Technology Associates of San Juan Capistrano,

California.

BIGGEST DISCOVERY YEAR

Larson said he knew the cameras would make a difference, but

said he was surprised at how well everything worked when the

first one was commissioned. “It tripled our average rate of

discoveries. It was startling to us that it worked so well.”

In addition to upgrading both cameras, the survey has

refurbished a third 1-meter telescope on Mount Lemmon that

can be operated remotely from a control room at the UA’s Lunar

and Planetary Lab. It is used for immediate followup of the most

interesting objects found each night. It frees more time for the

discovery telescopes.

As a result of the upgrade, Catalina Sky Survey discovered 924

near-Earth objects in 2016, its biggest yearly total and the most

ever discovered by any survey, said Lindley Johnson, head of

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Johnson’s office is charged with fulfilling NASA’s congressional

mandate to find and plot the paths of potentially hazardous near-

Earth objects.

NASA has already found 93.5 percent of the estimated population

of near-Earth asteroids larger than 1 kilometer in diameter,

Johnson told the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group in Tucson

recently.

If an object that large slammed into Earth, it “would have serious

consequences on the global climate and the global ecosystem,”

said Christensen.

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It would cause “millions if not billions of fatalities and would set

the human race back centuries if not more.”

The one suspected of wiping out the dinosaurs and 75 percent of

other species by generating clouds of dust that changed Earth’s

climate is estimated to have been about 10 kilometers in

diameter.

Christensen said those collisions happen “on the time scale of

tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of years.”

He views his work as insurance against the improbable.

FINDING LARGE OBJECTS

Johnson’s NASA office is working on the updated congressional

task of finding at least 90 percent of near-Earth objects 140

meters or larger.

Those objects could cause significant regional damage, said

Christensen, but not long-term global effects.

Christensen said the Catalina Sky Survey will find a bunch of

them. Pan-STARRS, meanwhile, is putting a second telescope into

operation later this year.

That means more work for folks like Bob McMillan of the Lunar

and Planetary Lab, who runs the SpaceWatch program from two

dedicated Steward Observatory telescopes atop Kitt Peak,

southwest of Tucson.

When McMillan and the late Tom Gehrels started the program in

1980, it, too, was an asteroid-discovery program, but over time it

began to concentrate on the follow-up studies needed to plot the

objects’ paths and predict if they might be a problem in the

future.

It’s critical to follow up interesting objects immediately, McMillan

said. Survey telescopes take four 30-second images, 10 minutes

apart, allowing astronomers to plot “a tiny arc” of an object’s orbit

and determine how fast it is moving.

It takes more observations than that to fully predict its orbit and

to have any hope of finding it the next time it comes around years

or decades later, he said.

NASA pays McMillan and his crew of six astronomers to follow the

“high-priority stuff,” such as potentially hazardous objects,

asteroids that could be visited by spacecraft, any that have been

identified as a target or already measured by radio telescopes

and those that are being continuously studied for the effect of

subtle forces on their orbits.

SpaceWatch also has agreements with larger telescopes for

“target of opportunity” observations of especially critical targets.

!

!

With two fairly large telescopes capable of seeing faint objects,

SpaceWatch finds itself in constant demand, McMillan said.

“There aren’t many who go as faint as we do as often as we do,”

he said.

McMillan and his colleagues are astronomers who specialize in

astrometry — the measurement of the position and motion of

objects in space. Knowing that the objects exist is one thing, he

said. “If you can’t find this stuff again, nothing else matters.”

Finding them, and predicting where they are headed, has become

a specialty at the Lunar and Planetary Lab.

SCANNING THE NIGHT SKIES

In the Catalinas, survey astronomers take turns watching the

skies each night the clouds and the moon are not interfering with

their “seeing.” The survey employs 11 people with a NASA budget

of about $1.7 million per year, said Christensen.

The observers watch a bank of computer screens, on which they

choose their targets for the evening. Each piece of the night sky

visible to the camera — a field that just grew nearly fivefold with

the new $500,000 cameras — is imaged four times, 10 minutes

apart, to look for things that move in the sky.

The computer weeds out all the known objects — stars, planets,

satellites, previously discovered asteroids, the space station.

Operators then have to figure out which of the moving objects

are “false positives” and which are candidates for forwarding to

the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical

Observatory, which verifies the genuine targets and issues alerts

for followups by professional and amateur astronomers.

The Minor Planet Center also keeps a list of potentially hazardous

asteroids and when they will make an approach to Earth that is

too close for comfort.

Johnson’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office is responsible

for identifying those threats and figuring out what to do about

them.

On its webpage, Johnson says “no known NEO currently poses a

risk of impact with Earth over the next 100 years.”

But plenty have yet to be found.

At the Tucson meeting earlier this month, Johnson said the pace

of discovery is accelerating, with Catalina Sky Survey and Pan-

STARRS leading the way. He said 93.5 percent of the largest

asteroids (1-kilometer and larger) have been found and half of

the asteroids 140-meters in diameter and larger have also been

discovered. Proposed space telescopes and larger ground-based

surveys will also be enlisted in the hunt.

Tom Beal

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NASA is also planning two missions, one with the European Space

Agency, to test strategies for moving asteroids into different

orbits, Johnson said.

Contact: tbeal@tucson.com or 573-4158. Follow him on Facebook or onTwitter: @bealagram

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