Special Topic: “Small Bodies” Moons
The “Special Topics” presentation four weeks ago was on the subject of the small moons of the various planets in the solar system. It would seem reasonable to think that the bodies that possess moons don’t stop with the major planets, but that many of the “small bodies” that are the focus of “Ice and …
This Week in History: August 30-September 5
AUGUST 30, 1979: The SOLWIND coronagraph aboard the U.S. Defense Department’s P78-1 satellite records images of a bright comet approaching the sun, and then disintegrating. This comet, the first comet ever to be discovered from space, turned out to be a Kreutz sungrazer, and was the first of several comets discovered by SOLWIND prior to …
Comet of the Week: SOLWIND 1 1979 XI
Perihelion: 1979 August 30.95, q = 0.005 AU The very first comet I ever observed, Comet Tago-Sato-Kosaka 1969g – a previous “Comet of the Week” – was also the first comet ever to be observed from space, an event which took place in mid-January 1970. Since that time many, many comets have been observed by …
Special Topic: The Kuiper Belt
Where the various comets that we see in our skies come from has long been a subject of high scientific interest. The Week 3 “Special Topics” presentation discussed how in the mid-20th Century the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort proposed the existence of the structure that we now call the “Oort Cloud” as being the source …
Blue Origin-led team delivers lunar lander mockup to NASA
The Blue Origin National Team of four US aerospace companies has delivered a full-scale engineering mockup of their proposed human lunar lander to NASA’s Johnson Space Center as part of NASA’s ambitious Artemis Moon program to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024. The Artemis Human Landing System (HLS) lander has been set up …
Four astronomical discoveries from ancient Greece
The Histories by Herodotus (484BC to 425BC) offers a remarkable window into the world as it was known to the ancient Greeks in the mid-fifth century BC. Almost as interesting as what they knew, however, is what they did not know. This sets the baseline for the remarkable advances in their understanding over the next …