Brian Redman

Brian Herman Thomas Redman (born 9 March 1937 in Burnley, Lancashire and educated at Rossall School, Fleetwood, Lancashire), is a retired British racing driver.
He was very successful in sportscar racing and the World Sportscar Championship, winning the 1970 Targa Florio with a Porsche 908 and the 12 Hours of Sebring twice, in 1975 with a BMW Coupé, in 1978 with a Porsche 935 and the Spa-Francorchamps 1000km race 4 times (1968–1970, 1972). For many years, Redman focused his career in the United States, winning the SCCA Formula 5000 Championship in 1974, 1975, and 1976, and the IMSA GT Championship in 1981. He was for many years associated with the Chevron marque, founded by fellow-Lancastrian Derek Bennett.
He is currently a regular at the Monterey Historic Automobile Races at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
Career.
Redman raced F1 for McLaren, Shadow, Cooper, Williams
He participated in 15 World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 1 January 1968. He achieved one podium in the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix, finishing third in a Cooper-BRM behind Graham Hill in a Lotus-Ford and Denny Hulme in a McLaren-Ford. He then had an accident at the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, crashing his Cooper-BRM when the suspension broke at the Les Coombes corner; he survived with a badly broken arm. He scored a total of 8 championship points in his career, with two 5th places in 1972, at the Monaco Grand Prix and the German Grand Prix driving a Yardley McLaren.
He achieved spectacular success in sports-car racing, particularly in 1968 as a John Wyer Gulf driver, in 1969 and 1970 as a Porsche works driver and in 1972 with the Ferrari 312 PB; Winning at Spa Francorchamps 1000 Ks 5 times, the Nurburgring 1000 Ks 3 times, Daytona 24 Hours 3 times, Sebring twice, Watkins Glen 6 Hours, Osterreichring twice, Monza 1000 Ks twice, the Targa Florio, Brands Hatch 6 Hours twice etc.
In 1973 Redman started racing in the USA full-time and won the SCCA/USAC Formula 5000 Championship three times in a row from 1974 to 1976 driving a Jim Hall/Carl Haas Lola T330/332C against considerable opposition, including Mario Andretti and Al Unser, Jody Scheckter, Jackie Oliver, Alan Jones, David Hobbs, Brett Lunger, Sam Posey, "Vern" Schuppan et al. Redman was employed at Haas's business office in Highland Park, Illinois, where he also lived for a time. At the end of 1976 the SCCA announced new rules. The F5000 single-seaters had to use full-width bodywork and the new series would be called Can-Am. On the first day of practice for the first race of the new season, at Circuit Mont-Tremblant, Canada the new car took off at 160 mph went 40 feet in the air and turned over, landing upside down. Redman suffered a broken neck (C1), fractured shoulder and sternum, plus bruising of the brain. The ambulance blew a tire on the way to hospital. Redman was declared dead. It took him 9 months to recover and he returned to racing on a spectacular note by winning the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1978 driving a Porsche 935. He continued driving for Dick Barbour Racing through 1979 and 1980. In 1981, driving the brand new Lolas T600 IMSA GTP car he won the first race at Laguna Seca and went on to win the IMSA Camel GTP championship. His last year of professional racing was at the age of 52, driving for the works Aston Martin team in the 1989 World Sports Prototype Championship. He later co-managed the Redman Bright racing team.
Redman has now taken out his 61st racing licence, lives in Florida and is active in historic racing.


Amy Simon

Amy Simon is an American planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, involved in several missions of the Solar System Exploration Program.
Education.
Simon is from Union Township, Union County, New Jersey, where she attended Union High School. She earned a bachelor's degree in Space Sciences from Florida Institute of Technology in 1993 and was inducted into Sigma Pi Sigma. She completed her doctoral studies in astronomy at the New Mexico State University in 1998. Upon graduation she became a postdoctoral research scientist at Cornell University.
Career.
Simon is a Senior Scientist in the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, having joined NASA as a civil servant in 2001. She served as the Chief of the Planetary Systems Laboratory from 2008 to 2010 and the Associate Division Director from 2010 to 2013.
Her scientific research involves the study of the composition, dynamics, and cloud structure in jovian planet atmospheres, primarily from spacecraft observations, and as of 2018 she has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications.
Works.
Her contributions include the first detailed study of the changing shape of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, as well as the discoveries of several types of waves in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Her analysis of Voyager 2, Cassini-Huygens, Hubble and New Horizons images led to the discovery of several new classes of Jupiter atmospheric waves.
Beyond Jupiter, she has studied atmospheric chemistry and dynamics on Saturn, including the north polar hexagon. She was also part of a team that observed Neptune using the Kepler space telescope, detecting solar oscillations in light reflected off a planet for the first time.
Simon is involved in multiple robotic NASA planetary missions. She was a co-investigator on the Cassini-Huygens Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) and is the deputy instrument scientist for the OSIRIS-REx Visible and IR Spectrometer (OVIRS), as well as for the Landsat 9 Thermal Infrared Sensor-2 instrument and the deputy principal investigator for the Lucy (spacecraft) L'Ralph instrument.
She is principal investigator of the Hubble Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program. Her team discovered a new Great Dark Spot on Neptune with Hubble and have published more than 12 manuscripts from OPAL data. Her work with OSIRIS-REX led to the discovery of hydrated minerals on the surface of Bennu and earned a NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal.
Explorations.
Simon also plans future planetary exploration missions. She served on the National Academy of Science's Space Studies Board 2013 Planetary Science Decadal Survey. She has co-led several mission studies for NASA including Flagship class missions to Enceladus and to the Ice Giants, Uranus and Neptune.<ref name=":20/"></ref><ref name=":21/"></ref> She was principal investigator for the proposed New Frontiers class Saturn probe mission, SPRITE.
Simon is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the American Astronomical Society, and the Division for Planetary Sciences.


Mounds Observatory

The ACT Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the Astronomy Club of Tulsa. It is located south of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States in the town of Mounds. It was also known as Mounds/RMCC Observatory before being renamed in 2010.


