Latest Steve Larson Stories

By University Of Arizona CommunicationsThe extraterrestrial rock is tumbling through space alongside thousands of similar objects in our solar system's main asteroid belt, roughly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.An asteroid discovered more than 100 years ago my not be an asteroid at all, but an extinct comet that is coming back to life, according to new observations.The night of Dec. 11, Steve Larson, senior staff scientist with the Catalina Sky Survey, was searching for potentially...

The Catalina Sky Survey detects potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. Now a spin-off survey is finding a windfall of "optical transients" in the same data.Astronomers have been mining a mother lode of astronomical data from the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey and finding more "optical transients" than they can characterize during the past 17 months.They have found more than 700 unique "optical transients," or objects that change brightness on time scales...

By Leah Rado, The Daily Republic, Mitchell, S.D. Aug. 2--For the past five years, swimming has been a constant in Steve Larson's life. The 4.0 student used swimming for the Mitchell Aquatic Club as a release from homework and studying for tests throughout high school, and also as a place to get away when life got tough earlier this year. Larson's 25-year-old sister, Jessica, passed away after a battle with cancer in February, putting a whole new perspective on life for the recent...