James Lick

James Lick (August 25, 1796 – October 1, 1876) was an American real estate investor, carpenter, piano builder, land baron, and patron of the sciences. At the time of his death, he was the wealthiest man in California, and left the majority of his estate to social and scientific causes.
Early years.
James Lick was born in Stumpstown (now Fredericksburg) Pennsylvania on August 25, 1796. Lick's grandfather, William Lick, served during the American Revolutionary War under General George Washington and his son, John Lick, during the American Civil War. The son of a carpenter, Lick began learning the craft at an early age. When he was twenty-one, after a failed romance with Barbara Snavely, Lick left Stumpstown for Baltimore, Maryland, where he learned the art of piano making. He quickly mastered the skill, and moved to New York City and set up his own shop. In 1821 Lick moved to Argentina, after learning that his pianos were being exported to South America.
South American years.
Lick found his time in Buenos Aires to be difficult, due to his ignorance of Spanish and the turbulent political situation in the country. However, his business thrived and in 1825 Lick left Argentina to tour Europe for a year. On his return trip, his ship was captured by the Portuguese, and the passengers and crew were taken to Montevideo as prisoners of war. Lick escaped captivity and returned to Buenos Aires on foot.
In 1832, Lick decided to return to Stumpstown. He failed to reunite with Barbara Snavely and their son and returned to Buenos Aires. He decided the political situation was too unstable and moved to Valparaíso, Chile. After four years, he again moved his business, this time to Lima, Peru.
In 1846, Lick decided to return to North America and, anticipating the Mexican–American War and the future annexation of California, he decided to settle there. However, a backlog of orders for his pianos delayed him an additional 18 months, as the Mexican workers he employed left to return to their homes and join the Mexican Army following the outbreak of war in April of that year. He finished the orders himself.
California years.
Lick arrived in San Francisco, California, in January 1848, bringing with him his tools, work bench, $30,000 in gold (valued at approximately $2.75 million as of 2020), and 600 pounds (275 kilograms) of chocolate. The chocolate quickly sold. So, Lick sent back word convincing his friend and neighbor in Peru, the confectioner Domingo Ghirardelli, to move to San Francisco, where he founded the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.
Upon his arrival, Lick began buying real estate in the small village of San Francisco. The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento a few days after Lick's arrival in the future state began the California Gold Rush and created a housing boom in San Francisco, which grew from about one thousand residents in 1848 to over twenty thousand by 1850. Lick himself got a touch of "gold fever" and went out to mine the metal, but after a week he decided his fortune was to be made by owning land, not digging in it. Lick continued buying land in San Francisco, and also began buying farmland in and around San Jose, where he planted orchards and built the largest flour mill in the state to feed the growing population in San Francisco.
In 1861, Lick began construction of a hotel, which became known as "Lick House", at the intersection of Montgomery and Sutter Streets in San Francisco. The hotel had a dining room that could seat 400, based on a similar room at the palace of Versailles. Lick House was considered the finest hotel west of the Mississippi River. The hotel was destroyed in the fire following the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
Following the construction, Lick returned to his San Jose orchards. In 1874, Lick suffered a massive stroke in the kitchen of his home in Santa Clara. The following morning, he was found by his employee, Thomas Fraser, and taken to Lick House, where he could be better cared for. At the time of his illness, his estates, outside his considerable area in Santa Clara County and San Francisco, included large holdings around Lake Tahoe, a large ranch in Los Angeles County, and all of Santa Catalina Island, making Lick the richest man in California.
In the next three years, Lick spent his time determining how to dispense with his fortune. He originally wanted to build giant statues of himself and his parents, and erect a pyramid larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in his own honor in downtown San Francisco. However, through the efforts of George Davidson, president of the California Academy of Sciences, Lick was persuaded to leave the greatest portion of his fortune to the establishment of a mountaintop observatory, with the largest, most powerful telescope yet built by man.
In 1874 he placed $3,000,000 ($65,200,000 relative value in 2017) at the disposal of seven trustees, by whom the funds were to be applied to specific uses. He replaced the board in 1875 with Faxon Atherton, John Nightingale, Bernard D. Murphy and his son, John H. Lick.
The principal divisions of the funds were:
Lick had had an interest in astronomy since at least 1860, when he and George Madeira, the founder of the first observatory in California, spent several nights observing. They had also met again in 1873 and Lick said that Madeira's telescopes were the only ones he had ever used. In 1875, Thomas Fraser recommended a site at the summit of Mount Hamilton, near San Jose. Lick approved, on the condition that Santa Clara County build a "first-class" road to the site. The county agreed and the hand-built road was completed by the fall of 1876.
On October 1, 1876, Lick died in his room in Lick House, San Francisco. In 1887, his body was moved to its final resting place, under the future home of the Great Lick Refracting Telescope.


Martha Betz Shapley

Martha Betz Shapley (1890–1981) was an American astronomer known for her research on eclipsing binary stars.
Early life.
Shapley was born on August 3, 1890 in Kansas City, Missouri, one of seven children of school music teacher Carl Betz (1854–1898) and his wife. Her family were descendants of German immigrants, and her grandfather once told her that he had seen astronomer Caroline Herschel in the streets of Hanover in Germany. Her mother and two sisters became schoolteachers, and Shapley herself became a schoolteacher at age 15. Three years later, she began her studies at the University of Missouri, where she earned a bachelor's degree in education, a second bachelor's degree, and a master's degree, in 1910, 1911, and 1913, respectively. She became a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
She became a high school mathematics teacher in 1912, and soon afterwards began working towards a doctorate in German literature at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. In 1914, she left the program to marry Harlow Shapley, an astronomer who had been a fellow student with her in Missouri.
Astronomical research.
Shapley moved with her husband to the Mount Wilson Observatory and Harvard College Observatory, and from 1915 through 1927 she continued to publish research on eclipsing binary stars, despite not having any formal academic appointment. This was a topic which her husband had previously studied as a graduate student but had moved on from; Zdeněk Kopal has speculated that (as she was the more talented in mathematics of the two Shapleys) she provided significant anonymous assistance to her husband in his doctoral work. Eventually, the pressure of family life caused her to set aside her work in this area.
War service and security investigation.
During World War II, in order to contribute to the war effort, Shapley applied to work for the civil service doing cryptanalysis, a subject she had previously studied, but was unable to find a position doing this in Boston.
Instead, she began working with Zdeněk Kopal calculating tables of munitions trajectories. After the war, when senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating her husband for his left-leaning political views, she came under fire as well, and in 1950 after she was discovered to have brought home data from Kopal on eclipsing binary stars she was relieved of her military work and of her security clearance. However, her clearance was restored and she was allowed to resume her work several months later.
Later life.
Shapley's husband retired in 1952, and the couple moved to New Hampshire, but Shapley continued her work on eclipsing binaries. In 1956, with Kopal, she published her last major work, "Catalogue of the Elements of Eclipsing Binaries". After her husband's death in 1972, she moved again, to Arizona. She died on January 24, 1981.
Her daughter Mildred Shapley Matthews also became a noted astronomer, her son Willis Shapley became an administrator at NASA, and another son Lloyd Shapley became a Nobel-prize-winning mathematician and economist.


Heidelberg-Moscow experiment


Solar eclipse of January 26, 2028

An annular solar eclipse will occur on January 26, 2028. 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. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide.


William Wallace (mathematician)

Prof William Wallace LLD (23 September 176828 April 1843) was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer who invented the eidograph (an improved pantograph).
Life.
Wallace was born at Dysart in Fife, the son of Alexander Wallace, a leather manufacturer, and his wife, Janet Simson. He received his school education in Dysart and Kirkcaldy.
In 1784 his family moved to Edinburgh, where he himself was set to learn the trade of a bookbinder. In 1790 he appears as "William Wallace, bookbinder" living and trading at Cowgatehead, at the east end of the Grassmarket.
His taste for mathematics had already developed itself, and he made such use of his leisure hours that before the completion of his apprenticeship he had made considerable acquirements in geometry, algebra and astronomy. He was further assisted in his studies by John Robison (1739–1805) and John Playfair, to whom his abilities had become known.
After various changes of situation, dictated mainly by a desire to gain time for study, he became assistant teacher of mathematics in the Perth Academy in 1794. This post he exchanged in 1803 for a mathematical mastership in the Royal Military College at Great Marlow, in which post he continued after it moved to Sandhurst, with a recommendation by Playfair.
In 1804 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were John Playfair, Thomas Charles Hope and William Wright.
In 1819 he was chosen to succeed John Playfair in the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh. Playfair's second chair (in Natural Philosophy) was taken by John Leslie.
Wallace developed a reputation for being an excellent teacher. Among his students was Mary Somerville. In 1838 he retired from the university due to ill health. In his final years he lived at 6 Lauriston Lane on the south side of Edinburgh.
He died in Edinburgh and was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard. The grave lies on the north-facing retaining wall in the centre of the northern section.
Mathematical contributions.
In his earlier years Wallace was an occasional contributor to Leybourne's "Mathematical Repository" and the "Gentleman's Mathematical Companion". Between 1801 and 1810 he contributed articles on "Algebra", "Conic Sections", "Trigonometry", and several others in mathematical and physical science to the fourth edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica", and some of these were retained in subsequent editions from the fifth to the eighth inclusive. He was also the author of the principal mathematical articles in the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia", edited by David Brewster. He also contributed many important papers to the "Transactions" of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
He mainly worked in the field of geometry and in 1799 became the first to publish the concept of the Simson line, which erroneously was attributed to Robert Simson. In 1807 he proved a result about polygons with an equal area, that later became known as the Bolyai–Gerwien theorem. His most important contribution to British mathematics however was, that he was one of the first mathematicians introducing and promoting the advancement of the continental European version of calculus in Britain.
Other works.
Wallace also worked in astronomy and invented the eidograph, a mechanical device for scaling drawings.
Family.
Wallace was married to Janet Kerr (1775–1824).
His daughter, Margaret Wallace, married the mathematician Thomas Galloway. His sons included the Rev Alexander Wallace (1803–1842) and Archibald C. Wallace (1806–1830).
He also appears to have had a son William Wallace (1784–1864) when William was aged only 16. The mother is not clear.
Notes.
Attribution:


