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On this day in 1801 - January 1st - Giuseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres.Ceres was the first object discovered in what's now known as the asteroid belt. It was at first considered a planet, then an asteroid, and is now classed as a dwarf planet.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/01/18 03:02 AM.
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On this day in 1925 - January 1st - Edward Hubble read to the American Astronomical Society what would be a ground-breaking paper.The paper showed that the Andromeda "nebula" wasn't an object in the Milky Way, but a galaxy in its own right.
Here is picture of the glass plate on which Hubble discovered a Cepheid variable - marked VAR! - in the Andromeda galaxy. From this he determined that it was too far away to be located in our own galaxy.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/02/18 02:37 PM.
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On this day in 1959 - January 2nd - the Soviet Union's Luna 1 was the first spacecraft to leave the Earth's gravitational field.
Luna 1 passed to within 6000 km of the Moon, and ended up in orbit around the Sun.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/02/18 02:27 PM.
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On this day in 2004 - January 2nd - NASA's Stardust probe encountered Comet Wild.
Stardust collected samples of space dust and comet dust, and returned them to Earth in 2006.
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On this day in 1920 - January 2nd - American author and scientist Isaac Asimov was born.
Asimov was a chemistry professor, but also a prolific writer on many subjects. He's best remembered for his works of science fiction and of popular science, including astronomy.
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On this day in 2004 - January 3rd - NASA's rover Spirit landed on Mars.
Along with the Opportunity rover, their mission was designed to last for just over three months. Spirit was active until 2010.
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On this day in 1643 - January 4th - Isaac Newton was born. Newton was born on Christmas Day 1642, according to the Julian Calendar then in use. Nearly a century later England adopted the Gregorian calendar, and the equivalent date was ten days later.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/04/18 02:35 AM.
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On this day in 1797 - January 4th - Wilhelm Beer was born.
Beer was an amateur astronomer, who with Johannes Heinrich Mädler, published the first map of the Moon (Mappa Salenographica). They also made a map of Mars and calculated the planet's rotation period to within 0.1 second of today's figure.
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On this day in 2005 - January 5th - Mike Brown's team at Palomar Observatory discovered Eris.The discovery of this distant object that originally appeared to be bigger than Pluto ignited the debate about the definition of a planet. For a time, NASA referred to Eris as the "10th planet", but in the end, both Eris and Pluto became dwarf planets.
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On this day in 1892 - January 5th - the first successful photograph was taken of an aurora.Early cameras couldn't catch the dim light of an aurora, and long exposures didn't capture the movement. German physicist Martin Brendel and a fellow scientist, on an expedition in northern Norway, took the first successful image, and revolutionized the study of the northern lights.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/06/18 09:17 AM.
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On this day in 1998 - January 6th - NASA's Lunar Prospector was launched.
The mission was designed to investigate the Moon from low polar orbit. This would include mapping the surface composition, locating lunar resources, and measuring magnetic and gravity fields.
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On this day in 1610 - January 7th - Galileo wrote the first letter in which he described his observations of the Moon through a telescope.
In those days, the Moon was assumed to be a perfectly smooth sphere. However Galileo saw that the surface was uneven with mountains, plains and valleys.
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On this day in 1610 - January 7th - Galileo first saw three of Jupiter's moons.The three objects he saw in his telescope are now known as Callisto, Io and Europa, three of the four Galilean moons.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/13/18 04:05 AM.
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On this day in 1587 - January 8th - Johannes Fabricius was born.
Fabricius was a German/Frisian astronomer, eldest son of David Fabricius who was also an astronomer. In their solar observing they discovered sunspots about the same time as, and independently of, Galileo.
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On this day in 1942 - January 8th - Stephen Hawking was born.
Hawking is possible the most famous living scientist. For thirty years he held the prestigious post of Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge, though he retired a number of years ago. (Isaac Newton was once Lucasian Professor.) He's best known for his work on black holes.
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On this day in 1839 - January 9th - Thomas Henderson published his determination of the distance to Alpha Centauri.Henderson had actually been the first person to calculate the distance to a fixed star by using stellar parallax. However he had delayed publishing his results, and the credit for being first went elsewhere.
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On this day in 1946 - January 10th - the US Army Signal Corps had the first successful echo detection of a radar signal bounced off the Moon.
It was part of the first experiment in radar astronomy, a technique used decades later to map the planet Venus.
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On this day in 1787 - January 11th - William Herschel discovered the Uranian moons Oberon and Titania.
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On this day in 1907 - January 12th - Sergei Korolev was born.Korolev was the mastermind of the Soviet space program, and a state secret referred to only as the Chief Designer.
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On this day in 2005 - January 12th - NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft was launched.
Deep Impact was the first space mission to study the interior composition of a comet.
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On this day in 1610 - January 13th - Galileo discovered a fourth satellite of Jupiter.
This was the one we now know as Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System.
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On this day in 1978 - January 13th - NASA selected its first women astronauts.
In 1983 Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.
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On this day in 2005 - January 14th - the European Space Agency (ESA) probe Huygens landed on Saturn's moon Titan.It was the first time a spacecraft had been landed on a moon other than our own. Here is footage of the Huygens landing on Titan..
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On this day in 2008 - January 14th - NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft made its first flyby of Mercury.
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) was the second spacecraft to reach Mercury, the first having been Mariner 10 in 1975.
