Castor Moving Group

The Castor Moving Group, or Castor stream, is a moving group of stars sharing similar velocities and directions. The stars that have been identified as part of the group include Castor, Fomalhaut, Vega, α Cephei and α Librae. While the reported group members are young (typically with ages of hundreds of millions of years), recent results suggest that the velocity differences amongst the moving group stars are too large for them to have possibly shared a common origin.
Discovery and constituents.
The moving group was first proposed by J. P. Anosova, and V. V. Orlov in 1990. Anosova and Orlov originally proposed 15 members. In 1999, Barrado y Navascues presented a membership list of 16 stars, and estimated a group age of 200 million years. The membership of the group has not been well-established and varies quite a bit amongst studies.
Physicality of the Group.
There is controversy over whether the Castor Moving Group constitutes a physical group of stars of shared origin (e.g. an "association") or a group of stars of heterogeneous age and chemical composition that happen to have somewhat similar velocities (e.g. a "dynamical stream"). In their 2013 paper describing the discovery of Fomalhaut C, Mamajek et al. point out that the 3D velocities of the famous Castor Moving Group members Fomalhaut, Vega, Castor, and LP 944-20 are now very well-determined. They find that the star-to-star velocity differences are so large (typically ~5–10 km/s) that the stars were not within 100 pc of each other as recently as 10 Myr ago, let alone at the purported group age of ~200 million years. The local density of purported Castor Moving Group members is very low (roughly 0.4% of the mass density of the local Galactic disk), hence the systems are not bound to one another, and the high velocity dispersion can not be attributed to the dynamical interactions amongst the moving group members themselves. They conclude that at least those famous "members" of the Castor Moving Group (Fomalhaut, Vega, Castor, LP 944-20) are extremely unlikely to have shared a common origin.
See also.
Ursa Major Moving Group


Charles Lethbridge Kingsford

Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, FBA (25 December 1862 – 29 November 1926) was a scholarly English historian and author.
Biography.
Kingsford was born on 25 December (Christmas Day) 1862 in Ludlow, Shropshire, the third son of Rev. Sampson Kingsford, formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, vicar of St Hilary, Cornwall, and at this date headmaster of Ludlow Grammar School.
He was sent to Rossall School, and went up to St John's College, Oxford, as a scholar, and obtained honours in the classical schools and in modern history. In 1888 he was awarded the Arnold prize for an essay on "The Reformation in France", and in the following year he joined the editorial staff of the "Dictionary of National Biography". In 1890 he was appointed an examiner in the Education Department, and was an assistant secretary from 1905 to 1912, when he resigned after internal reorganization made work less congenial.
During the First World War, he served as a special constable in London, for which he received the Special Constabulary Long Service Medal with clasp. He was later employed as private secretary to Sir Arthur Boscawen at the Ministry of Pensions from 1917 to 1918.
Kingsford was vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 1920–23, Ford Lecturer in British History at Oxford, 1923–24, and a vice-president of the Royal Historical Society and the London Topographical Society. In 1924 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy.
Kingsford was recognised at time of his death "as our greatest modern authority on the history of the late 15th century". With Thomas Andrew Archer he published in 1894 a book on the Crusades (see link below), which was well received. His edition of John Stow's "Survey of London" in 1908 increased his reputation, which was further enhanced by his "English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century" (1913) and his "Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth Century England" (1925). For the Royal Historical Society he wrote on Sir Otho de Grandison, and for the British Society of Franciscan Studies a volume on the Grey Friars of London. His last work, which appeared at the beginning of 1926, was "The Early History of Piccadilly, Leicester-square, Soho, and their Neighbourhood", which was based on a plan drawn in 1585 and published by the London Topographical Society. To the "Heroes of the Nations" series he contributed the volume on Henry V of England; he wrote the histories of the Royal Warwickshire and the Middlesex Regiments; and he edited the first volume on the manuscripts of Lord De L'Isle and Dudley in the publications of the Historical Manuscripts Commission. To these and other works he added over 400 articles to the "Dictionary of National Biography", and over 30 to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", besides the "Camden Miscellany", the "English Historical Review", "Archaeologia", the "Cambridge Medieval History", and the "London Topographical Record".
Death.
Kingsford died after a sudden seizure at his home, 15 Argyll Road, Kensington, London, on Saturday, 29 November 1926, at the age of 63. He was buried at South Tawton, Devon.
His obituary in "The Times" concluded: "To all his work he brought the scholarship of the true researcher, and by his patient ingenuity and insight he added materially to the sum of historical knowledge."
Family.
Kingsford married Alys, daughter of C. T. Hudson, LL.D., F.R.S.