William F. Bottke

William F. "Bill" Bottke (born 1966) is a planetary scientist specializing in asteroids. He works at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Education.
Bottke received his undergraduate degrees, in physics and astrophysics, at the University of Minnesota in 1988. In 1995, he received his PhD in planetary science from the University of Arizona for research on asteroid dynamics.
Research interests.
Bottke's research focuses on modeling various properties in asteroid dynamics. He has published extensively on the importance of tidal disruption and the Yarkovsky and YORP effects on the physical structure and orbits of asteroids, and the early solar system, particularly the Late Heavy Bombardment.
K-Pg (K/T) impactor.
In 2007, Bottke published a paper in Nature (with David Vokrouhlický and David Nesvorný), proposing that the asteroid that produced the Chicxulub Crater and caused the Cretaceous mass extinction (although the latter is still contended) formed during an asteroid breakup in the main asteroid belt approximately 160 million years ago. Bottke and his collaborators base this on a model for the evolution of the Baptistina asteroid family, in which fragments from the collision that formed the family migrate throughout the inner solar system. They date the event based on the current orbits of Baptistina family members, and then compute the orbital evolution of smaller (few-km) objects produced in the collision, and conclude that the Chicxulub impact or was one such object. They also propose that Tycho crater on the Moon was created by an object produced in the same collision.


Woodhenge

Woodhenge is a Neolithic Class II henge and timber circle monument within the Stonehenge World Heritage Site in Wiltshire, England. It is north-east of Stonehenge, in Durrington parish, just north of the town of Amesbury.
Discovery.
Woodhenge was identified from an aerial photograph taken by Squadron Leader (later Group Captain) Gilbert Insall, VC, in 1926, during the same period that an aerial archaeology survey of Wessex by Alexander Keiller and OGS Crawford (Archaeology Officer for the Ordnance Survey) was being undertaken. Although some sources attribute the identification of the henge to Crawford, Crawford himself credits its discovery to Insall. However, the site had been previously found in the early 19th century and described as an earthwork, thought to be a disc barrow. It was originally called Dough Cover. Maud Cunnington and B.H. Cunnington subsequently excavated the site between 1926 and 1929, confirming that it was indeed a henge.
Date.
Pottery from the excavation was identified as being consistent with the grooved ware style of the middle Neolithic, although later Beaker sherds were also found. Thus, the structure was probably built during the period of cultural similarities commonly known as the Beaker. The Beaker culture spans both the Late Neolithic and Britain's Early Bronze Age and includes both the distinctive "bell beaker" type ceramic vessels for which the cultural grouping is known, and other local styles of pottery from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.
While construction of the timber monument was probably earlier, the ditch has been dated to between 2470 and 2000 BC, which would be about the same time as, or slightly later than, construction of the stone circle at Stonehenge. Radiocarbon dating of artefacts shows that the site was still in use around 1800 BC.
Structure.
The site consists of six concentric oval rings of postholes, the outermost being about wide. They are surrounded first by a single flat-bottomed ditch, deep and up to wide, and finally by an outer bank, about wide and high. With an overall diameter measuring (including bank and ditch), the site had a single entrance to the north-east.
At the centre of the rings was a crouched inhumation of a child which Cunnington interpreted as a dedicatory sacrifice, its skull having been split. Subsequent theories have indicated that the weight and pressure of the soil over the years could have caused the skull to fragment. After excavation, the remains were taken to London, where they were destroyed during The Blitz, making further examination impossible. Cunnington also found a crouched inhumation of a teenager within a grave dug in the eastern section of the ditch, opposite the entrance.
Most of the 168 post holes held wooden posts, although Cunnington found evidence that a pair of standing stones may have been placed between the second and third post hole rings. Excavations in 2006 indicated that there were at least five standing stones on the site, arranged in a "cove". The deepest post holes measured up to and are believed to have held posts which reached as high as above ground. Those posts would have weighed up to 5 tons, and their arrangement was similar to that of the bluestones at Stonehenge. The positions of the postholes are currently marked with modern concrete posts – a simple and informative method of displaying the site.
Further comparisons with Stonehenge were quickly noticed by Cunnington: both have entrances oriented approximately to the midsummer sunrise, and the diameters of the timber circles at Woodhenge and the stone circles at Stonehenge are similar.
Relationship with other monuments.
Over 40 years after the discovery of Woodhenge, another timber circle of comparable size was discovered in 1966, to the north. Known as the Southern Circle, it lies inside what came to be known as the Durrington Walls henge enclosure.
There are various theories about possible timber structures that might have stood on and about the site, and their purpose, but it is likely that the timbers were free-standing, rather than part of a roofed structure. For many years, the study of Stonehenge had overshadowed work on the understanding of Woodhenge. Recent ongoing investigations as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project are now starting to cast new light on the site and on its relationship with neighbouring sites and Stonehenge.
Theories have emerged in which the sites may all be part of a layout in which the structures were linked by roads, and which incorporated the natural features of the River Avon. One of these paths, consisting of a series of wide parallel banks and ditches referred to as Stonehenge Avenue, crosses the ridge between the two sites that would otherwise make them both visible from one another, possibly connecting them physically as well as spiritually.
One suggestion is that the use of wood rather than stone may have held a special significance in the beliefs and practices involving the transformation between life and death, possibly separating the two sites into separate "domains". These theories have been supported by findings of bones of butchered pigs exclusively at Woodhenge, showing evidence of feasting, leaving Stonehenge as a site only inhabited by ancestral spirits, not living people. These same possible representations have also been seen in ritualistic megalithic sites on the island of Madagascar, at least 4,000 years after the erection of Woodhenge.


Alexander Strange

Alexander Strange (27 April 1818 – 9 March 1876) was a British army officer in India and took part there in the Great Trigonometrical Survey. After retirement from the army he settled in Britain; he supervised the construction of scientific instruments used in surveying, and supported scientific research.
Early life.
Strange was born in Westminster, London on 27 April 1818, son of Sir Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange and his second wife Louisa, daughter of Sir William Burroughs, 1st Baronet. He was educated at Harrow School, and left aged 16 for India, on receiving a commission in the 7th Madras light cavalry (22 June 1834). He was promoted lieutenant on 10 May 1837.
Survey of India.
In India his natural bent for mechanical science and his inventive faculty soon declared themselves. After studying at the Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory at Simla, Strange was appointed in 1847 second assistant to the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. He was employed on the "Karachi longitudinal series", extending from the Sironj base in Central India to Karachi, and crossing the Thar Desert north of the Rann of Kutch. When the work was begun in 1850 Strange acted as first assistant to Captain Renny Tailyour, but after the first season Tailyour withdrew and Strange took chief command.
While at work in the Thar Desert, the absence of materials for building the necessary platforms, besides the need of providing a commissariat for two hundred men, taxed all the leader's resources. The triangulation of the section was completed on 22 April 1853. The series was long, consisting of 173 principal triangles, and covering an area of . After this work was ended, Strange joined the surveyor-general, Sir Andrew Scott Waugh, at his camp at Attock, and took part in measuring a verificatory base-line. He then bore the designation of "astronomical assistant". In 1855 he joined the surveyor-general's headquarters office, and in 1856 was placed in charge of the triangulation southwards from Calcutta (present-day Kolkata) to Madras (present-day Chennai), along the east coast. In 1859 he was promoted to the rank of major, and, in accordance with the regulations, retired from the survey. He received the special thanks of the government of India.
Inspector of scientific instruments for India.
Returning home in January 1861, Strange retired from the army in December of the same year with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. As soon as he settled in England he persuaded the Indian government to establish a department for the inspection of scientific instruments for use in India, and was appointed to organise it, and to the office of inspector in 1862.
Hitherto the system followed by the government in supervising the construction of scientific instruments for official use had been to keep a stock of patterns, invite tenders for copying them, and accept the lowest, thus preventing any chance of improvement in the type of instrument, and affording no guarantee for good workmanship or material. Strange abolished the patterns, encouraged invention, insured competition as to price by employing at least two makers for each class of instrument, and enforced strict supervision; a marked improvement in design and workmanship was soon evident, and the cost of the establishment was shown in his first decennial report to be only about .028 of one per cent. of the outlay on the works which the instruments were employed in designing or executing.
For the trigonometrical survey he himself designed and superintended the construction of a set of massive standard instruments: a great theodolite with a horizontal circle of diameter, and a vertical circle of diameter (these circles were read by means of micrometre microscopes); two zenith sectors with arc of radius and telescope of focal length; two transit instruments for determining of longitude, with special arrangements for detecting flexure of the telescope; with others, which all exhibited important developments from previously accepted types.
Royal Society and other societies.
Strange was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1861, and of the Royal Society on 2 June 1864. He took an active part in their proceedings. He served on the council of the Astronomical Society from 1863 to 1867, and as foreign secretary from 1868 to 1873. He contributed several papers to the society's journals. He was on the council of the Royal Society from 1867 to 1869.
A lover of science for its own sake, he long preached the duty of government to support scientific research, especially in directions where discovery, though enriching the community, brings no benefit to the inventor. To this advocacy was mainly due the appointment in 1870 of the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction, which adopted and recommended many of his suggestions.
Family life.
He married Adelaide, daughter of the Reverend William Davies, on 17 October 1848 at Landour, India. They had three daughters and a son, Alexander Burroughs Strange, who became a civil engineer in Madras.
Strange died in Kensington, London on 9 March 1876, of "Indian fever" and a feeble heart.
References.
Attribution


Branner Earth Sciences Library

The Branner Earth Sciences Library and Map Collections is the main library supporting the Stanford University School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences on the Stanford University campus and part of Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR). It was named after John Casper Branner, first professor of geology and former president of Stanford University, whose book collection was the initial core of the library.
Branner Library contains more than 125,000 volumes, including 2000 serial titles, most of which are related to the earth and environmental sciences. The library also houses a collection of over 270,000 sheet maps and the Branner GIS facilities and services.
History.
Branner Earth Sciences Library and Map Collections had its origins when Stanford's first faculty member and second President, John Casper Branner, began buying books as an 18-year-old student at Cornell. He continued to acquire books, maps, and reports while at the Pennsylvania and Arkansas Geological Surveys. When he came to Stanford in 1891, he and his wife brought a boxcar full of books, which became the de facto departmental library, with himself also as the university's first librarian. He oversaw its continued growth and use by colleagues and students until he sold it to the University in 1915. He continued to buy and donate books to the collection until his death in 1922. Later, during the tenure of librarian Kathryn Cutler (1939–1979) the library had been moved from its long-time location on the second floor of Geology Corner to its current location in the Mitchell Earth Sciences Building.
Building.
Between 1968-1970, Spencer, Lee & Busse provided architectural design and planning for the building that houses the Earth Sciences library. The design includes a small, permanent mineral exhibit in the Mitchell Earth Sciences Building open to the public. Most specimens are on the second floor of the Branner Library, surrounded by a spiral staircase or glass library court.