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On this day in 1916 - January 14th - the Royal Astronomical Society in London admitted the first women to full membership in the society.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/16/18 01:19 AM.
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On this day in 2006 - January 15th - NASA's Stardust spacecraft completed its mission by returning its samples to Earth.
Stardust was robotic space probe whose primary mission was to collect dust samples from the coma of comet Wild 2, as well as samples of cosmic dust.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/16/18 01:13 AM.
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On this day in 2015 - January 16th - the UK Space Agency announced that the remains of the probe Beagle 2 had been located on Mars.The probe had been lost on Christmas Day 2003 after successful insertion into orbit by Mars Express. It was finally identified in images from the HiRise camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
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On this day in 1969 - January 16th - the first docking of two manned spacecraft occurred.
The Soviet Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 docked in space and transferred crew from one vehicle to another by a space walk.
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On this day in 2002 - January 18th - the Gemini South Observatory was dedicated.
Gemini South in Chile and Gemini North in Hawaii together constitute the Gemini Observatory. The twin telescopes provide almost complete coverage of the skies with two of the largest and most advanced optical/infrared telescopes available.
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On this day in 1851 - January 19th - Jacobus Kapteyn was born.
Kapteyn was a Dutch astronomer best known for his studies of the Milky Way. He discovered evidence for galactic rotation.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/19/18 03:05 PM.
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On this day in 1747 - January 19th - Johann Bode was born.Although his name lives on in "Bode's Law", he was a celestial cartographer who, amazingly, created two influential sky atlases.
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On this day in 2006 - January 19th - NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was launched.
The spacecraft made a flyby of the Plutonian system in the summer of 2015 that stunned everyone with the data that turned the dwarf planet and its moons from distant icy bodies into unbelievably complex worlds.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/20/18 04:13 PM.
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On this day in 2014 - January 20th - ESA's Rosetta spacecraft awoke from a deep space hibernation of over thirty months.Rosetta's historic mission saw her rendezvous with a comet, put a lander on its surface, and follow the comet as it went around the Sun.
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On this day in 1930 - January 20th - Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin was born.
The second man to step onto the Moon has been an astronaut, Air Force combat pilot, aerial gunnery instructor and flight commander. His doctoral thesis at MIT was on techniques for manned orbital rendezvous.
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On this day in 1573 - January 20th - Simon Marius was born.
Marius was a German astronomer who claimed he had seen Jupiter's moons before Galileo. Galileo's documentation was more extensive and published first, but the suggestions Marius made for naming the four large moons were eventually adopted.
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On this day in 2003 - January 22nd - Pioneer 10's last signal was received.
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt and later the first to pass the orbit of Pluto. Originally designed for a 21-month mission, it lasted more than 30 years.
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On this day in 1592 - January 22nd - Pierre Gassendi was born.
Gassendi was a French philosopher, priest, astronomer, and scientific observer, experimentalist and chronicler. He was the first person ever to see a planet transiting the Sun when he observed the 1631 transit of Mercury.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 01/22/18 11:54 PM.
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On this day in 1986 - January 24th - Voyager 2 flew past Uranus.This fly-by was the first and only visit of a spacecraft to Uranus.
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On this day in 1736 - January 25th - Joseph Lagrange was born.
French mathematician Lagrange was one of the greats of the 18th century, and his work included major contributions to physics and astronomy. He's best known now for his identification of equilibrium points between the gravity of the Earth and that the Sun. NASA's SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) sits at one of these points.
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On this day in 1983 - January 25th - the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) was launched.
IRAS, a joint project of NASA (USA), NIVR (Netherlands) and SERC (UK), was the first space telescope to carry out a survey of the whole night sky at infrared wavelengths.
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On this day in 1994 - January 25th - Clementine was launched.
Over a period of nearly four months the US spacecraft Clementine made scientific observations of the Moon. In addition, Clementine was used as a test of the effects on sensors and components of extended exposure to space.
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On this day in 2004 - January 25th - the Mars rover Opportunity landed on the red planet.
The mission was designed to last 90 Martian days - Opportunity is still operational.
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On this day in 1978 - January 26th - the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) was launched.
The IUE was a joint effort by ESA, the UK Science Research Council and NASA. It was switched off in 1996, after it had worked 14 years beyond its planned lifetime.
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On this day in 1967 - January 27th - the crew of Apollo 1, Virgil “Gus†Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee, died when fire swept through the command module during a preflight test.They are commemorated at the Astronaut Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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On this day in 1829 - January 27th - pioneering astrophotographer Isaac Roberts was born.Roberts was a Welsh amateur astronomer, and a fellow of the Royal Geological Society. He developed a photographic technique which made it possible to capture faint objects. Roberts's photograph of the Andromeda Nebula showed the spiral structure of M31, which was surprising at the time.
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On this day in 1941 - January 27th - New Zealand astrophysicist Beatrice Hill Tinsley was born.Beatrice Tinsley began her career late and died in 1981, but in the intervening years she revolutionized our view of galactic evolution. Her pioneering work continues to be regularly cited by researchers.
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On this day in 1611 - January 28th - Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius was born.Johannes Hevelius studied sunspots, produced a lunar chart, discovered several comets, and compiled an important star atlas. He was one of the most influential astronomers of the 17th century.