Space Telescope Science Institute

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). STScI is located on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus in Baltimore, Maryland and was established in 1981 as a community-based science center that is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). In addition to performing continuing science operations of HST and preparing for scientific exploration with JWST, STScI manages and operates the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST), the Data Management Center for the Kepler mission and a number of other activities benefiting from its expertise in and infrastructure for supporting the operations of space-based astronomical observatories. Most of the funding for STScI activities comes from contracts with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center but there are smaller activities funded by NASA's Ames Research Center, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the European Space Agency (ESA). The staff at STScI consists of scientists (mostly astronomers and astrophysicists), spacecraft engineers, software engineers, data management personnel, education and public outreach experts, and administrative and business support personnel. There are approximately 100 Ph.D. scientists working at STScI, 15 of which are ESA staff who are on assignment to the HST project. The total STScI staff consists of about 675 people in 2019.
STScI operates its missions on behalf of NASA, the worldwide astronomy community, and to the benefit of the public. The science operations activities directly serve the astronomy community, primarily in the form of , and eventually observations and grants, but also include distributing data from other NASA missions, such as the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, Galaxy Evolution Explorer and ground-based sky surveys. The ground system development activities create and maintain the software systems that are needed to provide these services to the astronomy community. STScI's public outreach activities provide a wide range of information, on-line media, and programs for formal educators, planetariums and science museums, and the general public. STScI's award-winning public outreach websites receive millions of hits per month. STScI also serves as a source of guidance to NASA on a range of optical and UV space astrophysics issues.
The STScI staff interacts and communicates with the professional astronomy community through a number of channels, including participation at the bi-annual meetings of the American Astronomical Society, publication of quarterly STScI newsletters and the STScI website, hosting user committees and science working groups, and holding several scientific and technical symposia and workshops each year. These activities enable STScI to disseminate information to the telescope user community as well as enabling the STScI staff to maximize the scientific productivity of the facilities they operate by responding to the needs of the community and of NASA.
STScI activities.
Telescope science proposal selection.
The STScI conducts all activities required to select, schedule, and implement the science programs of HST. The first step in this process is to support the annual community-led selection of the scientific programs that will be performed with HST. This begins with publishing of the annual Call for Proposals, which specifies the currently supported science instrument capabilities, proposal requirements and the submission deadline. Anyone is eligible to submit a proposal. All proposals are critically peer-reviewed by the Time Allocation Committee (TAC). The TAC consists of about 100 members of the U.S. and international astronomical community, selected to represent a broad range of research expertise needed to evaluate the proposals. Each proposal cycle typically involves reviewing 700 to 1100 proposals. Only 15 - 20% of these proposals will eventually be selected for implementation. The TAC reviews several categories of observing time, as well as proposals for archival, theoretical, and combined research projects between HST and other space-based or ground-based observatories (e.g., Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories). STScI provides all technical and logistical support for these activities. The annual cycle of proposal calls was occasionally altered in duration in years when a HST servicing mission was scheduled.
Proposers fortunate enough to be awarded telescope time, referred to as General Observers (GOs), must then provide detailed requirements needed to schedule and implement their observing programs. This information is provided to STScI on what is called a Phase II proposal. The Phase II proposal specifies instrument operation modes, exposure times, telescope orientations, and so on. The STScI staff provide the web-based software called Exposure Time Calculators (ETCs) that allow GOs to estimate how much observing time any of the onboard detectors will need to accumulate the amount of light required to accomplish their scientific objectives. In addition, the STScI staff carries out all the steps necessary to implement each specific program, as well as plan the entire ensemble of programs for the year. For HST, this includes finding guide stars, checking on bright object constraints, implementing specific scheduling requirements, and working with observers to understand and factor in specific or any non-standard requirements they may have.
Observation scheduling.
Once the Phase II information is gathered, a long-range observing plan is developed that covers the entire year, finding appropriate times to schedule individual observations, and at the same time ensuring effective and efficient use of the telescope through the year. Detailed observing schedules are created each week, including, in the case of HST operations, scheduling the data communication paths via the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) and generating the binary command loads for uplink to the spacecraft. Adjustments can be made to both long-range and weekly plans in response to Targets of Opportunity (e.g., for transient events like supernovae or coordination with one-of-a-kind events such as comet impact spacecraft). The STScI uses the Min-conflicts algorithm to schedule observation time on the telescope. The STScI is currently developing similar processes for JWST, although the operational details will be very different due to its different instrumentation and spacecraft constraints, and its location at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point (~1.5 million km from Earth) rather than the low Earth orbit (~565 km) used by HST.
Flight operations.
Flight Operations consists of the direct support and monitoring of HST functions in real-time. Real-time daily flight operations for HST include about 4 command load uplinks, about 10 data downlinks, and near continuous health and safety monitoring of the observatory. Real-time operations are staffed around the clock. Flight operations activities for HST are done at NASA's GSFC in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Science data processing.
Science data from HST arrive at the STScI a few hours after being downlinked from TDRSS and subsequently passing through a data capture facility at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Once at STScI, the data are processed by a series of computer algorithms that convert its format into an internationally accepted standard (known as FITS: Flexible Image Transport System), correct for missing data, and perform final calibration of the data by removing instrumental artifacts. The calibration steps are different for each HST instrument, but as a general rule they include cosmic ray removal, correction for instrument/detector non-uniformities, flux calibration, and application of world coordinate system information (which tells the user precisely where on the sky the detector was pointed). The calibrations applied are the best available at the time the data pass through the pipeline. The STScI is working with instrument developers to define similar processes for Kepler and JWST data.
Science data archiving and distribution.
All HST science data are permanently archived after passing through the calibration pipeline. NASA policy mandates a one-year proprietary period on all data, which means that only the initial proposal team can access the data for the first year after it has been obtained. Subsequent to that year, the data become available to anyone who wishes to access it. Data sets retrieved from the archive are automatically re-calibrated to ensure that the most up-to-date calibration factors and software are applied. The STScI serves as the archive center for all of NASA's optical/UV space missions. In addition to archiving and storing HST science data, STScI holds data from 13 other missions including the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE), the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX). Kepler and JWST science data will be archived and retrieved in similar fashions. The internet serves as the primary user interface to the data archives at STScI (http://archive.stsci.edu). The archive currently holds over 30 terabytes of data. Each day about 11 gigabytes of new data are ingested and about 85 gigabytes of data are distributed to users. The Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA; http://hla.stsci.edu/), currently in development, will act as a more integrated and user-friendly archive. It will provide raw Hubble data as well as higher-level science products (color images, mosaics, etc.).
Science instrument calibration and characterization.
STScI is responsible for in-flight calibration of the science instruments on HST and JWST. For HST, a calibration plan for the observatory is developed each year. This plan is designed to support the selected GO observation programs for that cycle, as well as to provide a basic calibration that spans the lifetime of each instrument. The calibration program includes measurements that are made relative to on-board calibration sources or to assess internal detector noise levels as well as observations of astronomical standard stars and fields, needed to determine absolute flux conversions and astrometric transformations. The external calibrations on HST typically total 5-10% of the GO observing program, with more time required when an instrument is still relatively new. HST has had a total of 12 science instruments to date, 6 of which are currently active. Two new instruments were installed during the May 2009 HST servicing mission STS-125. Electronic failures in STIS (in 2001) and in the ACS Wide-Field Channel (in 2007) were also repaired on-orbit in May 2009, bringing these instruments back to active status. All 12 HST instruments plus the 4 planned for JWST are summarized in the table below. HST instruments can detect light with wavelengths from the ultraviolet through the near infrared. JWST instruments will operate from the red-end of optical wavelengths (~6000 Angstroms) to the mid-infrared (5 to 27 micrometres). Instruments listed as decommissioned are no longer on board.
STScI staff develops the calibration proposals, shepherd them through the scheduling process, and analyze the data they produce. These programs provide updated calibration and reference files to be used in the data processing pipeline. The calibration files are also archived so users can retrieve them if they need to manually recalibrate their data. All calibration activity and results are documented, usually in the form of Instrument Science Reports posted to the public website, and occasionally in the form of published papers. Results are also incorporated into the Data Handbooks and Instrument Handbooks.
In addition to calibration of the instruments, STScI staff characterizes and documents the performance of the instrument, so users can better understand how to interpret their data. These are generally effects that are not automatically corrected for in the pipeline (because they vary with time or depend on the brightness of the source). They include global effects, such as charge transfer efficiency in the charge-coupled devices, as well as effects specific to modes and filters, such as filter "ghosts" (caused by subtle scattering of light within an instrument). Awareness of these effects can come from STScI staff as they analyze calibration programs, or from observers who find oddities in their data and provide feedback to STScI.
The STScI staff also performs the characterization and calibration of the telescope itself. In the case of HST, this has evolved to primarily be a matter of monitoring and adjusting focus, and monitoring and measuring point spread functions. (In the early 1990s, the STScI was responsible for accurate measurement of the spherical aberration, necessary for the corrective optics of all subsequent instruments). In the case of JWST, the STScI will be responsible for using the wavefront sensor system developed by JPL and Northrop Grumman Space Technology (NGST, the NASA contractor building the observatory) to monitor and adjust the segmented telescope.
Post observation support.
The post observation support includes a HelpDesk that users can contact to answer their questions about any aspect of observing – from how to submit a proposal to how to analyze the data.
Science community service.
The STScI performs large HST science programs on behalf of the community. These are programs with broad scientific applications. To date, these programs include the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), the Hubble Deep Field South (HDFS), and the Ultra Deep Field (UDF). The raw and processed data for these observations are made available to the astronomy community nearly immediately. These products have then been used by many astronomers in pursuit of their own research topics, and have motivated a great deal of follow-up work (see, for example, http://www.stsci.edu/ftp/science/hdf/clearinghouse/clearinghouse.html and http://www.stsci.edu/hst/udf/index_html).
Ground systems.
STScI is responsible for developing, enhancing, and maintaining most of the ground systems used to carry out our Hubble science operations described above. These systems originally (1980s, early 1990s) came from several sources, including in-house STScI developments and work done under NASA contracts with various vendors. Over HST's lifetime substantial work has been done on these systems - even while they were supporting daily operations of Hubble. They have been integrated into a more effective and easier to operate end-to-end system. They have been through major technology upgrades (e.g., improved operating systems and computer hardware, higher capacity archive storage media). They have also been modified to support the succession of instruments installed in the telescope. In the last several years, they have been modified to support WFC3 and COS, the two new instruments that will be installed during the next HST servicing mission, and to support the 2-Gyroscope mode of HST operations. STScI also provides subsets of ground system services to other astronomy missions, including FUSE, Kepler, and JWST. STScI's software engineers maintain about 7,900,000 source lines of code.
Mission development and operations support.
STScI routinely participates with NASA and industry system engineers and scientists in developing the overall mission architecture. For HST, this includes helping to determine and prioritize servicing mission activities and development of the servicing strategy. For JWST, this includes participating in the definition of high-level science requirements and the overall architecture for the mission. In both cases, the STScI focuses on the scientific capabilities of the mission, and also the requirements for smooth and efficient operations of the observatory.
Scientific research activities.
STScI manages the selection of the Hubble Fellowship Program. Since 1990, Hubble Fellowships support outstanding postdoctoral scientists whose research is broadly related to the scientific mission of the Hubble Space Telescope. In 2009, it was combined with the Spitzer Fellowship that since 2002 had been associated with the Spitzer telescope and science program. It now supports fellows undertaking research associated with all missions within the Cosmic Origins theme: the Herschel Space Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope (HST), James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The research may be theoretical, observational, or instrumental. Each year, since HST's launch in 1990, 8 to 12 fellowships are awarded; from 2009 it hovers about 16. STScI also sponsors a summer student intern program that allows talented undergraduate students from around the world to work with the Institute's scientific staff, providing these students with hands-on experience in state-of-the-art astronomical research. STScI's full-time scientific staff conducts original research spanning a broad range of astrophysics including investigations of the solar system, exoplanet detection and characterization, star formation, galaxy evolution, and physical cosmology. STScI hosts an annual scientific symposium held each spring as well as several smaller scientific workshops. The employment of an active scientific staff at STScI helps to ensure that HST, and eventually JWST, perform at peak capability.
Public outreach.
The STScI's Office of Public Outreach (OPO) provides a wide array of products and services designed to share and communicate the science and discoveries of HST (and eventually JWST) with the general public. OPO's efforts focus on meeting the needs of four communities: the news media, web users, the formal education community and informal science education venues.
OPO's News Branch produces approximately 40 new press releases each year featuring HST discoveries and science results. These media packages include news stories, Hubble images, explanatory artwork, animations, and supplementary information for use by print, broadcast, and on-line media. The branch also conducts press conferences called "NASA Science Updates" for particularly newsworthy discoveries. Science Writers' Workshops and other special events bring reporters to the Institute for in-depth sessions with scientists working on current astrophysical research problems.
The Formal Education Branch develops standards-based and rigorously evaluated educational products and lessons for use in K-14 curricula throughout the country. Many of the branch's products are incorporated in its award-winning web site called Amazing Space (http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/) where lessons and exercises are readily accessible by both teachers and students and is used in more than 200 school districts and in all 50 states.
The Informal Education Branch creates a variety of Hubble-related products and features for use in informal venues including museums, science centers, planetariums, and libraries. These include ViewSpace, a multimedia display system providing a series of educational features on the science of Hubble and other missions using imagery, text, and music. A short film called "Hubble: Galaxies Across Space and Time" which features a three-dimensional fly-through of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field has been produced for IMAX theaters and adapted for use in planetariums. The group also provides materials for conferences and workshops, manages Hubble traveling exhibits for national distribution, and creates video compilations of Hubble imagery and features.
OPO's Online Branch develops, improves and maintains a series of HST and JWST related web sites including the award-winning HubbleSite (http://hubblesite.org), which contains an image gallery of nearly 900 Hubble images that have been released for public consumption over the telescope's lifetime.