Solar eclipse of June 2, 2095

A total solar eclipse will occur on June 2, 2095. 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.


Photographic magnitude

Photographic magnitude (' or ' ) is a measure of the relative brightness of a star or other astronomical object as imaged on a photographic film emulsion with a camera attached to a telescope. An object's apparent photographic magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance and any extinction of light by interstellar matter existing along the line of sight to the observer.
Photographic observations have now been superseded by electronic photometry such as CCD charge-couple device cameras that convert the incoming light into an electric current by the photoelectric effect. Determination of magnitude is made using a photometer.
Method.
Prior to photographic methods to determine magnitude, the brightness of celestial objects was determined by visual photometric methods. This was simply achieved with the human eye by compared the brightness of an astronomical object with other nearby objects of known or fixed magnitude : especially regarding stars, planets and other planetary objects in the Solar System, variable stars and deep-sky objects.
By the late 19th Century, an improved measure of the apparent magnitude of astronomical objects was obtained by photography, often attached as a dedicated plate camera at the prime focus of the telescope. Images were made on orthochromatic photoemulsive film or plates. These photographs were created by exposing the film over a short or long period of time, whose total exposure length accumulates photons and reveals fainter stars or astronomical objects invisible to the human eye. Although stars viewed in the sky are approximate point sources, the process in collecting their light cause each star to appear as small round disk, whose brightness is approximately proportional to the disk's diameter or its area. Simple measurement of the disk size can be optically judged by either a microscope or by an specially designed astronomical microdensitometer.
Early black and white photographic plates used silver halide emulsions that were more sensitive to the blue end of the visual spectrum. This caused bluer stars to have a brighter photographic magnitude against the equivalent visual magnitude: appearing brighter on the photograph than the human eye or modern electronic photometers. Conversely, redder stars appear dimmer, and have a fainter photographic magnitude than its visual magnitude. For example, the red supergiant star KW Sagittarii has the photographic magnitude range of 11.0p to 13.2p but in the visual magnitude of about 8.5p to 11.0p. It is also common for variable star charts to feature several blue magnitude (B) comparison stars. e.g. S Doradus and WZ Sagittae.
Photographic photometric methods define magnitudes and colours of astronomical objects using astronomical photographic images as viewed through selected or standard coloured bandpass filters. This differs from other expressions of apparent visual magnitude observed by the human eye or obtained by photography: that usually appear in older astronomical texts and catalogues. Early photographic images initially employed inconsistent quality or unstable yellow coloured filters, though later filter systems adopted more standardised bandpass filters which are still used with today's CCD photometers.
Magnitudes and colour indices.
Apparent photographic magnitude is usually given as "mpg" or "mp", or photovisual magnitudes mp or mpv. Absolute photographic magnitude is "Mpg". These are different from the commonplace photometric systems (UBV, UBVRI or JHK) that are expressed with a capital letter. e.g. 'V" (mV), "B" (mB), etc. Other visual magnitudes estimated by the human eye are expressed using lower case letters. e.g. "v" or "b", etc. e.g. Visual magnitudes as mv. Hence, a 6th magnitude star might be stated as 6.0V, 6.0B, 6.0v or 6.0p. Because starlight is measured over a different range of wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum and are affected by different instrumental photometric sensitivities to light, they are not necessarily equivalent in numerical value.


Astronomy Reports

Astronomy Reports (Russian: Астрономический журнал, Astronomicheskii Zhurnal), is a Russian, monthly, peer reviewed, scientific journal. This journal tends to focus its publishing efforts on original research regarding astronomical topics. Other types of reporting are also included such as chronicles, proceedings of international conferences, and book reviews. Founded in 1924, it is described as the most prominent astronomy journal during the age of the Soviet Union. Originally a print version, it is also available online. The Editor-in-Chief was Alexander A. Boyarchuk, Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
Former title.
This journal, currently titled ""Astronomy Reports", continues with the same Russian title as when it was known in English as Soviet Astronomy. The former "Soviet Astronomy" shares exactly the same Russian name as this journal, exactly the same print issn, but the US Library of Congress lists this under a different and unique number in its catalog. Soviet Astronomy ceased publication with volume 36, no. 6 which was published in 1992.
Translation and distribution.
Astronomicheskii Zhurnal is translated into English by the International Academic Publishing Company Nauka/Interperiodica (MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica), which is also the official publisher. However, beginning in 2006 access and distribution outside of Russia is through Springer. In addition, the English version of the journal is published simultaneously with its Russian version under the title "Astronomicheskii Zhurnal"". From 1999, until present day it has produced 12 issues per year. However, prior to this only six issues were published each year, back to 1996.
Scope.
The field of interest for this journal, Astronomy, includes in its scope sub-topics of astronomy. These are stellar astronomy, celestial mechanics, radio astronomy, physics of the Sun, planetary astrophysics, astrophysics theory, and astrophysics science through observation. Also included are methods of astronomy and instrumentation.
Abstracting and indexing.
Astronomy Reports is indexed in the following databases:


Apollo Observatory

Apollo Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned by Boonshoft Museum of Discovery and operated by the Miami Valley Astronomical Society at Boonshoft Museum of Discovery. The observatory is located at Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton, Ohio, United States.
The observatory is named after Project Apollo and was dedicated in 1969. Because of its location in the vicinity of a major Air Force research and development arm at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB), it has benefited from an infusion of top-notch technical talent. With funds raised by both the Museum and the Miami Valley Astronomical Society (MVAS), a design by Richard Buchroeder was selected and built by members of the Society, many of whom worked in optics and engineering disciplines for the Air Force. Due to the selected design, the optical train was complex and turned out to be problematic to maintain. It was therefore later modified to a simpler Dall-Kirkham Cassegrainian design.
The original building and the 50 cm (20-inch) telescope located in the dome were designed under the advice and guidance of MVAS members. The original building contained an optical laboratory complete with a shock-isolated optical test bench. It also contained space on the first floor where mirror grinding and polishing was performed.
The remodeling of the Museum in 1991 resulted in the addition of a Digistar Planetarium at the expense of the MVAS optical shop areas.
The second floor of the Apollo Observatory contains a large meeting room where monthly meetings and social gatherings are held. Adjacent to the meeting room is the MVAS library where members may check out most of the holdings for their use. The 50 cm telescope is also located on the second floor, just to the south of the meeting room.
The MVAS claims that the 50 cm telescope is one of the largest telescopes available to the amateur astronomer in southwest Ohio, although increased light pollution combined with the thermal effects of the building limit its usefulness for serious amateur study.


Judson B. Coit Observatory

Judson B. Coit Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Boston University on the roof of the College of Arts & Sciences at 725 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The observatory is used in undergraduate and graduate courses of the Boston University Department of Astronomy, and for observing projects of the Boston University Astronomical Society.
Public Open Nights are held most Wednesday evenings throughout the year, weather permitting.
The Observatory is named for Judson Coit, the first Professor of Astronomy appointed by Boston University. It was originally located on the roof of the College of Liberal Arts Building on Boylston Street, occupied by Boston University from the early years of the 20th century until the late-1940s, when it was moved with the College of Liberal Arts (now College of Arts and Sciences) to its current location on Commonwealth Avenue


Bryan-Gooding Planetarium

Bryan-Gooding Planetarium in the Alexander Brest Science Theatre is a planetarium in the Museum of Science and History in Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. It was built in 1988 and featured a dome-shaped projection screen, JBL stereo sound system, and a Zeiss Jena Optical mechanical planetarium star projector. The facility has seating for 200, and approximately 60,000 people see a planetarium show each year.
The planetarium was built with a donation by the late Alexander Brest, and was originally known as the Alexander Brest Planetarium. The theater initially used the Dove X / DORK automation system for slide projectors and special effects projectors. In 1996, the automation system was upgraded to the JHE automation system. The star projector (Planetarium) was built by a German company named Carl Zeiss AG, and was capable of displaying 8,900 stars. The projector used two 500-watt lamps at each end of the projector.
Michael Reynolds was the first planetarium director who designed the first planetarium programs which included a lecture series, workshops for teachers and a seminar about telescope makers.
Updated equipment.
The Henry and Lucy Gooding Endowment and the Bryan family made a gift of nearly half a million dollars to MOSH in June 2010 to finance improvements to the Alexander Brest Space Theater. The seating, dome, and flooring were cleaned thoroughly, and the dome was repainted. However, the biggest improvement was the new Konica Minolta Super MediaGlobe II digital dome projection system which replaced the 22-year-old dome projector.
The high-resolution projection features 4096 x 2400 pixels, four times as many pixels as the best HDTV image. It has a contrast ratio of 10,000:1, but does not use an optical iris, so black images stay black and retain detail. The system can also display 3D digital space simulations using the Mitaka stella database from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
In contrast to the Jena projector which can project 8,900 stars, the MediaGlobe II can project 118,000 stars. The system can also project weather occurrences, such as rain, snow, lightning and aurora. The upgrades have improved the planetarium's overall experience, and have attracted more people to the new shows that utilize the advanced equipment.
New name.
The planetarium was closed for two months for renovations from August 23, 2010 to October 23, 2010. When the improvements were completed, the facility was renamed "The Bryan-Gooding Planetarium in the Alexander Brest Science Theatre".
Music.
In addition to the educational programs presented by the planetarium, the staff offers "Cosmic Concerts" on the first Friday nights of each month. The shows combine music (usually rock, pop or classical) with a multi-colored laser light show and video projected on the dome, interspersed with special effects and cosmic images of galaxies, nebulas, and pulsars.
The museum also sells diffraction glasses which can enhance the viewing experience. The audio is recorded and played back digitally on the planetarium's 18,000-watt sound system. In early 2010, the aging laser light system began to require so much water to cool the equipment that the staff discontinued the Cosmic Concerts until the new laser projection system and multicolored LED lighting system were installed in late summer.