Irregular mare patch

An irregular mare patch also known as an IMP, is a smooth, rounded, slightly mounded area, generally about 500 meters wide, occurring in the lunar maria.
Discovery.
Due to their small size, and corresponding difficulty of observational astronomy from Earth, the first irregular mare patch discovered, Ina, was only found in 1971 after analysis of photographs taken by Apollo 15. More were discovered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched in 2009 and found about 70 more.
Origin.
The origin of the irregular mare patches is uncertain. Crater counts, which can give an indication of the age of an area by the number of craters upon it, indicate that these regions can be as young as a few tens of millions of years old. It has been hypothesized by the LRO team that they are small volcanic lava flows, due to their spectroscopic similarity to other lava flows. However, other analysts dispute this, noting that there are many separate patches, instead of one large patch. This would require numerous small-scale eruptions. There is also no indication of flowing, as there is in lava in other eruptions on the Moon. Even more important, the hypothesis of volcanic action is at odds with the current theory of the Moon's geology, which states that the moon should have cooled and solidified by about 1 billion years ago, precluding further geological action.
Geological implications.
If these features are volcanic in origin, it is "'literally going to make geologists rewrite the textbooks about the moon'". According to the current scientific theories, the Moon's small size means that its mantle should have fully solidified by about 1 billion years ago, which is backed up by seismic data. This would prevent any further geological action by the Moon's interior. A recent (in geological terms) eruption would indicate that the Moon has cooled much more slowly than thought, possibly due to heat released from radioactive decay of radioisotopes in the Moon.


Sallie Baliunas

Sallie Louise Baliunas (born February 23, 1953) is a retired astrophysicist. She formerly worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and was the Deputy Director of the Mount Wilson Observatory from 1991 to 2003.
Early life and education.
Baliunas was born and grew up in New York City and its suburbs. She attended public schools in the New York City area and high school in New Jersey. She received a B.S. in astrophysics from Villanova University in 1974, and an A.M. and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Harvard University in 1975 and 1980. Her doctoral thesis was titled, "Optical and ultraviolet studies of stellar chromospheres of Lambda Andromedae and other late-type stars".
Career.
Baliunas was a research associate of the Harvard College Observatory in 1980 and became an astrophysicist in the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in 1989.
Baliunas was also a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College, an adjunct professor at Tennessee State University, and was deputy director of the Mount Wilson Observatory from 1991 to 2003.
She has been a member of the American Astronomical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Physical Society, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, International Astronomical Union, and Sigma XI.
She served on both the scientific advisory board and the board of directors of the Marshall Institute, a now defunct conservative think tank.
Astrophysics.
Baliunas's main focus was initially on astrophysical research. She studied visible and ultraviolet spectroscopy of stars; structure, variations, and activity in cool stars; evolution of stellar angular momentum; solar variability and global change; adaptive optics; exoplanets of Sun-like stars. She has published little in recent years, with only two refereed astronomy papers since 2010.
Global warming and solar variability.
In 1992, Baliunas was third author on a "Nature" paper that used observed variations in sun-like stars as an analogue of possible past variations in the Sun. The paper says that
By 1995, she had entered the global warming controversy. In January of that year the Marshall Institute think tank published a review she had written for them, "Are Human Activities Causing Global Warming?" disputing the IPCC Second Assessment Report and arguing that "predictions of an anthropogenic global warming have been greatly exaggerated, and that the human contribution to global warming over the course of the 21st century will be less than one degree Celsius and probably only a few tenths of a degree." She concluded with the view that "even if fears of anthropogenic global warming were realized – a concern which finds no support in the scientific data – there is no significant penalty for waiting at least two decades before taking corrective action to reduce global CO2 emissions." The work of Willie Soon and Baliunas, suggesting that solar variability is more strongly correlated with variations in air temperature than any other factor, even carbon dioxide levels, has been widely publicized by lobby groups including the Marshall Institute and Tech Central Station, and mentioned in the popular press.
Baliunas and Soon became well known for climate change denial, and in 1997 she won the Petr Beckmann Award for her "devastating critique of the global warming hoax."
In regard to there being a connection between CO2 rise and climate change, she said in a 2001 essay with Willie Soon:
The claim that atmospheric data showed no warming trend was incorrect, as the published satellite and balloon data at that time already showed a warming trend (see satellite temperature record). In later statements Baliunas acknowledged the measured warming in the satellite and balloon records, though she disputed that the observed warming reflected human influence.
Baliunas contends that findings of human influence on climate change are motivated by financial considerations: "If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and most to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn't be as much money to study it."
 She does not address the countervailing financial considerations of the energy companies that fund some of her collaborators, including Willie Soon who received over $1,000,000 from petroleum and coal interests since 2001.
Controversy over the 2003 "Climate Research" paper.
In 2003, Baliunas and aerospace engineer Willie Soon published a review paper on historical climatology in "Climate Research", which concluded that "the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." With Soon, Baliunas investigated the correlation between solar variability and temperatures of the Earth's atmosphere. When there are more sunspots, the total solar output increases, and when there are fewer sunspots, it decreases. Soon and Baliunas attribute the Medieval warm period to such an increase in solar output, and believe that decreases in solar output led to the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling from which the earth has been recovering since 1890.
The circumstances of the paper's publication were controversial, prompting concerns about the publishers' peer review process. An editorial revolt within "Climate Research" followed, with half of the journal's 10 editors eventually resigning. The publisher subsequently stated that critics said that the conclusions of the paper "cannot be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided" and that the journal "should have requested appropriate revisions prior to publication."
Ozone depletion.
In 1995, Baliunas testified before the United States House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment that CFCs were not responsible for ozone depletion. An article written by Baliunas and Soon in 2000 for the Heartland Institute, a conservative and libertarian public policy think tank, promoted the idea that ozone depletion rather than CO2 emissions could explain atmospheric warming.