Epigenes of Byzantium

Epigenes of Byzantium (; unknown-circa 200 BC) was a Greek astrologer. He seems to have been an earlier supporter of astrology, which, though derided by many Greek intellectuals, came to be accepted after Alexander the Great conquered major parts of the Near East.
The sources for the life of Epigenes are Seneca the Younger (c 65 AD), Pliny the Elder (c. 77 AD), and Censorinus (c. 238 AD).
Epigenes' claims to have been educated by the Chaldeans comes from the writings of Seneca. Pliny the Elder writes that Epigenes attests to the fact that the Chaldeans preserved astral observations in inscriptions upon brick tiles ("coctilibus laterculis") extending to a period of 720 years. Pliny calls Epigenes a writer of first-rate authority ("gravis auctor imprimis"). Smith interprets this to mean that Epigenes came before Berossus.
It is unclear when Epigenes lived - he may have lived about the time of Augustus; some conjecture that he lived centuries earlier - but he is known to have refined the study of his chosen field, defining Saturn, for example, as "cold and windy." Along with Apollonius of Myndus and Artemidorus of Parium, he boasted of having been instructed by the Chaldean priest-astrologers.
The 55-km lunar crater Epigenes is named after him.


Durrington Walls

Durrington Walls is the site of a large Neolithic settlement and later henge enclosure located in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site in England. It lies north-east of Stonehenge in the parish of Durrington, just north of Amesbury. The henge is the second-largest Late Neolithic palisaded enclosure known in the United Kingdom, after Hindwell in Wales.
Between 2004 and 2006, excavations on the site by a team led by the University of Sheffield revealed seven houses. It has been suggested that the settlement may have originally had up to 1,000 houses and perhaps 4,000 people, if the entire enclosed area was used. The site was settled for about 500 years, starting sometime between 2800 and 2100 BC.
The site may have been the largest settlement in northern Europe for a brief period. From 2010 to 2014, a combination of new technology and excavations revealed a -diameter henge constructed largely of wooden posts. Evidence suggests that this complex was a complementary monument to Stonehenge.
In 2020, a geophysical survey uncovered a number of pits, some natural sink holes and others apparently modified to hold massive timbers, interpreted as belonging to a circle or circuit of pits of Neolithic age. If this interpretation is correct, this would be Britain's largest prehistoric monument.
Etymology.
The name comes from the civil parish in which the site is located – Durrington, meaning "the farm of the deer people" ("doer" – "deer", "ing" – "people"/"tribe", "tun" – "farm"/"settlement"), and the large henge banks that surround it. The "Dur" prefix is commonly found in this part of England; the Durotriges Celtic tribe inhabited this area before their defeat by the Romans in the mid first-century C.E. Also, Dorchester was originally known as Durnovaria, and smaller cities with related names (e.g., Durweston) and locations (e.g., Durborough Farm) are found in this region.
Context.
What visibly remains of Durrington Walls today is the 'walls' of the henge monument – the eroded remains of the inner slope of the bank and the outer slope of the internal ditch. This now appears as a ridge surrounding a central basin. On the eastern side, the separate ditch and bank are much more discernible, although badly eroded by ploughing. Originally the ditch was some deep, wide at its bottom and wide at the top. The bank was in some areas wide. There were two entrances through the bank and ditch – at the north western and south eastern ends. There may also have been an entrance to the south and the north east, although these may have been deliberately blocked.
The henge enclosed several timber circles and smaller enclosures – not all of which have been excavated. Several Neolithic house floors have been found next to and under the eastern bank of the henge. Their density suggests that there was a very large village on the sloping river bank on this side.
The henge was constructed on high ground that slopes south east toward a bend in the River Avon, and is thus considerably higher at its north western side than at its south eastern edge. The south eastern entrance is roughly from the riverbank.
The henge has two roads passing through it – an old toll road, and a modern banked road constructed in 1967. In the past, military barracks were constructed at the north eastern end of the henge. Some houses were built on the western bank. The land on the western side of the toll road is owned by the National Trust, forming part of its Stonehenge Landscape property. It has free entry.
History.
Although there is evidence of some early Neolithic activity at the site, most of the structures seem to have been built in the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age. At some point c. 2600 BC, a large timber circle was constructed. It is now known as the Southern Circle. The circle was oriented southeast towards the sunrise on the midwinter solstice. Its four large concentric circles of postholes would have held extremely large standing timbers.
A paved avenue was constructed on a slightly different alignment – towards the sunset on the summer solstice – and it led to the River Avon. This feature is similar to the Stonehenge Avenue. A large timber post lay on this orientation, about as far away from the circle as the Heelstone is from Stonehenge.
At a similar time, but probably after the circle and avenue were constructed, a village began to develop around the site. Excavations have revealed seven Neolithic house floors on the eastern side of the bank. Some of these floors were located underneath the henge bank, suggesting that settlement came first. The density of some of the houses suggests that there are many more house floors under the field east of the henge, along the banks of the River Avon. One of the homes excavated showed evidence of a cobb wall and its own ancillary building, and was very similar in layout to a house at Skara Brae in Orkney. The other houses seem to have had simple wattle and daub walls. Evidence also suggests that the houses continued to the north of the site.
It is probable that the village surrounded a large, circular, open area that contained the Southern Circle and several smaller enclosures. A geophysical survey of the area 200 metres west of the Southern Circle, known as the western enclosures, showed "a group of at least six penannular structures ...arranged around a terrace overlooking the timber circle and the eastern entrance". An excavation revealed two houses set within timber palisades and ditched enclosures that appear to have been kept clean. These may have held elite occupants or might have been shrines, cult-houses, or spirit lodges.
Julian Thomas notes that
"Overall, the evidence from the internal structures at Durrington Walls does not show that this was a ‘ritual site’, for there is no such thing. There are simply sites at which ritual has taken place, and at Durrington a variety of acts of various degrees of ritualization, from formal rites to habitual practices, were woven into a complicated history, marking moments of crisis, transformation, and daily routine."
Sometime later, perhaps 200 years after the circle was first constructed, another two concentric rings were added, and the henge enclosure was constructed. A ditch some 5.5 m deep was dug, and the earth used to create a large outer bank some 30 m wide and presumably several metres high. Several features of the village, including houses and midden pits, were built over. The henge seems to have been built in one continuous operation, not in phases, as there is no evidence of soil or turf developing in the bank. The ditch also seems to have been dug in sections, perhaps by different groups of labourers. Estimates of the number of people required to create the henge vary from 4000 – 6000. At a similar time, another large timber circle and henge were created immediately south at Woodhenge.
It is unknown when the site fell out of use. It was re-occupied during the Iron Age, when a settlement and field system was established inside the henge. A large drainage ditch was also dug above the north eastern entrance, possibly to complement the field system.
Excavations and theories.
Richard Colt Hoare noted Durrington Walls in 1810, and observed that centuries of agriculture had left "its form much mutilated". Geoffrey Wainwright excavated the route of the new A345 in 1966. He discovered the southern timber circle of Durrington Walls, as well as a smaller one slightly north of it.
Since 2003 the Stonehenge Riverside Project, led by Mike Parker Pearson, has carried out annual excavations at Durrington Walls. It identified the Neolithic village and avenue to the river.
Radiocarbon dates of approximately 2600 BC are roughly contemporary with the earliest stone phase at Stonehenge. It is likely that the builders of the stone monument lived here. Parker Pearson believes that Durrington Walls was a complementary structure to Stonehenge, as evidenced by the similar solstice alignments. He suggests that the timber circle at Durrington Walls represented life and a land of the living, whilst Stonehenge and the down around it, encircled by burial mounds, represented a land of the dead. The two were connected by the River Avon and their respective avenues. A ceremonial procession route from one to the other represented the transition from life to death.
Geoff Wainwright and Timothy Darvill have contested Pearson's theories, however. They suggest that Stonehenge was a monument to healing and that connections between the two monuments were unlikely.
Pig bones at Durrington Walls have been interpreted as having come from many different sites around Britain. However, other interpretations of the same evidence suggest that the animals came from a much more limited area.
In 2015 an announcement was made by The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project that a geophysical survey showed evidence of another monument consisting of up to 90 standing stones buried under Durrington Walls. In August 2016 a joint project excavation, directed by Parker Pearson and members of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, revealed that there are no buried standing stones at Durrington Walls.
Instead, the ground-penetrating radar results had revealed a circle of enormous post-holes, not buried stones, beneath the henge bank which had been later filled with chalk rubble. A National Trust archaeologist, Dr. Nicola Snashall, suggested that as soon as the builders of Stonehenge abandoned their settlement on the site, a large timber monument was constructed and that later, "For some strange reason they took the timbers out and put up the enormous bank and ditch that we see today."
In 2020 researchers from the universities of St Andrews, Birmingham, Warwick, Bradford, Glasgow and the University of Wales Trinity Saint David announced the discovery of 20 pits at the site, and claimed that they had found Britain's largest prehistoric monument. Two groups of pits, including at least seven that appear entirely natural, were interpreted as belonging to a -diameter circle or circuit of large "shafts". The circuit surrounds Durrington Walls, dating from the Neolithic and estimated to be 4,500 years old. Some pits are claimed to be more than in diameter and in depth. The claim was supported through the use of a geophysical survey. The slow accumulation of silts within some pits suggests they were cut and then left open.