Iron peak

The iron peak is a local maximum in the vicinity of Fe (Cr, Mn, Fe, Co and Ni) on the graph of the abundances of the chemical elements.
For elements lighter than iron on the periodic table, nuclear fusion releases energy. For iron, and for all of the heavier elements, nuclear fusion consumes energy. Chemical elements up to the iron peak are produced in ordinary stellar nucleosynthesis, with the alpha elements being particularly abundant. Some heavier elements are produced by less efficient processes such as the r-process and s-process. Elements with atomic numbers close to iron are produced in large quantities in supernova due to explosive oxygen and silicon fusion, followed by radioactive decay of nuclei such as Nickel-56. On average, heavier elements are less abundant in the universe, but some of those near iron are comparatively more abundant than would be expected from this trend.
Binding energy.
A graph of the nuclear binding energy per nucleon for all the elements shows a sharp increase to a peak near nickel and then a slow decrease to heavier elements. Increasing values of binding energy represent energy "released" when a collection of nuclei is rearranged into another collection for which the sum of nuclear binding energies is higher. Light elements such as hydrogen release large amounts of energy (a big increase in binding energy) when combined to form heavier nuclei. Conversely, heavy elements such as uranium release energy when converted to lighter nuclei through alpha decay and nuclear fission. is the most thermodynamically favorable in the cores of high-mass stars. Although iron-58 and nickel-62 have even higher (per nucleon) binding energy, their synthesis cannot be achieved in large quantities, because the required number of neutrons is typically not available in the stellar nuclear material, and they cannot be produced in the alpha process (their mass numbers are not multiples of 4).


Walter Smiles

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Walter Dorling Smiles CIE DSO DL (8 November 1883 – 31 January 1953) was a Northern Irish politician.
Sir Walter was the son of William Holmes Smiles, director of Belfast Ropeworks, and grandson of Samuel Smiles. Sir Walter served during the First World War and, in the 1920s, managed a tea estate in Assam, there he became involved in local government and was a member of the Assam Legislative Council.
During the First World War; he obtained a pilots certificate but due to the lack of aircraft he transferred to Royal Naval Armoured Car Division. In 1915 he was seconded to the Imperial Russian Army to fight against Turkish forces in the Caucasus Campaign. In 1918 he had reached the rank of lieutenant commander and was highly decorated; he received the DSO in 1916, with bar in 1917 and a MID, along with Russian and Romanian decorations; such as the St George of the 4th class.
He was Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn from 1931 to 1945. Smiles was re-elected in 1935 but stood for Down in Northern Ireland at the 1945 Westminster election, as a Unionist. The two-seat constituency was split in 1950 into North Down and South Down. Smiles won North Down that year and remained its MP until his death in 1953; he lost his life in the sinking of off Larne Lough, in the Great Storm. He was succeeded by his daughter, Patricia Ford. He was the great-grandfather of explorer Bear Grylls.


NGC 7679

NGC 7679 is a lenticular galaxy with a peculiar morphology in the constellation Pisces. It is located at a distance of circa 200 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 7679 is about 60,000 light years across. It was discovered by Heinrich d'Arrest on September 23, 1864. The total infrared luminosity is , and thus it is categorised as a luminous infrared galaxy. NGC 7679 is both a starburst galaxy and a Seyfert galaxy.
Characteristics.
NGC 7679 is a barred lenticular galaxy seen face on, and is noted for its distorted shape. The galaxy has two plumes in opposite directions, possibly the result of tidal interaction with NGC 7682, and smooth outer arms. The inner region is of high surface brightness with many knots and a high star formation rate. The star formation rate of the galaxy is estimated to be 80 per year based on the x-ray luminosity observed by XMM-Newton, and on the H-alpha luminosity of 21.2 ± 0.2 per year while observations in infrared indicate a star formation of 11.35 ± 0.6 per year.
There is evidence of massive starburst activity in the circumnuclear region, with 35% of the stars there being aged less than 10 million years. A ring of ionised gas dominates both the optical and infrared wavelengths and is the locus of the starburst activity.
Nucleus.
The nucleus of NGC 7679 has been found to be active and has been categorised as a Seyfert galaxy. The most accepted theory for the energy source of Seyfert galaxies is the presence of an accretion disk around a supermassive black hole. NGC 7469 is believed to host a supermassive black hole whose mass is estimated to be (106.77) based on velocity dispersion.
The X-Ray spectrum from BeppoSAX shows no significant absorption above 2 MeV and the iron Ka line was marginally detected. However, the galaxy shows signs of obstruction in visual light, as it lacks broad emission lines. Two possible reasons are the presence of dust or the accretion disk that produces X-rays is not obstructed but the broad line region is. The lack of X-ray absorption along with the presence of broad H-alpha lines but not broad H-beta mean that it can't be easily categorised as a particular type of Seyfert galaxy.
Nearby galaxies.
NGC 7679 forms a pair with NGC 7682. NGC 7682 lies at a distance of 269.7 arcseconds, which corresponds to a projected distance of 97 kpc. The two galaxies are connected by a hydrogen bridge, a sign of a closer encounter in the past 500 million years. It is possible that the interaction of the two galaxies caused star formation in NGC 7679. A fainter galaxy has been found superimposed on the eastern arm of the galaxy, but it is actually located in the background.


Rosemary Hill Observatory

Rosemary Hill Observatory (RHO) is an astronomical observatory located near the town of Bronson, Florida (USA), about southwest of Gainesville, Florida. The observatory is owned and operated by the University of Florida, and opened in 1967. It has two telescopes and dormitories for extended observing runs.


Margaretta Palmer

Margaretta Palmer (1862–1924) was an American astronomer, one of the first women to earn a doctorate in astronomy.
She worked at the Yale University Observatory at a time when woman were frequently hired as assistant astronomers, but when most of these women had only a high school education, so Palmer's advanced degree made her unusual for her time.
Early life and education.
Palmer was born to a farming family in Branford, Connecticut on August 29, 1862, and completed a bachelor's degree at Vassar College in 1887. At Yale, she took two classes in astronomy with Maria Mitchell, although her graduation address concerned Greek tragedy. After graduating, she worked as an assistant to Mitchell and as a Latin instructor at Vassar.
In 1889 she was hired by the Yale University Observatory, and in 1892 she was admitted to graduate study at Yale University. Her 1894 doctorate was from the mathematics department at Yale, but its subject was astronomy, as it concerned the calculation of the orbit of a comet C/1847 T1 discovered in 1847 by Maria Mitchell. She was one of the first seven women to earn a doctorate at Yale. It has been suggested that she was "the first woman ever to earn a doctorate" in astronomy, although fellow astronomer Dorothea Klumpke earned hers in 1893. It would be over 30 years before another woman, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, became the first doctorate in astronomy at Radcliffe College.
During this period, Palmer also determined the orbits of three other comets, and collected a large set of observations of the moons of Jupiter. However, she was unable to complete the extensive calculation of the orbits of the moons because of a "long and serious illness".
Later career.
Palmer remained at the Yale Observatory for the rest of her life. Her work included the compilation of the "Yale Index to Star Catalogues", a cross-reference of the appearances of stars from the "Durchmusterung" in other star catalogs, which she announced in an incomplete form in a 1917 publication. For most of her time at Yale she was a research assistant, with some additional part-time work as a cataloguer in the Yale University Library, but she became an instructor at Yale in 1923. In 1924, with Frank Schlesinger, she published another pioneering star catalog, of the distances to 1870 stars calculated by Schlesinger's use of the principle of parallax.
Personal life.
Palmer was Episcopalian, and also published two books on religious topics, "Teachers' Notes on Our Book of Worship" (Young Churchman Co., 1914) and "Teachers' Notes on the Church Catechism" (Morehouse, 1918).
She died of her injuries on January 30, 1924, two weeks after an automobile accident, in New Haven, Connecticut.


Howard Harker

Major Howard Redmayne Harker (12 May 1891 – 27 February 1919) was a British World War I flying ace credited with five aerial victories.
Biography.
Howard Harker was born in Prestwich, Lancashire, the son of the architect John Dent Harker (1860–1933). He attended the Lawrence House School in St. Annes-on-Sea, and the Rossall School in Fleetwood, before graduating from Manchester University. From 1913 he was employed at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough, Hampshire. In February 1915 he made a memorable arrival at Hendon Aerodrome in a new B.E.2c biplane flown by Frank Goodden, who treated the assembled crowd to an impromptu display of aerial acrobatics before landing.
Harker was commissioned in the Royal Flying Corps as a temporary second lieutenant (on probation) on 15 April 1916. He was posted to No. 5 Reserve Squadron from 2 May until the day after receiving the Royal Aero Club Aviator's Certificate No. 2945, following his flight in a Maurice Farman biplane at the Military Flying School at Birmingham on 18 May. He was appointed a flying officer on 22 June, and confirmed in his rank on 11 July.
Harker was posted No. 57 Squadron, primarily a bomber and reconnaissance unit, in France. He gained his first victory, while flying a F.E.2d on 24 March 1917, by driving down 'out of control' an Albatros D.II east of Lens. He was appointed a flight commander with the rank of acting-captain on 6 April. In May his squadron was re-equipped with the DH.4, in which on 18 June he destroyed an Albatros D.III south of Houthulst. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on 1 July 1917. His remaining three victories were against Albatros D.Vs; on 17 July over Roulers, on 28 July over Ingelmunster, and on 21 August over Ledeghem–Menin.
On 26 September 1917 he was awarded the Military Cross, which was gazetted on 8 January 1918. His citation read:
Harker was appointed an acting-major on 1 October 1918. His final posting was to the No. 2 School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping at RAF Andover, Wiltshire. He died from pneumonia on 27 February 1919 at the Officers' Military Hospital at Tidworth, and is buried in the Southern Cemetery, Manchester.