Richard van der Riet Woolley

Sir Richard van der Riet Woolley OBE FRS (24 April 1906 – 24 December 1986) was an English astronomer who became the eleventh Astronomer Royal. His mother's maiden name was Van der Riet.
Biography.
Woolley was born in Weymouth, Dorset and attended Allhallows College, then in Honiton, for about 18 months, but then moved with his parents to South Africa upon their retirement. There he attended and received his degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Cape Town. Woolley returned to the United Kingdom and studied for a further MA degree in Mathematics and, later, a PhD at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. After two years at Mount Wilson Observatory he again returned to the United Kingdom in 1931.
From 1937 to 1939 he was Senior Assistant Observer and John Couch Adams Astronomer at the Cambridge Observatory.
Woolley specialized in solar astronomy and in 1939 he was appointed director of the Commonwealth Solar Observatory in Canberra, Australia. He later returned to the United Kingdom to take up his appointment as Astronomer Royal from 1956 to 1971.
Woolley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1953 and won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
in 1971.
From 1972 to 1976 he was director of the new South African Astronomical Observatory. He retired in the late 1970s and spent most of his retirement in South Africa.
Woolley was appointed an OBE in 1953 and knighted in 1963.
Views on the practicality of space flight.
Woolley is known for his initial disbelief in the practicalities of space flight, a notion he shared with Sir Harold Spencer Jones, his predecessor as Astronomer Royal. In a 1936 book review of P.E. Cleator's "Rockets Through Space", Woolley wrote:
"The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished"
On appointment as Astronomer Royal, he reiterated his long-held view that "space travel is utter bilge". Speaking to "Time" in 1956, Woolley noted
"It's utter bilge. I don't think anybody will ever put up enough money to do such a thing . . . What good would it do us? If we spent the same amount of money on preparing first-class astronomical equipment we would learn much more about the universe . . . It is all rather rot"
Woolley's protestations came just one year prior to the launch of Sputnik 1, five years before the start of the Apollo Program, and thirteen years before the first manned landing on the Moon.
In a 1995 letter to "New Scientist", J.A. Terry and John Rudge pointed out that the quotation ascribed to Woolley is actually a misquotation of what he actually said (as they had heard themselves on "Radio Newsreel"). Terry and Rudge report that Woolley's statement was: "All this talk about space travel is utter bilge, really." Woolley went on to say: "It would cost as much as a major war just to put a man on the moon." Terry and Rudge assert that Woolley's latter prediction turned out to be quite accurate, and state that the deletion of the first four words of the quotation by newspaper editors was in reaction to the fact that it was those self-same newspaper's hyperbolic articles, talking about space travel, that Woolley was criticising. "Anyone", said Terry and Rudge, "who had seen the flamboyant articles about space travel and the imminent colonisation of the moon and planets that were splashed all over the newspapers in 1956, with science fiction-style illustrations, must have been immediately aware of what the new Astronomer Royal was riled about."