Jbilet Winselwan meteorite

The Jbilet Wiselwan meteorite is a CM-type carbonaceous chondrite found in Western Sahara in 2013.
It is notable for having a low shock stage and weathering grade with a large total known weight. Thus, it provides a large amount of relatively pristine material without the cost premium associated with meteorite falls.
Jbilet Winselwan has been identified as a good analog for C-type asteroid sample return missions, such as Hayabusa2. Further study has also indicated that it represents a unique view of C-type asteroid regolith based on micro-scale dehydration textures found throughout the meteorite.
History.
Jbilet Winselwan was reported in early June 2013 by a meteorite hunter from Smara, Western Sahara. Due to inherent delays in communication from the desert, the official date of the find is earlier than the initial reports. The accessibility of the strewn field, being only 7 miles south of Smara, led to a large number of meteorite hunters visiting the area from the summer of 2013 onward. The majority of specimens range from 3 to 200 grams with a few larger samples occurring, the largest being ~900g. Samples reached the market quickly and the official classification was approved by The Meteoritical Society on 12 August 2013.
Classification and composition.
Jbilet Winselwan was classified as CM-type carbonaceous chondrite at The National Museum of Natural History, France, and The University of Hassan II Casablanca based on its oxygen-isotopic composition, petrography, and mineral compositions. The meteorite contains CAIs and both type I and type II condrules ranging up to 1.2mm with the majority around 200 μm. X-ray diffraction used in classification showed strong peaks for serpentines, broad but weaker peaks for smectites, and a weak broad peak for tochilinite. Major silicate compositions are: Olivine; Fa0.98±0.44 and Fa25-40, and Pyroxene; Fs2.6±1.5 and Fs40-61. Rare kamacite with 5.8 wt% Ni was identified. The oxygen isotopic compositions were measured for two fragments for identification, at δ18O 3.811±0.09 and 5.851±0.016, δ17O -2.446±0.040 and -0.601±0.026, respectively. The isotope values plot well inside the CM chondrite region.
Further study.
As a result of its pristinity and relative ease to obtain, Jbilet Winselwan has been extensively studied for a northwest Africa find. The earliest studies identified its extreme degree of brecciation, showing that it likely represents the uppermost portion of its parent asteroid; the regolith. This regolith context has been of particular interest, as two missions are currently underway to collect asteroid regolith, Hayabuusa2 and OSIRIS-REx. Jbilet Winselwan has specifically been identified as an analog for Hayabusa2, as the mission is targeting a C-type asteroid, the same class as its likely parent body. In this context, the meteorite was further characterized in its major and minor elements, alteration textures, hydrocarbons, and thermal metamorphism.
The extremely brecciated characteristics of Jbilet Winselwan have also led people to use it as an indicator of the thermal and hydration history of its parent body. A single thin section will contain multiple lithologies ranging from typically-hydrated CM chondrite material with tightly packed chondrules to significantly more dehydrated material with few, poorly preserved chondrules. It has been suggested that some Jbilet Winselwan lithologies represent prime examples of post-shock aqueous alteration, including some regions which have formed as a result of cyclical events.


Battle of Port Arthur

The of 8–9 February 1904 marked the commencement of the Russo-Japanese War. It began with a surprise night attack by a squadron of Japanese destroyers on the neutral Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, Manchuria, and continued with an engagement the following morning; further skirmishing off Port Arthur would continue until May 1904. The attack ended inconclusively, though the war resulted in a decisive Japanese victory.
Background.
The opening stage of the Russo-Japanese War began with pre-emptive strikes by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the Russian Pacific Fleet based at Port Arthur and at Chemulpo. Admiral Tōgō's initial plan was to swoop down upon Port Arthur with the 1st Division of the Combined Fleet, consisting of the six pre-dreadnought battleships , , , , and , led by the flagship , and the 2nd Division, consisting of the armored cruisers , , , , and . These capital ships and cruisers were accompanied by some 15 destroyers and around 20 smaller torpedo boats. In reserve were the cruisers , , , and . With this large, well-trained and well-armed force, and surprise on his side, Admiral Tōgō hoped to deliver a crushing blow to the Russian fleet soon after the severance of diplomatic relations between the Japanese and Russian governments.
On the Russian side, Admiral Starck had the pre-dreadnought battleships , , , , , , and , supported by the armored cruiser and the protected cruisers , , , , and , all based within the protection of the fortified naval base of Port Arthur. However, the defenses of Port Arthur were not as strong as they could have been, as few of the shore artillery batteries were operational, funds for improving the defenses had been diverted to nearby Dalny, and most of the officer corps was celebrating at a party being hosted by Admiral Starck on the night of 9 February 1904.
As Admiral Tōgō had received false information from local spies in and around Port Arthur that the garrisons of the forts guarding the port were on full alert, he was unwilling to risk his precious capital ships to the Russian shore artillery and therefore held back his main battle fleet. Instead, the destroyer force was split into two attack squadrons, one squadron with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd flotillas to attack Port Arthur, and the other squadron, with the 4th and 5th flotillas, to attack the Russian base at Dalny.
Battle.
Night attack of 8–9 February 1904.
At about 22:30 on Monday 8 February 1904, the Port Arthur attack squadron of 10 destroyers encountered patrolling Russian destroyers. The Russians were under orders not to initiate combat, and turned to report the contact to headquarters. However, as a result of the encounter, two Japanese destroyers collided and fell behind and the remainder became scattered. At circa 00:28 on 9 February, the first four Japanese destroyers approached the port of Port Arthur without being observed, and launched a torpedo attack against the "Pallada" (which was hit amidship, caught fire, and keeled over) and the "Retvizan" (which was holed in her bow). The other Japanese destroyers were less successful; many of the torpedoes became caught in the extended torpedo nets which effectively prevented most of the torpedoes from striking the vitals of the Russian battleships. Other destroyers had arrived too late to benefit from surprise, and made their attacks individually rather than in a group. However, they were able to disable the most powerful ship of the Russian fleet, the battleship "Tsesarevich". The Japanese destroyer "Oboro" made the last attack, around 02:00, by which time the Russians were fully awake, and their searchlights and gunfire made accurate and close range torpedo attacks impossible.
Despite ideal conditions for a surprise attack, the results were relatively poor. Of the sixteen torpedoes fired, all but three either missed or failed to explode. But luck was against the Russians insofar as two of the three torpedoes hit their best battleships: the "Retvizan" and the "Tsesarevich" were put out of action for weeks, as was the protected cruiser "Pallada".
Surface engagement of 9 February 1904.
Following the night attack, Admiral Tōgō sent his subordinate, Vice Admiral Dewa Shigetō, with four cruisers on a reconnaissance mission at 08:00 to look into the Port Arthur anchorage and to assess the damage. By 09:00 Admiral Dewa was close enough to make out the Russian fleet through the morning mist. He observed 12 battleships and cruisers, three or four of which seemed to be badly listing or to be aground. The smaller vessels outside the harbor entrance were in apparent disarray. Dewa approached to about of the harbor, but as no notice was taken of the Japanese ships, he was convinced that the night attack had successfully paralyzed the Russian fleet, and sped off to report to Admiral Tōgō.
Unaware that the Russian fleet was getting ready for battle, Dewa urged Admiral Tōgō that the moment was extremely advantageous for the main fleet to quickly attack. Although Tōgō would have preferred luring the Russian fleet away from the protection of the shore batteries, Dewa's mistakenly optimistic conclusions meant that the risk was justified. Admiral Tōgō ordered the First Division to attack the harbor, with the Third Division in reserve in the rear.
Upon approaching Port Arthur the Japanese came upon the Russian cruiser "Boyarin", which was on patrol. "Boyarin" fired on the "Mikasa" at extreme range, then turned and retreated. At around 12:00, at a range of about 5 miles, combat commenced between the Japanese and Russian fleets. The Japanese concentrated the fire of their 12" guns on the shore batteries while using their 8" and 6" against the Russian ships. Shooting was poor on both sides, but the Japanese severely damaged the "Novik", "Petropavlovsk", "Poltava", "Diana" and "Askold". However, it soon became evident that Admiral Dewa had made a critical error; the Russians had recovered from the initial destroyer attack, and their battleships had steam up. In the first five minutes of the battle "Mikasa" was hit by a ricocheting shell, which burst over her, wounding the chief engineer, the flag lieutenant, and five other officers and men, wrecking the aft bridge.
At 12:20, Admiral Tōgō decided to run away and flee. It was a risky maneuver that exposed the fleet to the full brunt of the Russian shore batteries. Despite the heavy firing, the Japanese battleships completed the maneuver and rapidly fled out of range. The "Shikishima", "Mikasa", "Fuji", and "Hatsuse" all took damage, receiving 7 hits amongst them. Several hits were also made on Admiral Kamimura Hikonojō's cruisers as they reached the turning point. The Russians in return had received about 5 hits, distributed amongst the battleships "Petropavlovsk", "Pobeda", "Poltava", and the "Sevastopol". During this same time, the cruiser "Novik" had closed to within of the Japanese cruisers and launched a torpedo salvo. All missed although the "Novik" had received a severe shell hit below the waterline.
Aftermath.
Outcome.
Although the naval Battle of Port Arthur had resulted in no major warship losses, the IJN had been driven from the battlefield by the combined fire of the Russian battleships and shore batteries, thus attributing to them a minor victory. The Russians took 150 casualties to around 90 for the Japanese. Although no ship was sunk on either side, several took damage. However, the Japanese had ship repair and drydock facilities in Sasebo with which to make repairs, whereas the Russian fleet had only very limited repair capability at Port Arthur.
It was obvious that Admiral Dewa had failed to press his reconnaissance closely enough, and that once the true situation was apparent, Admiral Tōgō's objection to engage the Russians under their shore batteries was justified.
The formal declaration of war between Japan and Russia was issued on 10 February 1904, a day after the battle. The attack, conducted against a largely unassuming and unprepared neutral power in peacetime, has been widely compared to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1907, the Second Hague Conference adopted provisions regarding the rights and duties of neutral powers on land and sea, prohibiting nations from committing any acts of hostility against neutral countries or persons as well as requiring that a declaration of war be given before commencing the attack on a targeted party.
Subsequent naval actions at Port Arthur, February–December 1904.
On Thursday 11 February 1904, the Russian minelayer started to mine the entrance to Port Arthur. One of the mines washed up against the ship's rudder, exploded and caused the ship to sink, with loss of 120 of the ship's complement of 200. "Yenisei" also sank with the only map indicating the position of the mines. The , sent to investigate the accident, also struck a mine and was abandoned, although staying afloat. She sank two days later after hitting a second mine.
Admiral Togo set sail from Sasebo again on Sunday 14 February 1904, with all ships except for "Fuji". On the morning of Wednesday 24 February 1904, an attempt was made to scuttle five old transport vessels to block the entry to Port Arthur, sealing the Russian fleet inside. The plan was foiled by "Retvizan", which was still grounded outside the harbor. In the poor light, the Russians mistook the old transports for battleships, and an exultant Viceroy Yevgeni Alekseyev telegraphed the Tsar of his great naval victory. After daylight revealed the truth, a second telegram needed to be sent.
On Tuesday 8 March 1904, Russian Admiral Stepan Makarov arrived in Port Arthur to assume command from the unfortunate Admiral Stark, thus raising Russian morale. He raised his flag on the newly repaired "Askold". On the morning of Thursday 10 March 1904, the Russian fleet took to the offensive, and attacked the blockading Japanese squadron, but to little effect. In the evening of 10 March 1904, the Japanese attempted a ruse by sending four destroyers close to the harbor. The Russians took the bait, and sent out six destroyers in pursuit; whereupon the Japanese mined the entrance to the harbor and moved into position to block the destroyers' return. Two of the Russian destroyers were sunk, despite efforts by Admiral Makarov to come to their rescue.
On Tuesday 22 March 1904, "Fuji" and "Yashima" were attacked by the Russian fleet under Admiral Makarov, and "Fuji" was forced to withdraw to Sasebo for repairs. Under Makarov, the Russian fleet was growing more confident and better trained.
In response, on Sunday 27 March 1904, Tōgō again attempted to block Port Arthur, this time using four more old transports filled with stones and concrete. The attack again failed as the transports were sunk too far away from the entrance to the harbor.
On 13 April 1904, Makarov (who had now transferred his flag to "Petropavlovsk") left port to go to the assistance of a destroyer squadron he had sent on reconnaissance north to Dalny. He was accompanied by the Russian cruisers , , and , along with the battleships "Poltava", "Sevastopol", "Pobeda", and "Peresvet". The Japanese fleet was waiting, and Makarov withdrew towards the protection of the shore batteries at Port Arthur. However, the area had been recently mined by the Japanese. At 09:43, "Petropavlovsk" struck three mines, exploded and sank within two minutes. The disaster killed 635 officers and men, along with Admiral Makarov. At 10:15, "Pobeda" was also crippled by a mine. The following day, Admiral Togo ordered all flags to be flown at half mast, and that a day's mourning be observed for his fallen adversary. Makarov was officially replaced by Admiral Nikolai Skrydlov on 1 April 1904; however, Skrydlov was unable to reach his command due to the Japanese blockade, and remained at Vladivostok overseeing command of the Vladivostok cruiser squadron until recalled to St Petersburg on 20 December.
On 3 May 1904, Admiral Togo made his third and final attempt at blocking the entrance to Port Arthur, this time with eight old transports. This attempt also failed, but Togo proclaimed it to be a success, thus clearing the way for the Japanese Second Army to land in Manchuria. Although Port Arthur was as good as blocked, due to the lack of initiative by Makarov's successors, Japanese naval losses began to mount, largely due to Russian mines. On 15 May, two Japanese battleships, the 12,320-ton and the 15,300-ton , sank in a Russian minefield off Port Arthur after they both struck at least two mines each, eliminating one-third of Japan's battleship force, the worst day for the Japanese Navy during the war.
Further naval operations from Port Arthur resulted in two break-out attempts by the Russians. The first was on 23 June 1904, and the second on 10 August, the latter of which resulted in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, which was tactically inconclusive. Afterwards, the Russian fleet did not make any more attempts to break out from their port, while the Japanese fleet dominated the waters for the duration of the war. But mines laid by Russian minelayers were a continuing problem for the IJN and resulted in more losses. On 18 September 1904, the 2,150-ton gunboat struck a Russian mine west of Port Arthur and sank. The same fate befell the 2,440-ton cruiser on 30 November in the same minefield, and on 13 December, the 4,160-ton cruiser sank in another Russian minefield a few miles south of Port Arthur while giving naval gunfire support to the Japanese armies now besieging the port.