Giorgio Abetti

Prof Giorgio Abetti HFRSE (5 October 1882 – 24 August 1982) was an Italian solar astronomer.
Life.
He was born in Padua, the son of noted astronomer Antonio Abetti. He was educated at the Universities of Padua and of Rome. He began his career at the Collegio Romano observatory in Rome as an assistant astronomer.
In the First World War he served in the Corps of Engineers with the Italian Army.
In 1921 he succeeded his father as the director of the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, and continued until 1957. From 1925 he was also a professor at the University of Florence, and continued in this capacity until 1957.
Giorgio Abetti is noted for having led expeditions to observe solar eclipses to Siberia (1936) and Sudan (1952). He was also a visiting professor at the University of Cairo in 1948–49. He was the vice president of the International Astronomical Union in 1938, and received the "Medaglia d'argento" from the Italian Geographic Society (1915), the "Premio reale" from the Accademia dei Lincei (1925), and the "Janssen medal" (1937).
In 1937, Abetti received the Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society.
The crater Abetti on the Moon and asteroid 2646 Abetti are named to honor both him and his father.
He died in Florence on 24 August 1982.
Bibliography.
He is the author of several popular works on astronomy.


Tachocline

The tachocline is the transition region of stars of more than 0.3 solar masses, between the radiative interior and the differentially rotating outer convective zone. This causes the region to have a very large shear as the rotation rate changes very rapidly. The convective exterior rotates as a normal fluid with differential rotation with the poles rotating slowly and the equator rotating quickly. The radiative interior exhibits solid-body rotation, possibly due to a fossil field. The rotation rate through the interior is roughly equal to the rotation rate at mid-latitudes, i.e. in-between the rate at the slow poles and the fast equator. Recent results from helioseismology indicate that the tachocline is located at a radius of at most 0.70 times the solar radius (measured from the core, i.e., the surface is at 1 solar radius), with a thickness of 0.04 times the solar radius. This would mean the area has a very large shear profile that is one way that large scale magnetic fields can be formed.
The geometry and width of the tachocline are thought to play an important role in models of the stellar dynamos by winding up the weaker poloidal field to create a much stronger toroidal field. Recent radio observations of cooler stars and brown dwarfs, which do not have a radiative core and only have a convective zone, demonstrate that they maintain large-scale, solar-strength magnetic fields and display solar-like activity despite the absence of tachoclines. This suggests that the convective zone alone may be responsible for the function of the solar dynamo.
The term "tachocline" was coined in a paper by Edward Spiegel and Jean-Paul Zahn in 1992 by analogy to the oceanic thermocline.


Meade ETX telescope

The ETX ("Everybody's Telescope") is a line of smaller aperture telescopes (60mm to 125mm) made by Meade Instruments.
Origins.
The ETX started out as a 90 mm (3-1/2") Maksutov Cassegrain telescope (first produced in 1996) and took advantage of high volume mass production and simplified optical and parts construction to open a new market for a cheap alternative to the very expensive Questar 3-1/2 Maksutov Cassegrain The ETX "line" has been expanded to 105 mm, and 125 mm Maksutov Cassegrains and achromatic refracting telescopes in sizes of 60 mm and 70 mm, but these two models were later replaced by an 80 mm model. The line has come to take advantage of "goto" telescope mount technology, making it very popular with amateur astronomers.
Model variations.
Maksutov-Cassegrain.
The original 1996 model, now referred to as the "RA" or "classic" model, had a clockwork mechanism to track movement of the earth with an equatorial wedge, but it cannot be retrofitted for computer control. Also included were tabletop tripod legs similar to the Questar.
In January 1999, Meade introduced the ETX-EC which included electronic control of both axis through a small hand-controller. An optional #497 Autostar package was offered and would replace the simple electric controls, turning the ETX-EC into a fully computerized "goto" telescope. A "standard" #883 tripod was available as an optional accessory.
Not officially a new model but rather a package (which eventually became standard), the "AT" package included an ETX-EC telescope bundled with the #497 Autostar controller and a stronger "deluxe" #884 tripod.
Meade's UHTC (Ultra High Transmission Coating) treatment was first offered as an option on "EC" model telescopes (part of the "AT" bundle) in 2002. This coating improves light transmission by about 15%.
In October 2004, Meade announced the new ETX-PE or Premier Edition. The small right-angle finder scope was replaced on these models by a LNT (Level North Technology) module which included a level sensor, a magnetic north sensor, accelerometer, real-time clock and a frameless red-dot viewfinder. UHTC was still offered as an option. Also bundled was the PC interface cable. These Premier Edition telescopes had an image of the North American (ETX125) or Orion (ETX90) Nebulae printed on the optical tube. These scopes were assembled in Meade's new facility located in Mexico.
Final versions of the ETX-PE (after January 2007) used a revised (framed viewfinder) LNT module and Autostar controller (#497ep), made the UHTC coatings standard and went back to blue optical tubes. The mounting points for the tabletop tripod were deleted as well. Production of these final versions was in China.
Retail price of the ETX telescope has been constantly going down since its original 1996 introduction while capabilities and included accessories have increased dramatically.
Production of the ETX 105 ended in November 2009 and the ETX 125 followed suit in October 2011.
The ETX 90 and ETX 125 Observer telescopes returned with many upgrades in 2016 continuing the legacy of the ETX series for years to come.
Achromatic Refractors.
In 2000, Meade added small 60mm and 70mm achromatic refractors to its ETX line. They were mounted on a dual fork mount similar to the larger models and included computer controls in the form of the #494 autostar.
At the time of introduction, they were some of the least expensive "goto" telescopes on the market.
Both models were replaced later by a single 80mm F/5 model.
Schmidt-Cassegrain.
In 2009, Meade introduced the ETX-LS, a 150mm (6 in) F/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain or ACF telescope on a very different single-fork arm. The LS include the Autostar III controller with over 100,000 objects in its database. It has a built-in CCD imager (E.C.L.P.S.) and a mini SD card reader for astrophotography. It includes audio and video descriptions of several hundred targets
An 8" version of the LS scope is also available, also F/10


