Mon Jul 11, 2022 FAREWELL SKYLAB
On July 11th, 1979 America’s first space station – Skylab - disintegrated when it re-entered earth’s atmosphere, its debris scattered across the south Pacific and Australia. Built from Apollo moon mission hardware, such as the Saturn 5 rocket’s third stage, it was launched in 1973. Over the next year, three different Skylab crews lived in it and made observations of the earth and the sun and the stars. And it provided lessons that would help us stay alive on future long duration missions, such as those aboard the current space station. There was even a racetrack reminiscent of the one seen in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”, where astronauts could run laps around Skylab’s inner circumference! One of my duties when I interned at the Hayden Planetarium was to provide daily updates on the anticipated re-entry time of Skylab. It was indeed a sad day when Skylab met its end.
Tue Jul 12, 2022 4TH OF JULY COSMIC FIREWORKS
On the 4th of July in the year AD 1054, a bright star appeared in the eastern predawn sky. It was near the star Al Hecka, the forward horn tip of the constellation Taurus the Bull. For the next month this new star, this “nova,” was so bright that it could even be seen in the daytime! As summer drew to a close, the star faded out of sight and was seen no more. In Europe there is no written record of this star’s appearance: either no one was looking up then, or more likely, the skies were overcast throughout its appearance. But Chinese astronomers made note of this “guest star,” as they called it, and that’s how we know about it today. If you’re out before sunrise this month, aim your telescope at that part of space behind the forward horn tip of Taurus, and you’ll find the Crab nebula, the exploded remains of a supernova - cosmic fireworks from nearly a thousand years ago.
Wed Jul 13, 2022 JULY FULL MOON
The moon is full today. Because thunderstorms are common in July, this full moon is often called the Thunder moon. According to the Sioux Indians, this is the Moon When the Wild Cherries Are Ripe. To the Winnebago, it is the Corn-Ripening Moon, and to the Kiowas, it is the Moon of Deer Horns Dropping Off. To the Omaha Indians, however, this is the Moon When the Buffalo Bellow. In ancient China, this was the Hungry Ghost Moon, named for departed souls who had left no descendants. In medieval times this was the Hay Moon or the Mead Moon, named for the elixir from the meadows of Briton and Europe. After this full moon came the first harvests from the fields and the pagan festival of Lughnasaid, which was later adopted by early Christians and became the celebration of Lammas, or “loaf mass,” in thanksgiving for the first fruits of the farmer’s labor.
Thu Jul 14, 2022 PRINCIPIA
On July 6 in the year 1686, Principia Mathematica was published in England. Principia was Isaac Newton’s great book on gravity and motion, which became a major breakthrough for our understanding of how the Universe works. His three laws of motion – inertia; force equals mass times acceleration; and action-reaction, plus the relationship between gravity, mass and distance, are still in use today, showing us how we can send rockets to the moon and beyond. Edmond Halley paid for Principia’s publishing, because he wanted it to help him work out comet orbits. Halley asked the Royal Society to pay for it, but they’d tied up all their money in a beautiful book, the “History of Fishes”, which nobody bought. Years later, when Halley wanted payment for his duties as secretary, they just gave him a lot of the fish books and suggested he could sell them and make some money that way.
Fri Jul 15, 2022 APOLLO 11 LAUNCH
On July 16, 1969, three astronauts were launched into space. Four days later, they would reach the moon. Six other men had preceded them, beginning with Apollo 8’s Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders; but they simply orbited the moon, they did not land on it. Beginning with the first rockets into earth orbit in the late 1950’s, America initiated manned training and preparation flights: first a single astronaut aboard the Mercury spacecraft; then two astronauts who orbited the earth in the Gemini missions, learning how to dock with other spacecraft, figuring out the best ways to maneuver while in a spacesuit outside the capsule; the loss of good people – Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Ed White – in the Apollo 1 fire. Then to fix what had gone wrong, and continue the struggle, until at last the moon was within our reach. “We went to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard.”