List of retroreflectors on the Moon

Retroreflectors are devices which reflect light back to its source. Five were left at five sites on the Moon by three crews of the Apollo program and two remote landers of the Lunokhod program. Lunar reflectors have enabled precise measurement of the Earth–Moon distance since 1969 using lunar laser ranging.


John Pediasimos

John Pediasimos (; ca. 1250 – early 14th century), also known as John Pothos, was a Byzantine churchman, scholar, astronomer, mathematician, mythologist, syllogistic, musician, and physician active at Constantinople, Ohrid and Thessalonica.
John was born about 1250, and for the first few years of his life studied in Constantinople under the teachers Manuel Holobolos and George Akropolites. Gregory of Cyprus was a fellow pupil. After his studies he was a given the prestigious position of "hypatos ton philosophon". He later served as "chartophylax" in the Archbishopric of Ohrid (ca. 1280), where he also taught. If his identification with a certain "megas sakellarios" John Pothos is correct, by 1284 he was in Thessalonica. John wrote on many subjects on his fields of study.


Copernicus Foundation for Polish Astronomy

The Copernicus Foundation for Polish Astronomy () is a Polish scientific foundation which aim is to support Polish astronomy by: financing research, founding stipends, propagation of an astronomical knowledge in the society and activation and stimulation of the astronomical community.
The Copernicus foundation is headquartered in Warsaw, Poland and Prof. Michał Jaroszyński is the chairman of the organization. The Copernicus Foundation is a publisher of an Acta Astronomica - a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering astronomy and astrophysics.
History.
The organization was founded in May 1990. The first president was Prof. Marcin Kubiak, and the vice-president - dr hab. Tomasz Chlebowski. Long-term chairman of the Board of the Foundation was Prof. Robert Głębocki (from the beginning till his death in 2005).
Activity.
The Foundation is involved in both one-time and recurring activities in accordance to its statute. The notable actions include:
The Foundation participated also in the financial support of many issues:


91P/Russell

91P/Russell, also known as Russell 3, is a periodic comet in the Solar System. It was discovered by Kenneth S. Russell in 1983.


Jean Dufay

Jean Claude Barthélemy Dufay (July 18, 1896–November 6, 1967) was a French astronomer.
During his career he studied nebulae, interstellar matter, the night sky and cometary physics. In 1925, while working in collaboration with Jean Cabannes, he computed the altitude of the Earth's ozone layer. He was named the honorary director of the Lyon and Haute-Provence observatories.
He became a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1963.
His undergrad was completed in 1913 and his Ph.D. in 1928 under Charles Fabry. In between he served (and was wounded) in World War I and taught.
He was awarded the Valz Prize by the French Academy of Sciences in 1932 for his work on astronomical photometry. The crater Dufay on the Moon is named after him.


Charles Fehrenbach (astronomer)

Charles Fehrenbach (born 29 April 1914 in Strasbourg; died 9 January 2008 in Nîmes) was a French astronomer and member of the French Academy of Sciences. He was director of the Observatoire de Haute Provence (OHP) until 1983. Following the Second World War, he was one of the first astronomers to pioneer the reversion method of using objective prisms to measure the Doppler shift of stars.
He was awarded the Lalande Prize in 1950, the Prix Jules Janssen in 1959, and the Karl Schwarzschild Medal in 1963. The minor planet 3433 Fehrenbach was named in his honor.


Junior Astronomical Society


Ursa Major in Chinese astronomy

According to traditional Chinese uranography, the modern constellation Ursa Major is located in the constellation called the Three Enclosures (三垣, "Sān Yuán").
The name of the western constellation in modern Chinese is 大熊座 ("dà xióng zuò"), meaning "the big bear constellation".
Stars.
The map of Chinese constellation in constellation Ursa Major area consists of :


Solar eclipse of August 3, 2073

A total solar eclipse will occur on August 3, 2073. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun's, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across Earth's surface, with the partial solar eclipse visible over a surrounding region thousands of kilometres wide.


Monoceros in Chinese astronomy

According to traditional Chinese uranography, the modern constellation Monoceros is located within the southern quadrant of the sky, which is symbolized as the Vermillion Bird of the South (南方朱雀, "Nán Fāng Zhū Què").
The name of the western constellation in modern Chinese is 麒麟座 ("qí lín zuò"), meaning "the "qilin" constellation".
Stars.
The map of Chinese constellation in constellation Monoceros area consists of :


Rostock astronomical clock

The Rostock astronomical clock is a fifteenth-century astronomical clock in St. Mary's Church, Rostock.
History and description.
The astronomical clock was built in 1472 by Hans Düringer, a clockmaker from Nuremberg. It consists of three partitions:
The medieval clock is the only one of its kind still in working condition with its original clockworks.


Enduring Quests and Daring Visions

Enduring Quests and Daring Visions is a vision for astrophysics programs released in late 2013. It lays out plans over 30 years as long-term goals and missions. Goals include mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background and finding Earth like exoplanets. To go deeper into space-time studying the Large Scale Structure of the Universe, extreme physics, and looking back farther in time.
Examples of discussed missions include:


Astronomy Ireland

Astronomy Ireland is an astronomy association based in Ireland (including the Republic and Northern Ireland). It is a non-profit educational organisation founded by David Moore.
History.
Astronomy Ireland (AI) was founded in Dublin in 1990 by David Moore and others following a split from the Irish Astronomical Society.
Publications and media.
Members are kept up-to-date by e-mail newsletters and text messages. A premium rate telephone news service alerts Irish and British astronomers to celestial events, ranging from flyovers of the International Space Station to meteor showers.
Astronomy Ireland produces a monthly magazine called "Astronomy Ireland" which is aimed mainly at amateur astronomers.
A weekly radio programme, "AIRS" (Astronomy Ireland Radio Show), is broadcast every Tuesday on FM radio and on the Internet. Previous shows are available from the MP3 archive on the club's website, along with recordings of other radio programmes.
Astronomy Shop.
A private venture called the Astronomy Shop was owned and managed by the company's director, David Moore. This shop was liquidated in 2013. The company "Astronomy & Space Ltd." was dissolved in 2015.