Mauna Kea Observatories

The Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) are a number of independent astronomical research facilities and large telescope observatories that are located at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, United States. The facilities are located in a 525-acre (212 ha) special land use zone known as the "Astronomy Precinct", which is located within the 11,228-acre (4,544 ha) Mauna Kea Science Reserve. The Astronomy Precinct was established in 1967 and is located on land protected by the Historical Preservation Act for its significance to Hawaiian culture. The presence and continued construction of telescopes is highly controversial due to Mauna Kea's centrality in native Hawaiian religion and culture, as well as for a variety of environmental reasons.
The location is near ideal because of its dark skies from lack of light pollution, good astronomical seeing, low humidity, high elevation of , position above most of the water vapor in the atmosphere, clean air, good weather and low latitude location.
Origin and background.
Significantly predating the current observatories there is evidence of active astronomy on Mauna Kea in the 1901 Land Office Map of the Island of Hawaii showing the "Hawaii Astronomy Station" near the Mauna Kea summit.
After studying photos for NASA's Apollo program that contained greater detail than any ground-based telescope, Gerard Kuiper began seeking an arid site for infrared studies. While he first began looking in Chile, he also made the decision to perform tests in the Hawaiian Islands. Tests on Maui's Haleakalā were promising, but the mountain was too low in the inversion layer and often covered by clouds. On the "Big Island" of Hawaiʻi, Mauna Kea is considered the highest island mountain in the world. While the summit is often covered with snow, the air is extremely dry. Kuiper began looking into the possibility of an observatory on Mauna Kea. After testing, he discovered the low humidity was perfect for infrared signals. He persuaded Hawaiʻi Governor John A. Burns to bulldoze a dirt road to the summit where he built a small telescope on Puu Poliahu, a cinder cone peak. The peak was the second highest on the mountain with the highest peak being holy ground, so Kuiper avoided it. Next, Kuiper tried enlisting NASA to fund a larger facility with a large telescope, housing and other needed structures. NASA, in turn decided to make the project open to competition. Professor of physics, John Jefferies of the University of Hawaii placed a bid on behalf of the university. Jefferies had gained his reputation through observations at Sacramento Peak Observatory. The proposal was for a two-meter telescope to serve both the needs of NASA and the university. While large telescopes are not ordinarily awarded to universities without well-established astronomers, Jefferies and UH were awarded the NASA contract, infuriating Kuiper, who felt that "his mountain" had been "stolen" from "him". Kuiper would abandon his site (the very first telescope on Mauna Kea) over the competition and begin work in Arizona on a different NASA project. After considerable testing by Jefferies' team, the best locations were determined to be near the summit at the top of the cinder cones. Testing also determined Mauna Kea to be superb for nighttime viewing due to many factors, including the thin air, constant trade winds and being surrounded by sea. Jefferies would build a 2.24 meter telescope with the State of Hawaiʻi agreeing to build a reliable, all weather roadway to the summit. Building began in 1967 and first light was seen in 1970.
Other groups began requesting subleases on the newly accessible mountaintop. By 1970, two telescopes had been constructed by the United States Air Force and Lowell Observatory. In 1973, Canada and France agreed to build the 3.6 m CFHT on Mauna Kea. However, local organizations started to raise concerns about the environmental impact of the observatory. This led the Department of Land and Natural Resources to prepare an initial management plan, drafted in 1977 and supplemented in 1980. In January 1982, the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents approved a plan to support the continued development of scientific facilities at the site. In 1998, were transferred from the observatory lease to supplement the Mauna Kea Ice Age Reserve. The 1982 plan was replaced in 2000 by an extension designed to serve until 2020: it instituted an Office of Mauna Kea Management, designated for astronomy, and shifted the remaining to "natural and cultural preservation". This plan was further revised to address concern expressed in the Hawaiian community that a lack of respect was being shown toward the cultural value the mountain embodied to the region's indigenous people.
, the Mauna Kea Science Reserve has 13 observation facilities, each funded by as many as 11 countries. It is one of the world's premier observatories for optical, infrared, and submillimeter astronomy, and in 2009 was the largest measured by light gathering power. There are nine telescopes working in the visible and infrared spectrum, three in the submillimeter spectrum, and one in the radio spectrum, with mirrors or dishes ranging from . In comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope has a mirror, similar in size to the UH88, now the second smallest telescope on the mountain.
Controversies.
Planned new telescopes, including the Thirty Meter Telescope, have attracted controversy due to their potential cultural and ecological impact. The multi-telescope "outrigger" extension to the Keck telescopes, which required new sites, was eventually canceled. Three or four of the mountain's 13 existing telescopes must be dismantled over the next decade with the TMT proposal to be the last area on Mauna Kea on which any telescope would ever be built.
Management.
The Reserve was established in 1968, and is leased by the State of Hawaiʻi's Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR). The University of Hawaiʻi manages the site and leases land to several multi-national facilities, which have invested more than $2 billion in science and technology. The lease expires in 2033 and after that 40 of 45 square kilometers (25 of 28 square miles) revert to the state of Hawaii.
Location.
The altitude and isolation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean makes Mauna Kea one of the best locations on earth for ground-based astronomy. It is an ideal location for submillimeter, infrared and optical observations. The seeing statistics show that Mauna Kea is the best site in terms of optical and infrared image quality; for example, the CFHT site has a median seeing of 0.43 arcseconds.
Accommodations for research astronomers are located at the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy (often called Hale Pōhaku), by unpaved steep road from the summit at above sea level.
An adjacent visitor information station is located at . The summit of Mauna Kea is so high that tourists are advised to stop at the visitor station for at least 30 minutes to acclimate to atmospheric conditions before continuing to the summit, and scientists often stay at Hale Pōhaku for eight hours or more before spending a full night at observatories on the summit, with some telescopes requiring observers to spend one full night at Hale Pōhaku before working at the summit.
Telescopes.
Telescopes found at the summit of Mauna Kea are funded by government agencies of various nations. The University of Hawaiʻi directly administers two telescopes. In total, there are twelve facilities housing thirteen telescopes at or around the summit of Mauna Kea.
CSO, UKIRT, and Hoku Kea are scheduled for decommissioning as part of the Mauna Kea Comprehensive Management Plan.
Opposition and protests.
In Honolulu, the governor and legislature, enthusiastic about the development, set aside an even larger area for the observatory after the initial project, causing opposition on the Big Island, in the city of Hilo. Native Hawaiians (kānaka ʻōiwi) believed the entire site was sacred and that developing the mountain, even for science, would spoil the area. Environmentalists were concerned about rare native bird populations and other citizens of Hilo were concerned about the sight of the domes from the city. Using town hall meetings, Jefferies was able to overcome opposition by weighing the economic advantage and prestige the island would receive. There has been substantial opposition to the Mauna Kea observatories that continues to grow. Over the years, the opposition to the observatories may have become the most visible example of the conflict science has encountered over access and use of environmental and culturally significant sites. Opposition to development grew shortly after expansion of the observatories commenced. Once access was opened up by the roadway to the summit, skiers began using it for recreation and objected when the road was closed as a precaution against vandalism when the telescopes were being built. Hunters voiced concerns, as did the Hawaiian Audubon Society who were supported by Governor George Ariyoshi.
The Audubon Society objected to further development on Mauna Kea over concerns to habitat of the endangered Palila, a species endemic to only specific parts of this mountain. The bird is the last of the finch billed honeycreepers existing on the island. Over 50% of native bird species had been killed off due to loss of habitat from early western settlers or the introduction of non-native species competing for resources. Hunters and sportsmen were concerned that the hunting of feral animals would be affected by the telescope operations. A "Save Mauna Kea" movement was inspired by the proliferation of telescopes, with opposition believing development of the mountain to be sacrilegious. Native Hawaiian non-profit groups, such as Kahea, whose goals are the protection of cultural heritage and the environment, oppose development on Mauna Kea as a sacred space to the Hawaiian religion. Today, Mauna Kea hosts the world's largest location for telescope observations in infrared and submillimeter astronomy. The land is protected by the United States Historical Preservation Act due to its significance to Hawaiian culture, but still allowed development.
2006 Kiholo Bay earthquake.
A number of the telescopes sustained minor damage during the October 15, 2006 Kiholo Bay earthquake and aftershocks. JCMT was performing an inclinometry run and recorded the earthquake on its tilt sensors. Both CFHT and W. M. Keck Observatory were operational and back online by October 19.


Hard Labor Creek Observatory

Hard Labor Creek Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Georgia State University in the United States. It is located within Hard Labor Creek State Park, 50 miles east of the Atlanta, Georgia campus.
Visiting the Observatory.
The observatory is open to the public one evening per month during the spring, summer, fall, and winter months. These events are free and are staffed by astronomers from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University. Potential visitors are advised that open houses are subject to cancellation due to inclement weather, and parking is limited so carpooling is highly encouraged. The current open house schedule can be found at GSU Astronomy Open House Schedule.


Sulagiri (meteorite)

Sulagiri is the official name of the meteorite which fell on 12 September 2008 in Sulagiri, Krishnagiri District, Tamil Nadu, India.
History.
On 12 September 2008, around 08:30 hours, from the north-west sky this meteorite fell, which was observed by several people residing in the villages around the town of Sulaguri. According to the eyewitnesses, they heard a screeching sound and a bang. It was followed by house shaking explosions. Bright flashes and smoke were also observed.


20D/Westphal

20D/Westphal was a periodic comet with an orbital period of 61 years. It fits the classical definition of a Halley-type comet with (20 years < period < 200 years). It was originally discovered by the German astronomer J. G. Westphal (Göttingen, Germany) on July 24, 1852.
It was independently discovered by the American astronomer Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters (Constantinople) on August 9.
The comet was last seen between September 27 and November 26, 1913, first by Pablo T. Delavan (La Plata Astronomical Observatory) and then others. It was predicted to return in 1976 but was never observed, and is now considered a lost comet.


Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment


Tim de Zeeuw

Pieter Timotheus "Tim" de Zeeuw (born 12 May 1956 in Sleen) is a Dutch astronomer specializing in the formation, structure and dynamics of galaxies.
Education and career.
He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics (cum laude) in 1976, a bachelor's degree in astronomy (cum laude) in 1977 and a master's degree in astronomy (cum laude) in 1980, all from Leiden University. He graduated with a PhD in astronomy from Leiden University in 1984.From 1984, he worked in the US, first as a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then, from 1988, as a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to the Netherlands in 1990 to become professor of theoretical astronomy at Leiden.
In 1993, he became the founding director of NOVA, the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy, which coordinates the graduate education and astronomical research at the five university astronomy institutes in the Netherlands. NOVA's mission is to train young astronomers at the highest international level and to carry out frontline astronomical research in the Netherlands. In particular, the NOVA programme resulted in Dutch participation in the development of many VLT/VLTI instruments, the Band 9 ALMA receivers, in studies for E-ELT instruments, and in an instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
In 2003, he was appointed Scientific Director of Leiden Observatory, a research institute in the College of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of Leiden University. From 2007 to 2017 he was the director general of European Southern Observatory.
He was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006 and a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020. He received the 2001 Descartes-Huygens prize for his contribution to the French-Dutch scientific collaborations. In 2009, he was awarded the Brouwer Award by the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society. On 14 May 2018 at the annual Netherlands Astronomy Conference, he was awarded the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
Research.
Tim de Zeeuw's research concentrates on the formation, structure and dynamics of galaxies, including our own, the Milky Way. In Leiden, he led a group active in the construction of state-of-the-art dynamical models for galaxies, and their comparison to high-quality photometric and spectroscopic observations, with the aim of establishing the properties of dark matter halos around galaxies, probing the supermassive nuclear black holes, measuring the kinematics and dynamics of the different stellar populations, and ultimately understanding the process of galaxy formation. A significant second line of research is the study of the origin, structure, and evolution of young stellar groups in the Solar Neighbourhood.
Trained as a theorist in stellar dynamics, he gradually expanded his research to include the analysis and interpretation of observations, and also became involved in the development of new instrumentation. In 1995, he initiated a project with R. Bacon and R. Davies to build SAURON, a panoramic integral-field spectrograph for the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT). The SAURON collaboration led to follow-up projects studying galactic nuclei with the VLT, to the initiative to move the integral field spectrograph OASIS from the Canada France Hawaii Telescope to the WHT and to equip the WHT with a laser guide-star, to participation in studies for possible integral-field units on the Hubble Space Telescope and JWST, and to participation in the development of MUSE for the VLT.
Tim de Zeeuw has (co)-authored 185 refereed papers and many other contributing papers. He has supervised the research projects of 25 master students and has guided the research of 60 graduate students and postdocs. He holds honorary doctorates from the Université Claude Bernard Lyon and the University of Chicago.
Together with W. van Saarloos and L. Peletier, he co-founded the Lorentz Center, the International Center for Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics, in Leiden, and served on its steering committee for a decade.
Tim de Zeeuw served on the HST Time Allocation Committee, chaired the Space Telescope Institute Council for four years and also served on the board of directors of the US-based Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. Between 2003 and 2006, he was a member of ESO's governing body, the Council, and chaired the Council Scientific Strategy Working Group. In this capacity he contributed to the development of ESO's strategic goals in 2004 and to changes in the ESO committee structure including the new terms of reference for the STC and OPC. He was the principal author of a report to Council outlining three scenarios for ESO's future role in European astronomy. In 2006/7, he chaired the Science Vision Working Group set up by ASTRONET, an ERA-NET activity funded by the European Commission and set up by funding agencies in Europe. The Science Vision Working Group established a global European Science Vision for Astronomy for the next 20 years.


