BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Astronomy On This Day . . .

On this day in 1970 – December 15th – Venera 7 landed on Venus.

The Soviet probe was the first spacecraft to land on Venus. It survived for only 53 minutes, 20 of them on the surface.

On this day in 1857 – December 16th – E.E. Barnard was born.

Edward Emerson Barnard was an American astronomer noted for his excellence as n observational astronomer. Barnard's Star is named for him.

On this day in 1917 – December 16th – Arthur C. Clarke was born.

Clarke wrote more than 100 books and he inspired the scientists and space explorers. In honor of his work, the International Astronomical Union named the distance of 36000 km above Earth the Clarke Orbit, and asteroid No. 4923 received the designation 'Clarke'.

On this day in 1968 – December 21st – Apollo 8 was launched.

The crew consisting of Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders would be the first humans to orbit the Moon.

Did you see the darkest night on the Solstice?

Connie, thanks for mentioning this. I'd just made some notes to put something about it in the thread "Nonsense and outright hoaxes". Now moved to write it up.

We know we have to be wary of political misinformation. But although people don't usually have the same high level of emotional involvement in astronomy stories, the level of ignorance is quite high. Someone who doesn't know what's going on gets it started and then it gets passed on. Who doesn't love what sounds like a cool story!

But this story is actually from 2010. It was resurrected - who knows why?! - published, and then passed around with a change in date. It was silly to call it the darkest night even then, but at least there was an eclipse.

Last night (December 21) there was a half Moon. I saw the Moon this morning as a waning crescent. The crescent will get smaller until it disappears at the new Moon on the 28th. Lunar eclipses can only occur when there's a full Moon. More here about Lunar Eclipses.

On this day in 2004 – December 25th – Mars Express and Beagle 2 arrived at Mars.

Contact was lost with the lander Beagle 2 which wasn't found until twelve years later.