Christine Kirch

Christine Kirch (1696 in Guben, Germany – 6 May 1782), was a German astronomer.
Life.
She was the daughter of the astronomers Gottfried Kirch and Maria Margarethe Kirch and the sister of Christfried Kirch. She and her sister Margaretha Kirch were educated in astronomy from the age of ten. As a child Kirch assisted her parents in their astronomical observations. Reportedly the young Kirch was responsible for taking time of observations by using a pendulum. As she became older Kirch was instructed in calculating calendars. She assisted first her mother and later her brother in calculating various calendars.
Until 1740 Kirch did not receive a salary for her contributions, but benefitted from small donations to her from the Berlin Academy of Sciences. Following the death of her brother Christfried the academy relied on her for assistance in calculating calendars. She took responsibility for calculating the calendar for Silesia, a province Prussia conquered in the early 1740s. The academy had a monopoly on calendars and the Silesia calendar generated significant income for the academy. Thus in 1776 Kirch received a respectable salary of 400 Thaler from the academy.
Kirch continued her calendar work for the academy up to her old age and was held in great esteem. At the age of 77 the academy elevated her to the status of emeritus, and she continued to receive a salary form the academy without being obliged to work. She introduced the astronomer Johann Bode to calendar making. She died in 1782 as a respected astronomer.


Hastings Museum

The Hastings Museum of Natural and Cultural History is located in Hastings, Nebraska. It claims to be the largest municipal museum between Chicago and Denver. It is housed in a building funded by the Works Progress Administration and dedicated on June 15, 1939. The museum exhibits include Kool-Aid, natural history dioramas, local history, weapons, life of pioneers on the Plains, rocks, minerals, fossils, antique vehicles, coins, and a planetarium.
Governance.
The Museum is under the jurisdiction of the City of Hastings and all employees are personnel of the Hastings government. The museum is governed by a 7-member board, with each member serving a term of 5 years. The board has the power to adopt rulesand it has control of the Museum funds. The board is responsible to the Mayor and City Council of Hastings, Nebraska. It is also supported by a Foundation to increase awareness and support, which was incorporated in 1985.
The Hastings Museum of Natural and Cultural History displays natural and cultural histories of Hastings, Adams County and the Great Plains of Nebraska. Founded in 1926 by Albert Brooking, it became home to his collection of Native American artifacts, fossils, and mounted birds. Albert Brookings’s bird collection was one of the largest in the United States. Other exhibits include natural history dioramas, an extensive armaments collection, and the history of Edwin Perkins, a local merchant famous for inventing Kool-Aid in 1927. The museum hosts an annual Native American festival. The Hastings Public Library and Adams County Historical Society are both at the museum.


Esmeralda Mallada

Esmeralda Herminia Mallada Invernizzi (born 10 January 1937) is a Uruguayan astronomer and professor who, for her contributions to that scientific discipline, has been honored with the designation of her name to an asteroid.
Career.
Mallada was a student of cosmography with Professor Alberto Pochintesta. At the University of the Republic's , she was a colleague of Gladys Vergara, who helped her prepare for the cosmography professorship competition. She became a professor of cosmography and mathematics in secondary education at age 21. She also taught at the university's , where she graduated with a licentiate in astronomy. She is currently retired.
On 16 October 1952, at the invitation of Pochintesta, she was one of the founders of the Association of Amateur Astronomers (AAA) in Uruguay, and in 2015 was made its honorary president. In 2015, the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union designated an asteroid that orbits between Mars and Jupiter with her name, 16277 Mallada. It is the first asteroid to bear the name of a Uruguayan woman astronomer.
Publications.
Some of the works published by Mallada together with Julio A. Fernández are:


Wold Cottage meteorite

The Wold Cottage meteorite (also called the Wold Newton meteorite) fell near Wold Cottage farm in 1795, a few miles away from the village of Wold Newton in Yorkshire, England.
The meteorite.
The stone fell at around 3 o'clock, on 13 December 1795, landing within a few yards of ploughman John Shipley. It created a crater approximately across, and embedded itself in the underlying chalk rock to a depth of , passing through of topsoil. The fall was observed by several people, who described a dark body passing through the air. As discovered at its landing point, the stone was warm and smoking; several people reported sounds of explosions as it fell. The owner of the land was Major Edward Topham, a well-known public figure, an ex-soldier, playwright and newspaper proprietor; he publicised the find and exhibited the meteorite publicly at Piccadilly in London.
The stone initially weighed . James Sowerby, a naturalist, acquired the meteorite in 1804. The meteorite was later acquired by the British Museum in 1835.
The meteorite can nowadays be seen in the Natural History Museum in London.
Analysis and research.
Early analyses recorded two parts of the stone, an earthy part, and a malleable part. The earthy part analysed as containing silicon, magnesium, iron, and a small amount of nickel, of which some parts of the iron and nickel were in the elemental state; the earthy substance was similar to kaolin (weathered feldspar), but relatively tough. The malleable parts also contained iron and nickel, the majority iron. A form of iron pyrites (iron sulphur compound) was also reported present. Modern science records the meteorite as a L6 ordinary chondrite.
The Wold Cottage meteorite was the largest meteorite observed to fall in Britain, and is the second-largest recorded in Europe (after the Ensisheim meteorite). The meteorite and evidence given about its fall contributed to the debate concerning whether extraterrestrial matter existed or not, and towards the early scientific study of meteorites.
The monument.
A monument was erected on the location of the stone's impact, by Major Topham, on whose property the stone had fallen. The structure was built of brick square and high, with a plaque on one face.
In fiction.
The event was used by the science fiction writer Philip José Farmer in his "biographies" of fictional characters ("Tarzan Alive" and "") as the basis for a literary premise commonly referred to as the Wold Newton family. The film "Robinson in Ruins" would also refer to the event, with the main character, Robinson, seeing it showing meteorites always fall at the time of significant events, in this case the 1795 amendment to the Settlement Act which allowed capitalism to develop faster in England.
The meteorite plays quite a central role in the 2019 detective novel "Sherlock Holmes & The Christmas Demon" by British author James Lovegrove.


Julius August Christoph Zech

Julius August Christoph Zech (24 February 1821 Stuttgart, Germany − 13 July 1864 Berg) was a German astronomer and mathematician.
In 1849, Zech published a table of logarithms; as a result, Zech logarithms for finite fields are named after him.


Eugenius I of Toledo

Eugenius I (sometimes Eugene; died 647) was Archbishop of Toledo from 636 to 646. He became successor in 636 of Justus in that metropolitan see. Like his predecessor he had been a disciple of Helladius in the monastery of Agali. He is famous as an astronomer and astronomical mathematician.
As a bishop he was virtuous and intelligent. At this period, under the Visigothic Kingdom, the councils of Toledo were national diets convoked by the monarch, attended by lay lords; they regulated, to some extent, not only spiritual but temporal affairs.
Of these councils Eugenius presided at the Fifth Council of Toledo, convoked in 636 by King Chintila to confirm his elevation to the throne; he assisted at the sixth, convoked by the same king to take precautions against the disorders of royal elections.
This council, contrary to the principles later put in practice by Ildephonsus, banished all Jews who did not embrace Catholicism.
Eugenius attended the Seventh Council of Toledo, which was summoned by King Chindaswinth and decreed that the bishops of Toledo should reside one month every year in that city.


Lyon astronomical clock

The Lyon astronomical clock is a fourteenth-century astronomical clock in Lyon Cathedral.
History and description.
The 9 metre tall clock is installed in the cathedral of Lyon. An astrolabe indicates the date and position of the moon, sun, and earth, as well as the stars. The first documentary evidence of an astronomical clock in the cathedral is from 1383 but this was destroyed in 1562. In 1661 it was reconstructed by Guillaume Nourrisson. During the French Revolution, all royal insignia was removed. The last restoration in 1954 reset the clock's perpetual calendar of 66 years. It will be accurate until 2019.
The central tower octagon supports several automated figures. After the angel on the left turns the hourglass, an angel on the right keeps the time for the three angels who strike bells to sound the hymn of Saint Jean-Baptiste. The Virgin Mary kneels in a chapel, and turns to the Angel Gabriel as he opens the chapel door, while a dove descends, representing the Holy Spirit. A Swiss Guard rotates around the dome. Movement stops at the sounding of the hour.
In a western niche, a statue rotates at midnight. On Sunday, it is Jesus resurrected; Monday: his death; Tuesday: St. John the Baptist; Wednesday: St. Stephen (patron saint of the ancient basilica) holding the palm of martyrs; Thursday: a child with chalice and host; Friday: a child with the symbols of crucifixion; on Saturday: the Virgin Mary.
The clock is currently inactive and has been since 2013. A notice on the clock says the clock will be repaired along with other planned repairs on the church interior.