Solar eclipses on Neptune

Solar eclipses on Neptune occur when any of the natural satellites of Neptune pass in front of the Sun as seen from the planet.
For bodies which appear smaller in angular diameter than the Sun, the proper term would be a transit and bodies which are larger than the apparent size of the Sun, the proper term would be an occultation.
All of Neptune's inner moons and Triton can eclipse the Sun as seen from Neptune.
All other satellites of Neptune are too small and/or too distant to produce an umbra.
From this distance, the Sun's angular diameter is reduced to one and a quarter arcminutes across. Here are the angular diameters of the moons that are large enough to fully eclipse the Sun: Naiad, 7–13'; Thalassa, 8–14'; Despina, 14–22'; Galatea, 13–18'; Larissa, 10–14'; Proteus, 13–16'; Triton, 26–28'.
Just because the moons are large enough to fully eclipse the Sun does not necessarily mean that they will do so. Eclipses of the Sun from Neptune are rare due to the planet's long orbital period and large axial tilt of 28 degrees. In addition, the largest moon, Triton, has an orbital inclination of about 25 degrees to Neptune's equator. This makes eclipses of the Sun by Triton rare. Even when such an eclipse does occur, it passes rather quickly, as Triton moves in the opposite direction of Neptune's rotation.


Jacobus Kapteyn

Prof Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn FRS FRSE LLD (19 January 1851 – 18 June 1922) was a Dutch astronomer. He carried out extensive studies of the Milky Way and was the discoverer of evidence for galactic rotation. Kapteyn was also among the first to suggest the existence of dark matter using stellar velocities as early as 1922.
Kapteyn's family and early life.
Kapteyn was born in Barneveld in the Netherlands to Gerrit J. and Elisabeth C. (née Koomans) Kapteyn, and was one of 15 children. Many of the Kapteyns  were gifted in mathematics and physics. He passed his entrance exams for university at the age of 16 but Kapteyn's parents wouldn't allow him to go until the following year. He went to the University of Utrecht to study mathematics and physics in 1868. He did very well in his studies and when he graduated he was magna cum laude. This laid the foundation for his later career.
Jacobus Kapteyn was a very doting father during the earlier years in his career and took an interactive role which during the 1880s was not done much by fathers. When Kapteyn's children reached schooling age both his daughters, Jacoba Cornelia and Henrietta, and his son, Gerrit, went to a boys' school. His daughters later made significant strides for women by going to university to read law and medicine. His daughter Henrietta (1881–1956) married astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung and gave him a granddaughter named Rigel.
Career.
In 1875, after having finished his thesis, he worked for three years at the Leiden Observatory. In 1878 Kapteyn was inducted as the first professor of astronomy and theoretical mechanics at the University of Groningen. Also at Groningen, he founded the Astronomical Laboratory in 1896 and consequently became the director of the facility. Kapteyn fulfilled both occupational roles as professor and director at Groningen until his retirement in 1921. In 1888 he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Between 1896 and 1900, lacking an observatory, he volunteered to measure photographic plates taken by David Gill, who was conducting a photographic survey of southern hemisphere stars at the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. To measure these plates he used a special parallacticic instrument that Kapteyn himself had constructed. The results of this collaboration was the publication of "Cape Photographic Durchmusterung", a catalog listing positions and magnitudes for 454,875 stars in the Southern Hemisphere.
In 1897, as part of the above work, he discovered Kapteyn's Star. It had the highest proper motion of any star known until the discovery of Barnard's Star in 1916.
In 1904, studying the proper motions of stars, Kapteyn reported that these were not random, as it was believed in that time; stars could be divided into two streams, moving in nearly opposite directions. It was later realized that Kapteyn's data had been the first evidence of the rotation of our Galaxy, which ultimately led to the finding of galactic rotation by Bertil Lindblad and Jan Oort.
In 1906, Kapteyn launched a plan for a major study of the distribution of stars in the Galaxy, using counts of stars in different directions. The plan involved measuring the apparent magnitude, spectral type, radial velocity, and proper motion of stars in 206 zones. This enormous project was the first coordinated statistical analysis in astronomy and involved the cooperation of over forty different observatories.
Around 1913 Kapteyn developed a theory of how stars were made based on his observations of irregular nebulae and their velocities. He theorized that stars in irregular nebulae eventually evolved into planetary nebulae. Although this theory is not entirely correct it did have some redeeming qualities.
He was awarded the James Craig Watson Medal in 1913. The year of 1920 Kapteyn took a part-time job at University of Leiden after leaving the university of Groningen. This move made Kapteyn able to see his granddaughter Rigel and his daughter Henrietta. In Kapteyn's later years of work he spent his time working on the combination of his life's work revising and editing the Kapteyn Universe. Kapteyn later retired in 1921 at the age of seventy, but on the request of his former student and director of Leiden Observatory Willem de Sitter, Kapteyn went back to Leiden to assist in upgrading the observatory to contemporary astronomical standards.
The astronomy institute of the University of Groningen is named after Kapteyn. A street in the city of Groningen is also named after Kapteyn: the J.C. Kapteynlaan. And the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on La Palma in the Canary Islands named the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (JKT) after him.
The Kapteyn Universe.
The structure and size of the galaxy was of great interest to many astronomers during Kapteyn's time. Around 1900, Hugo von Seeliger made an attempt at discerning the structure of the galaxy by making counts of stars between successive magnitudes. Ultimately, von Seeliger was able to determine the rates at which the galaxy was diminishing in multiple different areas of the sky. In 1901, Kapteyn employed the proper motions technique and derived a statistical approach that allowed him to estimate the average distance to stars between successive magnitudes, effectively providing a scale for von Seeliger's discoveries. Conclusive results from von Seeliger and Kapteyn estimated the galaxy to be an oblate star system approximately 10 kpc in width and 2 kpc in thickness, the sun being relatively close (0.6 kpc) to the center. Using the method of star counts, Kapteyn was able to confirm his results and dubbed his findings as his first model of the galaxy.
Despite having made great strides and providing a model for the galaxy, there was one major issue. Kapteyn's work was based on an unproven presumption, that is, there is no light absorption in space. If there were light absorption in space, then stars would look more faint, thus, seeming further away than they actually are. Light absorption would also cause the galaxy to disperse more quickly than it actually does. If light absorption proved to be a considerable factor, then Kapteyn's work, or at least his conclusions, would more or less be obsolete. To circumvent this dilemma, Kapteyn spent years studying and measuring the amount of absorption. In 1917 Kapteyn's assumptions on interstellar absorption were debated. The arguments were centered around an issue with the "zone of avoidance". By 1918, he was convinced light absorption was of negligible amounts and confidently stood behind his first model for the structure of the galaxy.
Kapteyn had presented his findings in his life's work, "First Attempt at a Theory of the Arrangement and Motion of the Sidereal System," which was published in 1922. Kapteyn's model and distance scale were challenged by Anton Pannekoek and Harlow Shapley, among others, but Kapteyn was not well enough to meet with his peers and discuss his work. He died in June 1922, soon after its publishing. It was only after Kapteyn's death that Robert Trumpler determined that the amount of interstellar reddening was actually much greater than had been assumed. This discovery estimated the size of the galaxy to be about 2.5 times larger than initially was thought, with the sun replaced to a distance of 9.2 kpc from the galactic center.
Honours.
Awards
Named after him


Shrinivas Kulkarni

Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni (born
4 October 1956) is a US-based astronomer born and raised in India. He is currently a professor of astronomy and planetary science at California Institute of Technology, and he served as director of Caltech Optical Observatory (COO) at California Institute of Technology, in which capacity he oversaw the Palomar and Keck among other telescopes. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honours.
Kulkarni is the brother of Sudha Murthy and brother-in-law of Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys. He has been the Jury Chair for the Infosys Prize for the discipline of Physical Sciences since 2009.
Early life and education.
Shrinivas Ramchandra Kulkarni was born on 4 October 1956 in the small town of Kurundwad in Maharashtra, into a Kannada speaking Deshastha Madhva Brahmin family. His father, Dr. R. H. Kulkarni, was a surgeon based in Hubballi and his mother, Vimala Kulkarni, was a devoted home-maker. He is one of four children and has three sisters, namely Sunanda Kulkarni, Sudha Murthy (wife of Infosys founder Narayana Murthy) and Jaishree Deshpande (wife of Gururaj Deshpande).
Kulkarni and his sisters grew up in Hubballi, Karnataka, and received their schooling at local schools there. He obtained his MS in Physics (integrated master's course) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1978 and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983.
Career.
In 1987, Kulkarni obtained a position as faculty at the California Institute of Technology. According to his website, he has mentored 64 young scholars by the end of 2016.
Kulkarni is known for making key discoveries that open new sub-fields within astronomy, using wide range of wavelength in observation. ADS shows that his papers cover following fields: (1) HI absorption studies of Milky Way Galaxy, (2) pulsars, millisecond pulsars, and globular cluster pulsars, (3) brown dwarfs and other sub-stellar objects, (4) soft gamma-ray repeaters, (5) gamma-ray bursts, and (6) optical transients. He made significant contributions in these sub-fields of astronomy.
Key discoveries.
Kulkarni started off his career as a radio astronomer. He studied Milky Way Galaxy using HI absorption under the guidance of his advisor Carl Heiles, and observed its four arms. The review articles he wrote with Carl Heiles have been highly cited in the field of interstellar medium.
He discovered the first millisecond pulsar called PSR B1937+21 with Donald Backer and colleagues, while he was a graduate student. In 1986, he found the first optical counterpart of binary pulsars, while he was a Millikan Fellow at California Institute of Technology. He was instrumental in discovery of the first globular cluster pulsar in 1987 using a supercomputer.
With Dale Frail at NRAO and Toshio Murakami and his colleagues at ISAS (predecessor of JAXA that was led by Yasuo Tanaka at that time) Kulkarni showed that soft gamma-ray repeaters are neutron stars associated with supernova remnants. This discovery eventually led to the understanding that neutron stars with extremely high magnetic field called magnetars are the soft gamma-ray repeaters.
Caltech-NRAO team which he led showed in 1997 that gamma-ray bursts came from extra-galactic sources, and identified optical counterparts. Their research initiated the detailed studies of the sources of gamma-ray bursts along with the European team led by Jan van Paradijs.
He was also a member of the Caltech team that observed the first irrefutable brown dwarf in 1994 that orbited around a star called Gliese 229.
His recent work involved Palomar Transient Factory which has succeeded in identifying the new groups of optical transients such as superluminous supernova, calcium-rich supernova, and luminous red nova.
The success of his astronomical research is evident by 63 Nature Letters, 7 Science Letters, and total of 479 refereed scientific articles that bear his name by the end of 2015, according to ADS. Recognizing his contribution to astronomy, he was awarded the Dan David Prize in 2017.
Awards and honours.
Kulkarni has received many awards and honours, including the NSF's Alan T. Waterman Award in 1992, the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society in
1991, the Jansky Prize in 2002 and the Dan David Prize in 2017. In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate from Radboud University in the Netherlands.
Services to the field.
Kulkarni has been the Jury Chair for the Infosys Prize for the discipline of Physical Sciences since 2009. The prize is awarded by the Infosys Foundation, whose founder is Kulkarni's brother-in-law, Narayana Murthy.
Kulkarni is a member of as many as four national academies around the globe. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, London, in 2001, a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2003, an honorary fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences in 2012, and a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences on 12 September 2016.