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On this day in 1986 - January 28th - NASA's space shuttle Challenger exploded soon after launch killing the seven crew members.They are commemorated at the Astronaut Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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On this day in 1958 - January 31st - NASA launched Explorer 1.
It was the USA's first successful satellite, and launched as part of US participation in International Geophysical Year.
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On this day in 2003 - February 1st - NASA's space shuttle Columbia broke up during re-entry, killing the seven crew members.
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On this day in 1995 - February 3rd - the first space shuttle mission with a female pilot was launched.
Eileen Collins was the first woman to pilot a space shuttle. Four years later she became the first woman commander of a space shuttle.
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On this day in 1966 - February 3rd - the Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 made the first successful soft landing on the Moon.
Luna 9 also sent back the first pictures taken on the Moon's surface.
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On this day in 1906 - February 4th - Clyde Tombaugh was born.Tombaugh was the American astronomer who discovered Pluto. He died in 1997, and a portion of his ashes were on the New Horizons spacecraft that journeyed to Pluto.
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On this day in 1963 - February 5th - Dutch astronomer Maarten Schmidt had a sudden insight that provided the clue to solving the mystery of quasars.Schmidt realized that a quasar wasn't an object in our Galaxy, and its unusual spectrum wasn't full of unknown elements. It was mostly composed of hydrogen that was redshifted because of its enormous distance away in an expanding Universe.
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On this day in 1974 - February 5th - NASA's Mariner 10 took a historic gravity assist from Venus in order to make its flyby of Mercury.
It was the first spacecraft to turn the theoretical possibility of such a gravity assist into a reality, enabling the first visit of a spacecraft to Mercury.
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On this day in 1971 - February 6th - Alan Shepard hit the first golf balls on the Moon.
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On this day in 1984 - February 7th - NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless made the first untethered spacewalk during space shuttle mission STS-41B.
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On this day in 1971 - February 6th - Alan Shepard hit the first golf balls on the Moon.
The Apollo 14 lunar module landed on the Moon on February 5th with lunar module pilot and Ed Mitchell and commander Alan Shepard. Shepherd made the lunar golf shots on their second exploration of the Moon.
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On this day in 1826 - February 8th - Jules Verne was born.
The French author was a major European literary figure best known in the English-speaking world for his exciting and influential adventure stories, many of which are considered early science fiction. Ray Bradbury said "We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne."
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On this day in 1974 - February 8th - the Skylab 4 mission ended.
The Skylab 4 crew was the last to occupy the US space station.
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On this day in 2010 - February 11th - NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched.
The SDO observes the Sun in order to understand the ways in which it affects the Earth, such as space weather.
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On this day in 2001 - February 12th - NASA's NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft landed on the asteroid 433 Eros.
NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) was the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on an asteroid.
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On this day in 1852 - February 13th - Johan Dreyer was born in Copenhagen.
Dreyer was a prominent astronomer and writer. He was born in Denmark but became a British citizen. Dreyer is best remembered for his New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (based on the Herschel catalogues of nebulae). The catalogue numbers are still in use, prefixed by NGC.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 02/14/18 05:43 AM.
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On this day in 1990 - February 14th - NASA's Voyager 1 took a Family Portrait, looking towards the Sun from 6 billion km away.Earth is only one pixel of the image, christened by Carl Sagan "the pale blue dot".
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On this day in 2011 - February 14th - NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft made a close flyby of comet Tempel 1. It was NASA's second visit to Tempel 1, because the Deep Impact mission had visited it in 2005, sending an impactor in order to learn about the comet's interior.
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On this day in 1980 - February 14th - NASA's Solar Maximum mission was launched.
Solar Max was designed to investigate solar phenomena, particularly solar flares.
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On this day in 2000 - February 14th - NASA's NEAR-Shoemaker went into orbit around the asteroid Eros.
Eros was the Greek god of love, the son of Aphrodite.
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On this day in 2013 - February 15th - a meteor explosion occurred over Chelyabinsk in Russia causing around 1500 injuries.
The meteoroid was about 20 meters across with a mass of 12,000–13,000 metric tonnes. Fortunately, the explosion occurred high in the atmosphere and the atmosphere absorbed much of the energy. However the shock waves caused a lot of damage and many of the injuries were from flying glass.
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On this day in 1564 - February 15th - Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy.Galileo was one of the first to use a telescope to observe the heavens. He's known for his astronomical discoveries, his experimental physics, his astronomical discoveries, and, of course, his getting in trouble with the Church.
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On this day in 1973 - February 15th - Pioneer 10 was the first ever spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt.
Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972 and is is now nearly three times as far away from the Sun as Pluto is.
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On this day in 1948 - February 16th - Gerard Kuiper discovered Miranda, a moon of Uranus.
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On this day in 1996 - February 17th - the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft was launched.
The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) did a fly-by of asteroid Mathilde and then went on to study asteroid Eros from Orbit.
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Today - February 17, 2018 - NASA's Mars rover Opportunity her 5000th sol on the red planet.
[bOpportunity's mission was originally planned for 90 sols. A sol is a Martian day, and it's just over 39.5 minutes longer than an Earth day.[/b]
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On this day in 1930 - February 18th - Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.
Pluto was considered to be the ninth planet for many years, but is now classified as a dwarf planet.
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On this day in 1677 - February 18th - Jacques Cassini was born at the Paris Observatory.
