November 5, 2021 Today in 1906, Marie Curie gave her inaugural lecture as the first woman lecturer at the Sorbonne. She explained the theory of ions in gases and her treatise on radioactivity. Madame Curie would become a Nobel prize winner and authority on radioactivity. Marie Curie and her daughter Irène in the laboratory after… Continue reading
Astronomy Fact of the Day: November 1, 2021
November 1, 2021 Today in 1884, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted universally at a meeting of the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, USA. From then the International Date Line was drawn up and 24 time zones created. Standard time zones of the world. Credit: United States Central Intelligence Agency
Astronomy Fact of the Day: November 3, 2021
November 3, 2021 Today in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2 with the first live animal sent into space – a Siberian husky dog, Laika. Biological data, the first data of its kind, was transmitted back to Earth and showed scientists how Laika was adapting to space. The craft was not planned for recovery,… Continue reading
Astronomy Fact of the Day: October 31, 2021
October 31, 2021 Today in 1956, an airplane landed at the South Pole for the first time. When Navy Admiral George J. Dufek stepped off the Que Sera Sera, an LC-47 transport plane, he was the first American to set foot on there. He came with an advance party to build the first permanent South… Continue reading
Astronomy Fact of the Day: October 29, 2021
October 29, 2021 Today in 1991, the space probe Galileo became the first human object to fly past an asteroid. The encounter provided data and over 150 images of the asteroid Gaspra in the main asteroid belt. Gaspra is approximately 20 kilometers wide. This picture of asteroid 951 Gaspra is a mosaic of two images… Continue reading
Astronomy Fact of the Day: October 27, 2021
October 27, 2021 Today in 1780, a total solar eclipse was visible in New England. During the American Revolutionary War, the first American solar eclipse expedition was organized and sent out from Harvard College in Massachusetts. A special immunity agreement was negotiated with the British to allow the scientists to work unharmed. The Harvard expedition,… Continue reading
Astronomy Fact of the Day: October 25, 2021
October 25, 2021 Today in 1975, the Soviet unmanned probe Venera 10 soft-landed on Venus. Although it was designed to last only 30 minutes in the extremely high-temperature and high-pressure environment of Venus, Venera 10 transmitted for a record 65 minutes. More information about Venera 10 may be found in NASA’s ‘Mission’ pages here. The… Continue reading
Astronomy Fact of the Day: October 23, 2021
October 23, 2021 Today in 2007, Space Shuttle Discovery launched on the twenty-third Shuttle mission to the International Space Station and delivered the Harmony module. Harmony, also known as Node 2, is the utility of the ISS. It connects the laboratory modules of the United States, Europe, and Japan as well as providing sleeping cabins… Continue reading
Astronomy Fact of the Day: October 21, 2021
October 21, 2021 Today, the annual Orionid Meteor Shower reaches it’s peak. A meteor shower is a celestial event where meteors, or shooting stars, can be observed caused by streams of cosmic debris entering the Earth’s atmosphere. While usually a respectable meteor shower, the nearly full moon will make observing many meteors from the Orionids… Continue reading
Astronomy Fact of the Day: October 19, 2021
October 19, 2021 Today in 2008, NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) launched to map the boundary of our solar system. IBEX produced the first all-sky map of the heliosphere. The heliosphere is a giant bubble around the solar system produced by a constant flow of charged particles from the Sun. This is an artist’s concept… Continue reading