Battle of the Colline Gate (82 BC)

The Battle of the Colline Gate, fought on the Kalends of November 82 BC, was the final and decisive battle of the civil war between Lucius Cornelius Sulla and the Marians. Sulla won and secured control of Rome and Italy. Appian is the only source who provides details about the battle.
Much of the war was fought in northern Italy. The Lucanians, the Samnites, and the Gauls fought alongside the Marians. Following defection of the Gauls to the forces of Sulla and the defeat of some of his forces by Metellus (one of Sulla's lieutenants) near Placentia (Piacenza), Carbo, the leader of the Marians, fled to Africa. His lieutenants, Gaius Carrinas, Gaius Marcius Censorinus, and Damasippus tried to force their way through a pass controlled by Sulla's men with all their forces and with the Samnites. This failed and they marched on Rome.
Prelude.
When Sulla found out the Samnites were moving on Rome he sent his cavalry ahead to hinder them while he himself force-marched his army to the capital. The Samnite army arrived first, at daybreak, causing a lot of consternation in the city. After the first shock wore off the Romans sent out a cavalry force to delay the attackers. Unfortunately for the Romans, the battle-hardened Samnites easily dispatched the cavalry attack killing many of them. However, the delay did allow a cavalry detachment sent ahead by Sulla to catch their breath, organize, and begin harassing the enemy. The arrival of Sulla's cavalry proved to the Romans and Samnites alike that Sulla was on his way. Telesinus decided to wait for Sulla's arrival and deployed his army slightly away from the Colline Gate. Sulla's main army arrived at noon and set up camp near to the temple of Venus Erucina, outside the walls of Rome, not far from the Colline Gate.
The Battle.
Sulla's commanders were concerned by the state of his soldiers after their forced-march. They pointed out that they were not up against the disorganized Marians, whom they had easily beat time and again, but against the Samnites and Lucanians − highly motivated, experienced, and warlike opponents. They urged Sulla to wait and let his soldiers recuperate over night. But Sulla only allowed his men a meal and a few hours rest. Then he organized his battle lines, and at four o'clock, with the sun already sinking, the battle began.
After a lot of hard fighting Sulla's left wing was driven backwards until they literally had their backs to the wall. The rearmost ranks tried to seek shelter inside the walls, but the soldiers manning the walls dropped the portcullis on them and forced them to fight on. Sulla rode over to his left wing and tried to recover the situation; he pleaded with his men, he threatened some, he even physically turned some round to face the enemy. The ranks he was trying to keep were shattered with heavy casualties. Eventually, Sulla and the bulk of the left ended up in their camp. That is when messengers arrived from Marcus Licinius Crassus who had taken command of the right wing while Sulla gave his full attention to the left. Crassus reported that his men had completely routed the enemy facing them. He wanted to know if he could have supplies now to break for supper. Sulla used Crassus' victory to boost the morale of his men and counter-attacked the Samnites.
The battle continued through the night. Gaius Carrinas, a Marian commander, and Pontius Telesinus, the Samnite commander, were killed and their camp was seized. Marcius, Carrinas, and Marcus Lamponius, the Lucanian, fled. Eventually, the entire enemy army broke and fled. The death toll was estimated at 50,000. There were 6,000-8,000 prisoners.
Aftermath.
Marcius and Carrinas were captured and brought in the next day. Sulla killed them. He sent his lieutenant, Lucretius, to show their heads before the walls of Praeneste (Palestrina), where Gaius Marius the Younger was besieged. Velleius Paterculus wrote that Sulla ordered the head of Telesinus to be carried around the walls of Praeneste fixed on top of a spear. He did not mention Marcius and Carrinas.
The people of Praeneste understood that the Marian army had been destroyed and that Sulla controlled Italy. They surrendered. Marius hid in a tunnel and committed suicide. His head was cut off and displayed in Rome. Some senators who had held command under Marius were killed by Sulla when he reached Praeneste and some were imprisoned. The inhabitants were divided into Romans, Samnites, and Praenestians. Then a herald told the Romans that they deserved to die but they were pardoned. The men of the other two groups were killed. Norba, a town which still resisted, was taken by treachery. The inhabitants strangled themselves with ropes or fell on each other's swords. Others set fire to the town.


Fernand Baldet

Fernand Baldet (16 March 1885 – 8 November 1964) was a French astronomer.
He worked with Count Aymar de la Baume Pluvinel observing Mars from the newly built observatory on Pic du Midi in 1909. The resulting photographs, taken with the 0.5 metre (20 inch) reflecting baillaud telescope, were so sharp, that they were able to disprove Percival Lowell's claim of geometrical canals on the planet's surface.
Baldet was the President of the Société astronomique de France (SAF), the French astronomical society, from 1939-1945. In 1946, Baldet and Charles Maurain jointly received the Prix Jules Janssen, the Society's highest award.
The crater Baldet on the Moon and the crater Baldet on Mars were named in his honour.


WASP-77 Ab


Kushida

Kushida (串田) may refer to :


List of stellar explosion types

Stellar explosion can refer to:


U (TNO)

U is a possible astronomical body detected by Chile's Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) during a survey for substellar objects in the Alpha Centauri system.
In images taken on 7 July 2014 (343.5 GHz) and 2 May 2015 (445 GHz), researchers discovered a source in the far infrared located within 5.5 arcseconds of . Based on its proper motion, it was at first thought to be a part of the Alpha Centauri system. Further analysis, however, found that the object must be closer to the Solar System, and that it may be gravitationally bound to the Sun. The researchers suggest that the object may be an extreme trans-Neptunian object (ETNO) beyond , a super-Earth at around , or a very cool brown dwarf at around .
The research was published on the arXiv in December 2015, but was later withdrawn pending further study. Additional observations of the detection at 343.5 GHz could not be made, whereas the detection at 445 GHz "was" confirmed to greater than 12σ. A single point of data, however, is insufficient for proper analysis, and further observations must be made to better determine this object's nature and its orbit.
Other astronomers have expressed skepticism over this claim. Mike Brown thinks that it is statistically improbable for a new Solar System object to be accidentally observed in ALMA's extremely narrow field of view, whereas Bruce Macintosh suggests that the detections may be artifacts introduced due to ALMA's calibration methods.


Solar eclipse of February 28, 2044

An annular solar eclipse will occur on February 28, 2044. 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. An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is smaller than the Sun's, blocking most of the Sun's light and causing the Sun to look like an annulus (ring). An annular eclipse appears as a partial eclipse over a region of the Earth thousands of kilometres wide.
This is the last of 55 umbral eclipses of Solar Saros 121. The 1st was in 1070 and the 55th will be in 2044. The total duration is 974 years.
Images.
Animated path


2202 Pele

2202 Pele, provisional designation , is an eccentric asteroid and near-Earth object of the Amor group, approximately 1–2 kilometers in diameter.
It was discovered by American astronomer Arnold Klemola at the U.S. Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, California, on 7 September 1972. The asteroid was named after Pele from native Hawaiian religion.
Orbit and classification.
"Pele" orbits the Sun at a distance of 1.1–3.5 AU once every 3 years and 6 months (1,265 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.51 and an inclination of 9° with respect to the ecliptic.
It is an Amor asteroid, the second largest subgroup of near-Earth objects, that approach the orbit of Earth from beyond, but does not cross it. It has an "Earth minimum orbit intersection distance" of , which corresponds to 55.6 lunar distances.
No precoveries were taken. The asteroid's observation arc starts two days after the official discovery observation.
Physical characteristics.
As of 2017, "Pele"s effective size, composition, and albedo, as well as its rotation period and shape remain unknown. It measures between 1 and 2 kilometers, based on a generic magnitude-to-diameter conversion, which assumes an albedo in the range of 0.05 to 0.25.
Naming.
This minor planet was named after Pele, the goddess of fire, lightning, and volcanoes from Hawaiian mythology. Pele created the Hawaiian Islands and made Kīlauea her home, after she was forced to go away by her rival sister and goddess of the sea, Nāmaka. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 1 June 1980 ().