He was the son of the director of the observatory Jean Dominique Cassini, with whom he made numerous astronomical observations. Eventually, he took over his father's duties as head of the Paris Observatory and continued the astronomical work.
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On this day in 1473 - February 19th - Nicolaus Copernicus was born.His work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) set out his arguments for a heliocentric (sun-centered) system instead of a geocentric (Earth-centered) system.
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On this day in 1986 - February 19th - Mir was launched by the Soviet Union.
Mir was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit. It was first continuously inhabited long-term research station in orbit. The failing station was deorbited in March 2001.
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On this day in 1965 - February 20th - John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
Glenn's space capsule Friendship 7 took him around the Earth three times before its splashdown.
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On this day in 1965 - February 20th - NASA's Ranger 8 ended its mission by a crash landing on the Moon.
The Ranger program was intended to obtain close-up images of the Moon's surface to help choose landing sites for Apollo missions. Ranger 8 transmitted 7,137 images before its mission ended.
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Thanks! i didn't know this.
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On this day in 1994 - February 20th - the US probe Clementine entered lunar orbit.
Clementine's mission was to make scientific observations of the Moon, and to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment.
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On this day in 1978 - February 22nd - the first Navstar GPS satellite was launched.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) was originally called Navstar GPS.
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On this day in 1986 - February 22nd - Sweden's first satellite, Viking, was launched.
Viking was launched as a piggyback payload on an Ariane 1 rocket that carried a French remote sensing satellite and it conducted a successful magnetospheric research mission until 12 May 1987.
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On this day in 1990 - February 23rd - Pioneer 11 crossed the orbit of Neptune on its way out of the Solar System.
The spacecraft went beyond the most distant planet, but since there are dwarf planets and many other objects beyond Neptune, the spacecraft still hasn't left the Solar System.
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On this day in 1987 - February 23rd - the light from supernova SN 1987A reached Earth.
The supernova occurred in the Tarantula Nebula in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was the closest supernova seen in nearly four hundred years, visible to the unaided eye in the southern hemisphere. It has greatly increased our understanding of this spectacular phenomenon.
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On this day in 1945 - February 23rd - Ukranian astronomer Svetlana Gerasimenko was born.
Gerasimenko was the co-discoverer of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the comet which was studied by the Rosetta mission. Both the Rosetta spacecraft and the lander Philae are on the comet as it continues its orbit.
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On this day in 1968 - February 24th - the discovery of the first pulsar was announced.
A pulsar is a fast-rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. We can only detect it when it's pointing towards us, rather like a lighthouse, so it seems to pulse. A neutron star is the remnant of a massive star following the collapse of its core in a supernova explosion.
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On this day in 1842 - February 26th - Camille Flammarion, French astronomer and popular author, was born.
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On this day in 1897 - February 27th - French astronomer Bernard Lyot was born.
Bernard Lyot's work brought him major international awards. His most important contributions to astronomy were in solar observing, especially the invention of the coronagraph which makes it possible to observe the Sun's corona without waiting for a total eclipse.
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On this day in 2007 - February 28th - the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Jupiter en route to Pluto.
New Horizons made over 700 observations of the Jovian system, but the main reason for the flyby was to carry out a gravity assist maneuver, That boosted the speed of the spacecraft to get it to Pluto five years earlier than it would have otherwise.
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On this day in 1927 - March 1st - American astronomer George Abell was born.
Abell's catalogue of galaxy clusters from the Palomar Sky Survey remains an important piece of work. But in addition to being an active professional astronomer, he was a teacher, administrator, writer and science popularizer.
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On this day in 1966 - March 1st - the Soviet probe Venera 3 landed on Venus, the first Earthly craft to land on another planet.
The probe was entering the atmosphere as ground control lost contact with the orbiting spacecraft. Therefore any data it may have collected couldn't be transmitted.
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On this day in 2002 - March 1st - the European Space Agency (ESA) launched Envisat, the world's largest civilian Earth observation satellite.
Envisat's objective was to provide observational data complementary to European remote-sensing missions in order to improve environmental studies. Contact was lost in 2012 and Envisat is being replaced by the Sentinel series of satellites.
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On this day in 1965 - March 1st - the first foundation piles were laid for ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre) at Noordwijk in the Netherlands.
ESTEC is the European Space Agency's main technology development and test centre for spacecraft and space technology.
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On this day in 1982 - March 1st - the descent stage of Soviet probe Venera 13 landed on Venus.
It was the first Venusian probe to transmit color pictures from the surface of the planet. Designed to survive for half an hour, it transmitted data for over two hours.
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On this day in 2004 - March 2nd - the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Rosetta spacecraft.Rosetta would travel for ten years and billions of miles in order to rendezvous with a comet, accompany it as it moved through the inner Solar System past the Sun, and deploy a lander.
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On this day in 1972 - March 2nd - NASA's Pioneer 10 was launched.
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to cross the Asteroid Belt and to complete the first mission to Jupiter. It's now over 120 au from the Sun, heading out of the Solar System in the direction of the constellation Taurus.
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On this day in 1979 - March 4th - Jupiter's rings were discovered by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
The rings are dark and made up mainly of dust, so had not been seen from Earth.
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On this day in 1923 - March 4th - Sir Patrick Moore, English amateur astronomer, writer and broadcaster, was born.