Daniel Apai

Daniel Apai (born 1977) is a professor and astrophysicist at The University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. He is known for his studies of astrobiology, extrasolar planets, and the formation of planetary systems. He is the principal investigator of the Earths in Other Solar Systems team of NASA's "Nexus for Exoplanet System Studies" and the Hubble Space Telescope Cloud Atlas Treasury program, and Project EDEN, a large survey for habitable planets in the immediate solar neighborhood.
Education.
Daniel Apai was born in Szeged, Hungary in 1977 and grew up in Budapest, Hungary.
He studied physics at the University of Szeged, Hungary and the University of Jena, Germany, and received a diploma as research physicist in 2000. After graduation, he was awarded a German Academic Exchange Service Doctoral Fellowship and began his doctoral studies at the University of Jena, under the supervision of Thomas Henning on observational studies of young stars. In 2002 he moved to the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany and he received his Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 2004. In 2004 he was the recipient of the Patzer Price. Between 2004 and 2008 Daniel Apai has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Steward Observatory's NASA Astrobiology Institute node on high-contrast adaptive optics direct imaging searches for extrasolar planets. In 2008 Apai took on a position at the Space Telescope Science Institute to work as an astronomer at the institute's Science Policy Group. In 2011 he moved back to faculty of the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory and Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. He also held short-term visiting positions at The University of Texas, at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, and at The University of Bern.
Work.
Apai's work includes detailed comparative studies of planet formation around sun-like stars and low-mass stars; his team has discovered that the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks depends on stellar mass. He used, for the first time, multi-epoch near-infrared radial velocity measurements to demonstrate that many O-type stars have massive companions at the time of their formation. Apai has also used the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope to carry out pioneering observations to map condensate clouds in brown dwarf and exoplanet atmospheres. These studies demonstrated that brown dwarfs at the L- to T spectral type transition have clouds with varying thickness, and that many brown dwarfs have zonal circulation and planetary-scale waves. Daniel Apai was also a member of the team that discovered and imaged the super-jupiter Beta Pictoris b around the star Beta Pictoris.
Publications and Books.
Daniel Apai is an author of over 300 professional publications. He co-edited (with Dante Lauretta) the book Protoplanetary Dust, published by Cambridge University Press.


Open Exoplanet Catalogue

The Open Exoplanet Catalogue is a catalogue of all discovered extra-solar planets. It is a new kind of astronomical database decentralized and completely open.
It is considered one of the four exoplanet catalogues most widely used, together with the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, the NASA Exoplanet Archive, and the Exoplanet Data Explorer.
In 2012, Hanno Rein presented a new kind of astronomical database based on small text files and a distributed version control system.
In 2016, Ryan Varley presented ExoData, Python interface and exploratory analysis tool for the Open Exoplanet Catalogue.
Statistics.
As of October 2020, the Open Exoplanet Catalogue has the following statistics:
See also.
Exoplanet


Hobbs Observatory

Hobbs Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire's Department of Physics and Astronomy and home to the Chippewa Valley Astronomical Society. It is located in the Beaver Creek Reserve four miles North of Fall Creek, Wisconsin. It is named after the Hobbs Foundation, a local philanthropic organization which provided money for the initial construction in 1978 and the purchase of a Navy telescope.


159P/LONEOS

159P/LONEOS is a periodic comet in the Solar System.


Atmosphere of Ceres


GRB 050709

GRB 050709 was a gamma-ray burst (GRB) detected on July 9, 2005. A gamma-ray burst is a highly luminous flash of gamma rays, the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation, which is often followed by a longer-lived "afterglow" emitting at longer wavelengths (X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and radio).
Observations.
GRB 050709 was detected by multiple instruments on board HETE-2 on July 9, 2005 at 22:36:37 UTC. The first pulse lasted 100 milliseconds, followed 30 seconds later by a fainter pulse lasting approximately 150 seconds. The disparity between the spectra of the first pulse and the second suggest that the second pulse was the onset of the burst's afterglow. As such, this burst was classified as a short-duration hard burst.
A radio source was detected on July 11 at a position of R.A.=, Decl.=. Optical observations taken 34 hours after the burst revealed an optical afterglow. This was the first discovery of transient optical emission from a short burst.
Ejecta.
Analysis of the burst's afterglows suggested two models to explain the burst's afterglow. In the first, the burst's ejecta were collimated into a jet with a half-angle greater than 6° and interacted with a high-density medium. In the second, the jet had a half-angle greater than 2° and interacted with a low-density medium. If the characteristics of the first model, which were similar to those of GRB 050724, are representative of all short GRBs, then the emission jets of short GRBs are less collimated and less energetic than those of long GRBs.
Host galaxy.
GRB 050709's x-ray afterglow associated the burst with a host galaxy at a redshift of z = 0.16. This galaxy's light curve excluded the possibility of a supernova association, a common feature of long bursts. This suggested that short-duration bursts release much less energy than long-duration bursts.