Apus in Chinese astronomy

The modern constellation Apus is not included in the Three Enclosures and Twenty-Eight Mansions system of traditional Chinese uranography because its stars are too far south for observers in China to know about them prior to the introduction of Western star charts. Based on the work of Xu Guangqi and the German Jesuit missionary Johann Adam Schall von Bell in the late Ming Dynasty, this constellation has been classified as one of the 23 Southern Asterisms (近南極星區, "Jìnnánjíxīngōu") under the name Exotic Bird (異雀, "Yìquè").
The name of the western constellation in modern Chinese is 天燕座 ("tiān yàn zuò"), meaning "the heaven swallow constellation".
Stars.
The map of Chinese constellation in constellation Apus area consists of :


Elisabeth von Matt

Elisabeth von Matt (1762–1814) was an Austrian astronomer active in the late 18th and early 19th century who is regarded as the only female scientist to have her observations published in European astronomy journals during the period. She worked primarily in positional astronomy, documenting the asteroids Pallas and Juno.
Life.
Elisabeth von Matt (née Humelauer) was a baroness living in Vienna. There, she built a private observatory and ordered the equipment needed to observe the sky. Her observations were published in Bode's "Astronomisches Jahrbuch" and Franz Xaver von Zach's "Monatliche Correspondenz". In addition to her own contributions to measurements at the time, von Matt supported the advancement of the field of astronomy by opening her observatory to Johann Tobias Bürg, who was her mentor, and assisting in the supply of books and instruments in the community.
Legacy.
Austrian botanist Josef August Schultes named the plant genus "Mattia" in honor of von Matt in 1809. The minor planet 9816 von Matt, discovered in 1960 by Cornelis Johannes van Houten and I. van Houten-Groeneveld, was named after von Matt. Two instruments owned by von Matt—a sextant manufactured by Edward Troughton and a chronometer manufactured by John Arnold (watchmaker)—are held in the collection of the Vienna Observatory at the University of Vienna.


Gerald Kron

Gerald Kron (April 6, 1913 – April 9, 2012) was an American astronomer who was one of the pioneers of high-precision photometry with photoelectric instrumentation. He discovered the first starspot and made the first photometric observation of a stellar flare.
A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1934, Kron became interested in astronomy, which he studied under Joel Stebbins. Stebbins arranged for Kron to enter the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in astronomy in 1938.
During World War II, Kron served with the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and participated in the development of microwave radar. He later became the head of the Special Devices Group at the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) at Inyokern, California, where he conducted studies on solid fuel rockets, and developed radio transponders for the Manhattan Project's Project Camel.
After the war Kron returned to the Lick Observatory, where he was one of the designers of the C. Donald Shane telescope. Using photometric techniques that he had pioneered before the war, he studied the stars, especially eclipsing binaries. In 1965, Kron became director of the United States Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and he was a regular visitor to the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory.
Early life.
Gerald Edward Kron was born in Milwaukee on 6 April 1913, the son of Edmund Kron, a mechanic, and his wife Letty Dieterick Kron. He attended Lincoln High School in Milwaukee, and then University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1934. While there took advantage of the access to machine shops as part of his training to design and build a 6-inch telescope. After graduation, he received a scholarship to study astronomy for two years under Joel Stebbins. He published his first paper in 1935, a study of the photometric elements of Boss 5070, an eclipsing binary.
In 1935, Kron travelled to California with Stebbins and Albert Whitford, where Kron and Whitford assisted Stebbins at the Mount Wilson Observatory. After returning to Madison, he worked with Whitford on the design of a 200-inch telescope. Stebbins arranged for Kron to enter the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in astronomy in 1938, with a thesis on the photometric elements of eclipsing binaries. He then worked in the Lick Observatory as a research assistant.
World War II.
In May 1940 Kron joined the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and participated in the development of microwave radar. He would later use devices and equipment that he became familiar with at the Radiation Laboratory such as the RCA IP21 photomultiplier and Direct-coupled amplifiers in looking at the stars. Later in World War II he became head of the Special Devices Group at the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) at Inyokern, California, where he conducted studies on solid fuel rockets.
He also participated in the Manhattan Project's Project Camel, developing instrumentation to evaluate the test drops of nuclear bomb shapes. Radio transponders with timing pulses attached to the bombs allowed their position to be tracked the release of the bomb until the time it was all destroyed when the bomb detonated in the air or hit the ground. This gave the drop time to within a few hundredths of a second. In the course of his duties he visited Kingman and Wendover Army Air Fields. When the war ended, he "liberated" some equipment from NOTS before it could be destroyed.
Later life.
After the war Kron returned to the Lick Observatory, where he was one of the designers and creators of the C. Donald Shane telescope. During the war, Kron met Katherine Carson Gordon, a Vassar College graduate and a Radcliff College student, at a picnic at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. After the war, she became an assistant at Lick Observatory. He married her on 22 April 1946. She continued publishing papers under her maiden name.
The two worked together, looking at eclipsing binaries. At one point they found an irregularity, which they attributed to an area of colder temperature, a starspot. His observation and explanation were correct, but he was ahead of his time. It would be many years before the existence of starspots was accepted, and they became a popular research topic. They also made the first photometric observation of a stellar flare.
In 1965, Kron became director of the United States Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He regularly visited Canberra in Australia, where the Mount Stromlo Observatory allowed him to study M-type dwarf stars in the southern sky. He was senior research fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra from 1974 to 1976. He retired in 1985 to live in Honolulu, but moved to Sedona, Arizona, in 1995.
Kron served for a time as President of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the International Astronomical Union's Commission on Instrumentation. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Kron published over 130 scientific papers, many of them described the method accurately measure the light of stars and globular clusters. He pioneered the use of photomultiplier tubes to measure the infrared radiation of cold stars. His measurements of globular clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud revised earlier views on distances outside the Milky Way Galaxy.
He died on 12 April 2012. His wife Katherine and son Donald predeceased him. He was survived by his brother Robert and his remaining four children, Richard, Jenny, Virginia and Charles.


Phoenicis Lacus quadrangle

The Phoenicis Lacus quadrangle is one of a series of 30 quadrangle maps of Mars used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Astrogeology Research Program. The Phoenicis Lacus quadrangle is also referred to as MC-17 (Mars Chart-17). Parts of Daedalia Planum, Sinai Planum, and Solis Planum are found in this quadrangle. Phoenicis Lacus is named after the phoenix which according to myth burns itself up every 500 years and then is reborn.
The Phoenicis Lacus quadrangle covers the area from 90° to 135° west longitude and 0° to 30° south latitude on Mars. The Tharsus rise, which was formed from lava flows, occupies part of area. The volcanoes Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons are believed to have once had glaciers on them. Glaciers may still exist under a thin layer of rocks. The ice can be a source of water for the possible future colonization of the planet. One of the most prominent features of this quadrangle is a large intersecting set of canyons called Noctis Labyrinthus. Other interesting features are lava channels, Dark slope streaks, pit crater chains, and large troughs (called fossae). Research published in the journal Icarus has found pits in Zumba Crater are caused by hot ejecta falling on ground containing ice. The pits are formed by heat forming steam that rushes out from groups of pits simultaneously, thereby blowing away from the pit ejecta.
Noctis Labyrinthus.
Noctis Labyrinthus is a large canyon system found in the Phoenicis Lacus quadrangle. Its walls contain many layers of rocks. Research, described in December 2009, found a variety of minerals—including clays, sulfates, and hydrated silicas in some of the layers.
Lava channels.
Lava sometimes forms a tube as it moves away from the vent (opening from which lava flows from a volcano). The top of a stream of lava cools down, thereby forming a solid roof. Meanwhile, the lava continues moving in the tube. Often, when all the lava leaves the tube, the roof collapses, making a channel. These features are found on Mars. Some can be seen around Pavonis Mons, in the picture below. Some people have suggested that future colonists on Mars could use lava tunnels as shelters. They would offer great protection from radiation, especially ultraviolet radiation. Lava Channels on the flank of the volcano Pavonis Mons are pictured below in a picture from Mars Odyssey THEMIS. Sometimes the lava tube remains intact for a time. Lava will break out along the tube to accumulate or flow away. Lava flows often have a lobate appearance at the edges. A good view of such a lava tube is shown below.
Glaciers.
Many of the volcanoes on Mars show strong evidence of past and possible present glacial activity.
When glaciers melt and retreat, they leave behind material that was carried in and on the ice. Often the material is dropped in a ridge, called a moraine. An example of moraines is shown in the picture below from the flank of Arsia Mons, a picture taken with the Mars Odyssey THEMIS.
Dark slope streaks.
A picture below shows dark streaks on the slopes of Aganippe Fossa. Such streaks are common on Mars. They occur on steep slopes of craters, troughs, and valleys. The streaks are dark at first. They get lighter with age. Sometimes they start in a tiny spot, then spread out and go for hundreds of meters. They have been seen to travel around obstacles, like boulders. It is believed that they are avalanches of bright dust that expose a darker underlying layer. However, several ideas have been advanced to explain them. Some involve water or even the growth of organisms. The streaks appear in areas covered with dust. Much of the Martian surface is covered with dust. Fine dust settles out of the atmosphere covering everything. We know a lot about this dust because the solar panels of the Mars Rovers get covered with dust, thus reducing the electrical energy. The power of the Rovers has been restored many times by the wind, in the form of dust devils, cleaning the panels and boosting the power. So, we know that dust settles from the atmosphere then returns over and over. Dust storms are frequent, especially when the spring season begins in the southern hemisphere. At that time, Mars is 40% closer to the sun. The orbit of Mars is much more elliptical then the Earth's. That is the difference between the farthest point from the sun and the closest point to the sun is very great for Mars, but only a slight amount for the Earth. Also, every few years, the entire planet is engulfed in global dust storms. When NASA's Mariner 9 craft arrived there, nothing could be seen through the dust storm. Other global dust storms have also been observed, since that time.
Research, published in January 2012 in Icarus, found that dark streaks were initiated by airblasts from meteorites traveling at supersonic speeds. The team of scientists was led by Kaylan Burleigh, an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. After counting some 65,000 dark streaks around the impact site of a group of 5 new craters, patterns emerged. The number of streaks was greatest closer to the impact site. So, the impact somehow probably caused the streaks. Also, the distribution of the streaks formed a pattern with two wings extending from the impact site. The curved wings resembled scimitars, curved knives. This pattern suggests that an interaction of airblasts from the group of meteorites shook dust loose enough to start dust avalanches that formed the many dark streaks. At first it was thought that the shaking of the ground from the impact caused the dust avalanches, but if that was the case the dark streaks would have been arranged symmetrically around the impacts, rather than being concentrated into curved shapes.
The crater cluster lies near the equator 510 miles) south of Olympus Mons, on a type of terrain called the Medusae Fossae formation. The formation is coated with dust and contains wind-carved ridges called yardangs. These yardangs have steep slopes thickly covered with dust, so when the sonic boom of the airblast arrived from the impacts dust started to move down the slope.
Using photos from Mars Global Surveyor and HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists have found about 20 new impacts each year on Mars. Because the spacecraft have been imaging Mars almost continuously for a span of 14 years, newer images with suspected recent craters can be compared to older images to determine when the craters were formed. Since the craters were spotted in a HiRISE image from February 2006, but were not present in a Mars Global Surveyor image taken in May 2004, the impact occurred in that time frame.
The largest crater in the cluster is about in diameter with close to the area of a basketball court. As the meteorite traveled through the Martian atmosphere it probably broke up; hence a tight group of impact craters resulted.
Dark slope streaks have been seen for some time, and many ideas have been advanced to explain them. This research may have finally solved this mystery.
Pit crater chains.
Pit craters are common near volcanoes in the Tharsis and Elysium system of volcanoes. Pit craters form when a void is produced by a cracking of the surface caused by stretching. Also, lava may drain out of an underground chamber, thus leaving an empty space. When material slides into a void, a pit crater or a pit crater chain forms. Pit craters do not have rims or ejecta around them, like impact craters do. On Mars, individual pit craters can join to form chains or even to form troughs that are sometimes scalloped. Pit craters are not common on Earth. Sinkholes, where the ground falls into a hole (sometimes in the middle of a town) resemble pit craters on Mars. However, on the Earth these holes are caused by limestone being dissolved thereby causing a void. The image below of Arsia Chasmata contains a pit crater chain.
Fossa on Mars.
Certain areas on Mars possess large troughs (long narrow depressions) called fossae in the geographical language used for Mars. This term is derived from Latin; therefore fossa is singular and fossae is plural. Troughs form when the crust is stretched until it breaks. The stretching can be due to the large weight of a nearby volcano. Fossae/pit craters are common near volcanoes in the Tharsis and Elysium system of volcanoes. A trough often has two breaks with a middle section moving down, leaving steep cliffs along the sides; such a trough is called a graben. Lake George, in northern New York State, is a lake that sits in a graben.
Volcanoes.
The most common form of volcanism on the Earth is basaltic. Basalts formed from molten rocks that cooled on the surface. They originated from the partial melting of the upper mantle. They are rich in iron and magnesium (mafic) minerals and commonly dark gray in color. The principal type of volcanism on Mars is probably also basaltic. Although Mars displays many volcanoes here and other places, there has been no evidence of recent volcanic activity, even at a very low level. Research, published in 2017, found no active release of volcanic gases during two successive Martian years. They looked for the outgassing of sulfur-bearing chemicals with spectrometers.