He was best known as the enthusiastic and knowledgeable presenter of the BBC TV program The Sky at Night, which he began in 1957. Although Sir Patrick is no longer with us, the program goes on and is the world's longest-running television series.
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On this day in 2005 - March 5th - the European Space Agency's first deep space ground station was officially inaugurated.
The New Norcia facility in Western Australia was the first, but it's been joined by stations in Spain and Argentina. Deep space tracking stations are essential for missions such as Rosetta and Mars Express.
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On this day in 1512 - March 5th - Gerardus Mercator was born.
Mercator was a German-Flemish cartographer, geographer and cosmographer. He created the 1569 world map based on a new projection that represented sailing courses of constant bearing as straight lines—an innovation that is still employed in nautical charts.
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On this day in 1937 - March 6th - Valentina Tereshkova was born.Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space. She was a Soviet cosmonaut who spent three days orbiting in Vostok 6.
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On this day in 1787 - March 6th - Joseph Fraunhofer was born.
Fraunhofer was a German optician who was known for the quality of his optical glass and excellent telescope objectives. His name is still known today for his discovery of the dark absorption lines - known as Fraunhofer lines - in the Sun's spectrum.
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On this day in 2015 - March 6th - NASA'S Dawn spacecraft went into orbit around dwarf planet Ceres.
Dawn had already orbited the asteroid Vesta before being the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet.
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On this day in 2009 - March 7th - NASA launched its planet-hunter Kepler.
As of February 2017 Kepler had found over 2600 confirmed exoplanets and five thousand possibles for further investigation.
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On this day in 1792 - March 7th - John Herschel was born.Son of the discoverer of Uranus, John Herschel was one of the 19th century's most distinguished individuals. He was a brilliant mathematician, chemist and astronomer, as well as an accomplished artist, musician and linguist.
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On this day in 1837 - March 7th - Henry Draper was born.
Henry Draper was a pioneer of astrophotography. Following his early death, his wife Anna donated money to Harvard College Observatory to complete his catalogue of stellar spectra. If you see a deep sky object named with an “HD†prefix, it refers to this catalogue.
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On this day in 1831 - March 7th - King William IV signed a Royal Charter for the Astronomical Society of London, and it assumed the name Royal Astronomical Society.
William IV also agreed to be the Society's Patron; every subsequent monarch has followed suit.
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On this day in 1979 - March 9th - astronomer Linda Morabito discovered evidence of volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon Io.
Voyager 1 took the picture on which the first active volcano outside the Earth was found.
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On this day in 1564 - March 9th - David Fabricius was born.
Along with his son Johannes, David Fabricius discovered Mira, the first known periodic variable star. They also made the first confirmed observations of sunspots.
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On this day in 1934 - March 9th - Yuri Gagarin was born.A soviet pilot and cosmonaut, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was the first person to orbit the Earth.
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On this day in 1977 - March 10th - rings were discovered around the planet Uranus.
The rings were found by a team of astronomers intending to use the occultation by Uranus of star SAO 158687 to study the planet's atmosphere.
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On this day in 1811 - March 11th - French mathematician and astronomer Urbain LeVerrier was born.LeVerrier's calculations enabled the Berlin Observatory to discover the planet Neptune.
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On this day in 1835 - March 12th - Canadian-American mathematician and astronomer Simon Newcomb was born.
Newcomb made important contributions to international timekeeping and other fields in applied mathematics such as economics and statistics. He was a professor at the United States Naval Observatory and at Johns Hopkins.
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On this day in 1781 - March 13th - William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus.All of the other planets known at that time had been known since antiquity.
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On this day in 1855 - March 13th - Percival Lowell was born.
Lowell was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona and began the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death.
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On this day in 1879 - March 14th - Albert Einstein was born.
Einstein is definitely a man who needs no introduction.
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On this day in 1855 - March 14th - Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli was born.
Schiaparelli produced the most detailed map of Mars ever published, and it became a standard reference in planetary cartography. When he referred to canali (channels) on Mars, it was translated into English as canals, and Percival Lowell and others were convinced that there was an advanced civilization on Mars.
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On this day in 1935 - March 14th - Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan was born.
Cernan, the commander of Apollo 17, was the last man on the Moon.
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On this day in 2016 - March 14th - part 1 of the ExoMars astrobiology mission was launched.
ExoMars is a joint ESA/Roscosmos mission. The launch of the spacecraft containing ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli lander was successful. (TGO is now in orbit around Mars, but the lander crashed.)
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 03/17/18 10:41 AM.
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On this day in 1932 - March 15th - Apollo astronaut Alan Bean was born.
Bean was the Apollo 12 lunar module pilot, and the fourth person to walk on the Moon.
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On this day in 1713 - March 15th - French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille was born.Lacaille was one of astronomy's greats. He surveyed nearly 10,000 stars in the southern hemisphere, and invented fourteen new constellations still in use today.
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On this day in 1750 - March 16th - Caroline Herschel was born.Caroline Herschel was an assistant to her brother William. She also discovered eight comets and a number of deep-sky objects. She was the first woman to be awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society for her work.
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Chimpanzee
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Chimpanzee
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Been busy and not had a chance to visit. I do miss the notifications.
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On this day in 2011 - March 17th - NASA's Messenger spacecraft went into orbit around Mercury.
Messenger was the first craft ever to orbit Mercury.