98P/Takamizawa

98P/Takamizawa is a periodic comet in the Solar System.
On 29 June 2188 the comet will pass about from Earth.


Tharsis quadrangle

The Tharsis quadrangle is one of a series of 30 quadrangle maps of Mars used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Astrogeology Research Program. The Tharsis quadrangle is also referred to as MC-9 (Mars Chart-9).
The name Tharsis refers to a land mentioned in the Bible. It may be at the location of the old town of Tartessus at the mouth of Guadalquivir.
The quadrangle covers the area from 90° to 135° west longitude and 0° to 30° north latitude on Mars and contains most of the Tharsis Rise. The plateau is about as high as Earth's Mount Everest and about as big in area as all of Europe. Tharsis contains a group of large volcanoes. Olympus Mons is the tallest.
Volcanoes.
Tharsis is a land of great volcanoes. Olympus Mons is the tallest known volcano in the Solar System; it is 100 times larger than any volcano on Earth. Ascraeus Mons and Pavonis Mons are at least 200 miles across and are over six miles above the plateau that they sit on—and, the plateau is three to four miles above the zero altitude of Mars. Pavonis Mons, the middle in a line of three volcanoes, sits at just about dead center on the equator. Mons is a term used for a large raised feature. Tholus is about the same, but smaller. A patera is flatter and like a volcano with a super large opening. Actually, a patera is formed when the top of a volcano collapses because its magma chamber is empty. Crater Lake Oregon was formed that way. Several volcanoes form a straight line in the Tharsis Uplift. Two major ones are in the Tharsus quadrangle: Ascraeus Mons and Pavonis Mons. It has been proposed that these are the result of plate motion which on Earth makes volcanic arc islands.
Although Mars displays many volcanoes here and other places, there has been no evidence of recent volcanic activity, even at a very low level. Research, published in 2017, found no active release of volcanic gases during two successive Martian years. They looked for the outgassing of sulfur-bearing chemicals with spectrometers.
Potential influence of volcanic emissions on climate.
Some scientists maintain that Tharsis has had great influence on the climate of Mars. Volcanoes give off large amounts of gas when they erupt. The gases are usually water vapor and carbon dioxide. Some estimates put the amount of gas released to the atmosphere as enough to make the atmosphere thicker than the Earth's. In addition, the water released by the volcanoes could have been enough to cover all of Mars to a depth of 120 meters. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide raises the temperature of a planet by trapping heat in the form of infrared radiation. The volcanic eruptions on Tharsis could have made Mars more Earth-like in the past. Mars may have once had a much thicker and warmer atmosphere. Oceans and/or lakes may have been present.
Fossa.
The Tharsis quadrangle is also home to large troughs (long narrow depressions) called fossae in the geographical language used for Mars. Fossae in this area are Ulysses Fossae, Olympica Fossae, Ceraunius Fossae, and Tractus Fossae. These troughs form when the crust is stretched until it breaks. The stretching can be due to the large weight of a nearby volcano. Studies have shown that the volcanoes of Tharsis caused most of the major fossae on Mars. The stress that caused the fossae and other tectonic features is centered in Noctis Labyrinthus, at 4 S and 253 E. But the center has moved somewhat over time. Fossae/pit craters are common near volcanoes in the Tharsis and Elysium system of volcanoes. A trough often has two breaks with a middle section moving down, leaving steep cliffs along the sides; such a trough is called a graben. Studies have found that on Mars a fault may be as deep as 5 km, that is the break in the rock goes down to 5 km. Moreover, the crack or fault sometimes widens or dilates. This widening causes a void to form with a relatively high volume. When material slides into the void, a pit crater or a pit crater chain forms. Pit craters do not have rims or ejecta around them, like impact craters do. On Mars, individual pit craters can join to form chains or even to form troughs that are sometimes scalloped. Other ideas have been suggested for the formation of fossae and pit craters. There is evidence that they are associated with dikes of magma. Magma might move along, under the surface, breaking the rock and, more importantly, melting ice. The resulting action would cause a crack to form at the surface. Pit craters are not common on Earth. Sinkholes, where the ground falls into a hole (sometimes in the middle of a town) resemble pit craters on Mars. However, on the Earth these holes are caused by limestone being dissolved thereby causing a void.
Knowledge of the locations and formation mechanisms of pit craters and fossae is important for the future colonization of Mars because they may be reservoirs of water.