Ibn al-Sarraj


Stellar mass loss

Stellar mass loss is a phenomenon observed in stars. All stars lose some mass over their lives at widely varying rates. Triggering events can cause the sudden ejection of a large portion of the star's mass. Stellar mass loss can also occur when a star gradually loses material to a binary companion or into interstellar space.
Causes.
A number of factors can contribute to the loss of mass in giant stars, including:
Solar wind.
The Sun, a low-mass star, loses mass due to the solar wind at a very small rate, solar masses per year.
Gravitational mass loss.
Often when a star is a member of a pair of close-orbiting binary stars, the tidal attraction of the gasses near the center of mass are sufficient to pull gas from one star onto its partner. This effect is especially prominent when the partner is a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole.
Mass ejection.
Certain classes of stars, especially Wolf-Rayet stars are sufficiently massive and distended that their hold on their upper layers is rather weak. Often, events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections will then be sufficiently powerful to blast some of the upper material into space.
Red giant mass loss.
Stars which have entered the red giant phase are notorious for rapid mass loss. As above, the gravitational hold on the upper layers is weakened, and they may be shed into space by violent events such as the beginning of a helium flash in the core. The final stage of a red giant's life will also result in prodigious mass loss as the star loses its outer layers to form a planetary nebula.


Comets in Chinese culture


Roger Griffin (astronomer)

Roger Francis Griffin (23 August 1935 – 12 February 2021) was an astronomer and emeritus professor of Observational Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. His most notable works are in the area of spectrography of stars. Griffin featured, along with Donald Lynden-Bell, Neville Woolf, and Wallace Sargent, in the 2015 documentary "Star Men", which detailed their camaraderie and contributions to astronomy, and retraced their trip through the Southwestern United States.


Horace Price

Horace MacCartie Eyre Price (3 August 186321 November 1941) was a missionary of the Anglican Church.
Horace Price was born in Malvern into an ecclesiastical family on 3 August 1863: his father was W. Salter Price. He was educated at Rossall School and Trinity College, Cambridge (whence he gained a Cambridge Master of Arts {MA Cantab}), made deacon at Advent 1886 (19 December), by Archibald Campbell Tait, Bishop of London, at St James's, Piccadilly and ordained priest the following year. He was a CMS Missionary in Sierra Leone then a Curate in Wingfield, Suffolk before serving the Anglican Church in Japan where he eventually became Archdeacon of Osaka. In 1905 he became Bishop in Fukien, serving until 1918. He was consecrated bishop on Candlemas 1906 (2 February) at Westminster Abbey, by Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury. Although almost 53 years of age, Eyre Price sought a commission as a Temporary Chaplain to the Forces in July 1915.He was appointed and immediately set off for Gallipoli. His diary shows that he was based at a military prison and in hospitals in Alexandria but then he was posted to the Gallipoli beaches. There, he chaired meetings of chaplains and, on one occasion, confirmed eighty candidates. ‘The service was made all the more impressive by the fact it was on the hillside facing the sea and the guns of our warships were thundering all the time.’After Gallipoli, Eyre Price spent time in Alexandria, Malta, Salonika, and Gibraltar, but had periods in hospital suffering from debility, fainting attacks and an irregular heartbeat. On his return to Salonika in 1918, he caught typhoid and was again hospitalised. He was demobilised in August, 1919.Returning to the UK he was Assistant Bishop of Ely and Archdeacon of Ely (1919 onwards), Vicar of Pampisford (1919–1921) and Canon Residentiary of Ely Cathedral (1921 onwards) until his death on 21 November 1941. He had become a Doctor of Divinity (DD).


Planetarium projector

A planetarium projector, also known as a star projector, is a device used to project images of celestial objects onto the dome in a planetarium.
Modern planetarium projectors were first designed and built by the Carl Zeiss Jena company in Germany between 1923 and 1925, and have since grown more complex. Smaller projectors include a set of fixed stars, Sun, Moon, and planets, and various nebulae. Larger machines also include comets and a far greater selection of stars. Additional projectors can be added to show twilight around the outside of the screen (complete with city or country scenes) as well as the Milky Way. Still others add coordinate lines and constellations, photographic slides, laser displays, and other images. The OMNIMAX movie system (now known as IMAX Dome) was originally designed to operate on planetarium screens.
Companies that make (or have made) planetarium projectors include Carl Zeiss Jena (Germany), Spitz (US), Goto and Minolta (Japan), Evans & Sutherland (US), Emerald planetariums (Israel) and Ohira Tech (Japan).
1960s.
A good example of a "typical" planetarium projector of the 1960s was the Universal Projection Planetarium type 23/6, made by VEB Carl Zeiss Jena in what was then East Germany. The planetarium projector was a -long dumbbell-shaped object, with -diameter spheres attached at each end representing the night sky for the northern and southern hemispheres. Connecting the two spheres was a framework that held nearly 150 individual projectors, including those dedicated to the planets, the Sun, and specific stars.
Each globe held representations of almost 4,500 stars per hemisphere. The "stars" were created by tiny holes that were punched into copper foil, ranging from 0.023 to 0.452 mm in size, the larger holes letting more light get through and thereby creating brighter star images. Two glass plates held this foil between them to create what was called a "star field plate". Each globe was illuminated using a 1,500-watt lamp that was located in its center. A number of aspherical condenser lenses were placed within each globe to focus the light onto the plates. Twenty-three of the most prominent stars had their own projectors, designed to project a small disk instead of pinpoint of light, and were also colored: Betelgeuse and Antares would appear reddish, Rigel and Spica would each have a blue tinge. An image of the Milky Way was created by using drum-type projectors that were studded with unfocused pinprick-sized holes based on photographic images of our galaxy. Specific projectors could imitate the light changes of such variable stars as Algol or Omicron Ceti, and other projectors could produce images of the constellations, of specific historical comets, compass points and other astronomical phenomena. When a particular star or planet dipped below the artificial horizon, a gravity-based mercury-filled shutter would be activated, blocking out the light.
Recent developments in planetarium projector technology.
Since the release of the Evans & Sutherland Digistar in 1983, a single projector with a fish eye lens was able to for the first time show stars from points of view other than Earth's surface, travel through the stars, and accurately show celestial bodies from different times in the past and future. In more recent years, planetaria — or dome theaters — have broadened their offerings to include wide-screen or "wraparound" films, fulldome video, and laser shows that combine music with laser-drawn patterns. The newest generation of planetariums such as Evans & Sutherland's Digistar 6, Global Immersion's Fidelity or Sky-Skan's DigitalSky, offer a fully digital projection system, in which a single projector with a fish eye lens, or a system of digital video or laser video projectors around the edge of the dome, are used to create any scene provided to it from a computer. This gives the operator tremendous flexibility in showing not only the modern night sky as visible from Earth, but any other image they wish (including the sky as visible from points far distant in space and time). While many projection systems maintain their large single or multiple projectors, other systems cater to portable planetariums, like the Emerald planetariums LITE series, at 42lbs to 62lbs, and the Digitalis Education Solutions, Inc Digitarium Iota and Delta 3, at 20.6 and 33.5 lbs, respectively.