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On this day in 1930 - March 17th - Apollo astronaut Jim Irwin was born.
Irwin was the Apollo 15 lunar module pilot and eighth person to walk on the Moon.
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On this day in 1965 - March 18th - the Soviet spacecraft Voskhod 2 was launched.
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to leave a spacecraft for a "spacewalk".
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On this day in 1865 - March 21st - Antonia Maury was born.The American astronomer was best known for her work at Harvard College Observatory.
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On this day in 1997 - March 22nd - Comet Hale-Bopp made its closest approach to Earth.The two-tailed comet was probably the most widely observed comet of the twentieth century. It's also known as the Great Comet of 1997.
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On this day in 1749 - March 23rd - Pierre-Simon Laplace was born.
Laplace was a brilliant French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist who is sometimes called "France's Newton". He accounted for the observed deviations of planets from their theoretical orbits by applying Newton's theory of gravitation to the problem.
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On this day in 2001 - March 23rd - the Soviet/Russian space station Mir was deorbited.
Mir was the first space station assembled in orbit and the first continuously inhabited long-term orbital research station.
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On this day in 1840 - March 23rd - American polymath John William Draper produced the first detailed photograph of the Moon.This was the first astrophotograph taken in North America.
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On this day in 1893 - March 24th - German astronomer Walter Baade was born.
Baade, who worked at Mt Wilson Observatory for many years, defined two distinct populations of stars and his discovery that there are two types of Cepheid variable star meant that his recalculation of the known universe doubled the size calculated by Hubble.
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On this day in 1665 - March 25th - Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn's moon Titan.
ESA's Titan lander was named for Huygens, a prominent Dutch mathematician and scientist.
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On this day in 1972 - March 27th - the Soviet probe Venera 8 was launched.
Venera 8 made the first completely successful landing on Venus and sent data from the surface for fifty minutes before succumbing to the pressure and searing temperature.
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On this day in 1802 - March 28th - Heinrich Olbers discovered Pallas.
Pallas was the second asteroid to be discovered, and it was counted as a planet at the time, as Ceres had been.
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On this day in 1807 - March 29th - Heinrich Olbers discovered Vesta.
Vesta was the third asteroid to be discovered, and it was counted as a planet at the time, as Ceres and Pallas had been.
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On this day in 1974 - March 29th - Mariner 10 made what was the first ever flyby of Mercury.
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On this day in 1997 - March 31st - Pioneer 10's mission officially ended.
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to go through the asteroid belt and the first to fly by Jupiter. After the end of the mission, there was still contact with the spacecraft to record telemetry as it headed out into the Kuiper Belt. It's currently about 121 au from Earth.
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On this day in 1845 - April 2nd - French physicists Leon Foucault and Louis Fizeau made the first successful photograph of the Sun.
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On this day in 1867 - April 3rd - Wilhelm Tempel, observing in Marseilles, discovered Comet 9P/Tempel 1.
in 2005 the comet was the target of NASA's Deep Impact probe.
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On this day in 2014 - April 3rd - Sentinel 1-A was launched from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, the first ESA satellite for the Copernicus EU programme.
Copernicus is the world's largest single Earth observation programme.
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On this day in 1966 - April 3rd - the Soviet spacecraft Luna 10 was inserted into orbit around the Moon.
It was not only the first spacecraft to go into orbit around the Moon, but the first human-made object to orbit any body beyond the Earth.
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On this day in 1973 - April 3rd - Salyut 2 was launched.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 06/17/18 06:35 PM.
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On this day in 1973 - April 5th - NASA launched Pioneer 11.
Pioneer 11 was the first spacecraft to encounter Saturn and it followed Pioneer 10 into the far reaches of the Solar System. It's now close to 102 light years away.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 04/05/19 04:25 AM.
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On this day in 1965 - April 6th - Intelsat I was the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.
It was nicknamed Early Bird for the proverb "The early bird catches the worm." Although the satellite remains in orbit, the last time it was activated was in 1990.
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On this day in 2001 - April 7th - NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter was launched.
The orbiter was designed to look for evidence of past or present water and ice, as well as study the planet's geology and radiation environment. Its primary mission was meant to last 32 months, but It's still in service.
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On this day in 1964 - April 8th - NASA's Gemini I was launched - it was an unmanned test flight.
The Gemini program was the bridge between NASA's Mercury program - its original ventures in manned spaceflight - and the Apollo moon program.
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On this day in 1968 - April 9th - Europe's spaceport, the Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) or Guiana Space Centre, became operational.
The first launch was of a sounding rocket from the French Veronique series.
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On this day in 1959 - April 9th - NASA selected its first group of astronauts, known as the Mercury Seven.
They were the pioneers of the US manned space program: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. None of the Mercury Seven are still alive.
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On this day in 1921 - April 9th - Mary Jackson was born.
Mary Jackson was NASA's first black female engineer. She began as a computer for NASA's predecessor organization, but went on from mathematics to take advanced engineer classes. She worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, for most of her career.
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On this day in 1919 - April 10th - John C. Houbolt was born.
Houbolt, an American aerospace engineer, is credited with leading the team behind the lunar orbit rendezvous (LOR) that was used to land humans on the Moon and return them to Earth. Using LOR, NASA saved time and billions of dollars by efficiently using existing rocket technology.
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On this day in 1980 - April 11th - NASA's Viking 2 lander astrobiology mission ended.
The lander operated on the surface for 1316 days, and was turned off on April 11, 1980 when its batteries failed.
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On this day in 1970 - April 11th - NASA's Apollo 13 Moon mission was launched.
This was the ill-fated mission that didn't make onto the Moon, but with the assistance of a lot of smart people the astronauts made it safely back to Earth.
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On this day in 1984 - April 11th - the space shuttle Challenger redeployed the Solar Max satellite following its retrieval and repair.
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On this day in 1986 - April 11th - Halley's Comet was at its closest to the Earth.
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On this day in 2006 - April 11th - ESA's Venus Express was inserted into orbit around Venus.
The mission provided an enormous amount of data on the Venusian atmosphere until ESA concluded it in December 2014. In addition to helping to understand the atmosphere of Venus, it also contributed to an a general understanding of atmospheric dynamics in general, including climate change on Earth.
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On this day in 1960 - April 11th - Project Ozma began.
Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake initiated this project. It was a pioneering SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) experiment that searched for signs of life in distant planetary systems by monitoring interstellar radio waves.
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On this day in 1961 - April 12th - Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first spaceman.Gagarin made the historic first orbit of the Earth in the Vostok 1 craft.
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On this day in 1597 - April 13th - Giovanni Battista Hodierna was born.
Hodierna was a Sicilian astronomer at the court of the Duke of Montechiaro. Pre-dating Messier by over a century, he compiled a sky catalog that included a number of nebulous objects that might be confused with comets.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 05/18/18 12:56 PM. Reason: date corrected
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On this day in 1629 - April 14th - Dutch scientist and mathematician Christiaan Huygens was born.
Huygens was a prominent scientist in his day, his varied contributions including the invention of the pendulum clock, and the discovery of Saturn's moon Titan. NASA named its Titan lander after him.
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On this day in 1972 - April 16th - Apollo 16 was launched.
It was crewed by Commander John Young, Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke and Command Module Pilot Ken Mattingly.
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On this day in 1598 - April 17th - the Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli was born.
Riccioli's best known for his Almagestum Novum published in 1651. It included his Moon map and over 1500 folio pages densely packed with text, tables and illustrations. The work became a standard technical reference book for astronomers all over Europe and included the names of prominent lunar features still in current use.
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On this day in 2014 - April 18th - NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) was intentionally crashed into Moon at end of its mission.
LADEE, orbiting the Moon's equator, studied the lunar exosphere and dust in the Moon's vicinity. It was crashed on the far side of the Moon to ensure that it didn't damage historically important landing sites on the near side.
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On this day in 1971 - April 19th - Salyut 1 was launched.
Salyut 1, launched by the Soviet Union, was the first ever manned space station.
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On this day in 1967 - April 19th - NASA's Surveyor 3 unmanned probe landed on the Moon.
In November 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean would land near the probe and remove some parts to return them to Earth.
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On this day in 1967 - April 20th - Apollo 16 astronauts landed on the Moon.
Commander John Young and lunar module pilot Charles Duke spent three days on the lunar surface.
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On this day in 1858 - April 23rd - Max Planck was born.
Planck was a German theoretical physicist best known as the originator of quantum theory. His work won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. The European Space Agency (ESA) named a space observatory for him - it mapped the cosmic microwave background from 2009-2013.
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On this day in 1990 - April 25th - the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed.
The STS-31 mission of the shuttle Discovery launched the telescope.
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On this day in 1920 - April 26th - the Shapley-Curtis debate took place on the nature and distance of spiral nebulae.
Even less than a century ago, we didn't know what the "spiral nebulae" were. Were they objects in our Milky Way galaxy and therefore comparatively close? Or were they "island universes", i.e., other galaxies, and therefore at a great distance?
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On this day in 2017 - April 26th - the Cassini spacecraft made the first dive of the Grande Finale of its 13-year study of the Saturnian system.
It was the first of a series of close orbits that involved Cassini diving between Saturn and its rings. Astronomers collected data to learn more about the origins, mass, and age of Saturn's rings, as well as the mysteries of the gas giant's interior.
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On this day in 1900 - April 28th - Dutch astronomer Jan Oort was born.
Oort made major contributions to the understanding of the Milky Way and was a pioneer in radio astronomy. He realized that the orbits of comets “implied there was a lot more solar system than the region occupied by the planets.†The Oort cloud of comets that surrounds the Solar System was named for him.
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On this day in 1928 – April 28th – American geologist Gene Shoemaker was born.
Shoemaker was one of the founders of the study of planetary science. And with his wife Carolyn and David Levy, he was co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 which hit Jupiter.
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On this day in 1906 – April 28th – Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok was born.He's best known for his work on the structure and evolution of our Galaxy and the dark nebulae named for him. Click here to learn more about Bok globules.
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On this day in 2003 – April 28th – NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) was launched.
GALEX, which operated until early 2012, was an orbiting space telescope observing galaxies in ultraviolet light. Its observations provided data about how galaxies, the basic structures of our Universe, evolve and change.
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On this day in 2013 – April 29th – ESA's Herschel Space Observatory mission ended.
The infrared observatory was named after William Herschel, who discovered infrared radiation, and his sister and collaborator Caroline Herschel. The observatory was able to see the coldest and dustiest objects in space, but it needed liquid helium to cool its instruments. When that ran out, the mission ended.
Last edited by Mona - Astronomy; 05/01/18 04:52 PM.
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On this day in 1949 – May 1st – Gerard Kuiper discovered Neptune's moon Nereid.Nereid was the second known moon of Neptune. It was discovered over a century after William Lassell discovered the first one, Triton.
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On this day in 1961 – May 5th – Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
Shepard made a suborbital flight in Freedom 7.
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On this day in 2003 – May 9th – the Japanese mission Hayabusa ("peregrine falcon") was launched.
Hayabusa was the first mission to return a sample of material from an asteroid.
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On this day in 1900 – May 10th – British-American astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was born.Cecilia Payne, in her PhD thesis, was the first to propose that stars stars were composed mainly of hydrogen and helium.
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On this day in 1974 – May 11th – the first geostationary satellite was launched.
SMS-1 (Synchronous Meteorological Satellite) was the first satellite in the first series of geostationary meteorological satellites. (A geostationary satellite is in an orbit that keeps it above the same part of the Earth all of the time.).
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On this day in 2009 – May 11th – space shuttle mission STS-125 was launched.
STS-125 was the fifth and final servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope.
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On this day in 1916 – May 11th – Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was published.
Einstein's theory has often been tested and has passed every test - it's changed the way we viewed the cosmos.
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On this day in 1930 – May 12th – the Adler Planetarium opened in Chicago.
The Adler Planetarium was the first planetarium in the western hemisphere.
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On this day in 1978 - May 12th - ESA's VILSPA ground station (now the European Space Astronomy Centre) in Spain was officially opened by their Majesties King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia.
VILSPA was one of ESA's original tracking stations and has been responsible for providing telemetry, tracking and command support to ESA as well as non-ESA satellites.
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On this day in 1973 - May 14th - Skylab, the first United States space station, was launched.
Lifting Skylab into low earth orbit was the final mission and launch of a Saturn V rocket, the launch vehicle that carrying Apollo crews to the Moon.
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On this day in 2009 - May 14th - ESA launched the Planck Space Observatory.
Launched along with the Herschel Space Observatory, from 2009-2013 Planck made high resolution studies of the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the very early Universe.
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On this day in 2009 - May 14th - ESA launched the Herschel Space Observatory.Launched along with the Planck Space Observatory, from 2009-2013 Herschel observed the cosmos in infrared.
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On this day in 1857 - May 15th - Scottish-American astronomer Williamina Fleming was born.Fleming, a computer at Harvard College Observatory, was a pioneer in the classification of stellar spectra. During the course of her career, she discovered 10 novae, 52 nebulae, and 310 variable stars.
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On this day in 1718 - May 15th - Johannes Kepler discovered the simple mathematical rule governing the orbits of the solar system's planets, now recognized as Kepler's Third Law of planetary motion.Kepler's three laws described the orbital motions of the planets in a solar system where they orbited the Sun, not the Earth.
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On this day in 2011 - May 16th - STS-134 Endeavour launched, the final space shuttle mission.
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On this day in 1836 - May 17th - English scientist and astronomer Norman Lockyer was born.
Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen he is credited with discovering the gas helium which was first discovered in the light spectrum of the Sun decades before any was found on Earth.
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On this day in 1968 - May 17th - the first ESRO satellite was successfully launched.
The European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) was a precursor to the European Space Agency (ESA). ESRO-2B was the first mission controlled by teams at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. It was mainly intended to study X-ray and particle emissions from the Sun.
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On this day in 1969 - May 18th - Apollo 10 was launched.
Apollo 10 was a dress rehearsal for the first Moon landing, testing all of the components and procedures, just short of actually landing.
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On this day in 2009 - May 18th - The final spacewalk to service the Hubble Space Telescope took place.
Amongst other things the astronauts installed some new instruments, made repairs to two instruments, replaced old batteries, and added new gyroscopes.
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On this day in 1990 - May 20th - the Hubble Space Telescope sent back its first image, that of several stars, captured with its Wide Field/Planetary Camera.
Unfortunately, they then discovered there was a flaw in the main mirror which meant fuzzy images for three years until the first shuttle servicing mission. Interestingly, the images were still much better than the ones from ground-based telescopes.
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On this day in 2010 - May 21st - the Japanese experimental aircraft IKAROS was launched.
IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) is the first spacecraft to successfully demonstrate solar sail technology in interplanetary space.
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On this day in 2008 - May 25th - NASA's Phoenix lander landed on Mars.
Phoenix was expected to spend 90 Martian sols searching for environments suitable for microbial life. It carried out its mission for 157 Martian sols.
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BellaOnline Editor Renaissance Human
Joined: May 2010
Posts: 11,963 Likes: 30 |
On this day in 1961 - May 25th - President John F. Kennedy challenged the USA to "commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
Sadly, Kennedy didn't live to see it happen.
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Joined: May 2010
Posts: 11,963 Likes: 30
BellaOnline Editor Renaissance Human
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OP
BellaOnline Editor Renaissance Human
Joined: May 2010
Posts: 11,963 Likes: 30 |
On this day in 1983 - May 26th - ESA's X-ray observatory, Exosat, was launched.
Exosat was the first ESA mission to study the Universe at X-ray wavelengths, and one of the first unmanned satellites to feature an onboard computer. The spacecraft was operational from May 1983 to April 1986.
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