Glaciers.
Some scientists see evidence that glaciers exist on many of the volcanoes in Tharsis, including Olympus Mons, Ascraeus Mons, and Pavonis Mons. Ceraunius Tholus may have even had its glaciers melt to form some temporary lakes in the past.
Dark slope streaks.
Some pictures below show dark streaks: on the slopes on large blocks just to the left of Tharsis Tholus, on Ceraunius Fossae, and on Olympica Fossae. Such streaks are common on Mars. They occur on steep slopes of craters, troughs, and valleys. The streaks are dark at first. They get lighter with age. Sometimes they start in a tiny spot, then spread out and go for hundreds of meters. They have been seen to travel around obstacles, like boulders. It is believed that they are avalanches of bright dust that expose a darker underlying layer. However, several ideas have been advanced to explain them. Some involve water or even the growth of organisms. The streaks appear in areas covered with dust. Much of the Martian surface is covered with dust. Fine dust settles out of the atmosphere covering everything. We know a lot about it because the solar panels of the Mars Rovers get covered with it, thus reducing the electrical energy. The power of the Rovers has been restored many times by the wind, in the form of dust devils, clearing the panels and thus boosting the power. Dust storms are frequent, especially when the spring season begins in the southern hemisphere. At that time, Mars is 40% closer to the sun. The orbit of Mars is much more elliptical then the Earth's. That is the difference between the farthest point from the sun and the closest point to the sun is very great for Mars, but only a slight amount for the Earth. Also, every few years, the entire planet is engulfed in global dust storms. When NASA's Mariner 9 craft arrived there, nothing could be seen through the dust storm. Other global dust storms have also been observed, since that time.
Research, published in January 2012 in "Icarus", found that dark streaks were initiated by airblasts from meteorites traveling at supersonic speeds. The team of scientists was led by Kaylan Burleigh, an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. After counting some 65,000 dark streaks around the impact site of a group of 5 new craters, patterns emerged. The number of streaks was greatest closer to the impact site. So, the impact somehow probably caused the streaks. Also, the distribution of the streaks formed a pattern with two wings extending from the impact site. The curved wings resembled scimitars, curved knives. This pattern suggests that an interaction of airblasts from the group of meteorites shook dust loose enough to start dust avalanches that formed the many dark streaks. At first it was thought that the shaking of the ground from the impact caused the dust avalanches, but if that was the case the dark streaks would have been arranged symmetrically around the impacts, rather than being concentrated into curved shapes.
The crater cluster lies near the equator 510 miles) south of Olympus Mons, on a type of terrain called the Medusae Fossae formation. The formation is coated with dust and contains wind-carved ridges called yardangs. These yardangs have steep slopes thickly covered with dust, so when the sonic boom of the airblast arrived from the impacts dust started to move down the slope.
Using photos from Mars Global Surveyor and HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scientists have found about 20 new impacts each year on Mars. Because the spacecraft have been imaging Mars almost continuously for a span of 14 years, newer images with suspected recent craters can be compared to older images to determine when the craters were formed. Since the craters were spotted in a HiRISE image from February 2006, but were not present in a Mars Global Surveyor image taken in May 2004, the impact occurred in that time frame.
The largest crater in the cluster is about in diameter with close to the area of a basketball court. As the meteorite traveled through the Martian atmosphere it probably broke up; hence a tight group of impact craters resulted.
Dark slope streaks have been seen for some time, and many ideas have been advanced to explain them. This research may have finally solved this mystery.


Hopkins Observatory

Hopkins Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts (USA). Constructed in 1838 by Albert Hopkins, the college claims that it is the oldest observatory in the United States.
The observatory dates to 1834 when Prof. Albert Hopkins traveled to England to obtain astronomical equipment. His students constructed the observatory 1836-1838 in the center of the quad. It was moved once in 1908 and again to its present location in 1961, where it now serves as a planetarium. Today's building still contains the original transit, regulator with mercury-compensated pendulum, and rule.
The museum's second director, Truman Henry Safford, was a calculating prodigy. In 1852 the firm of Alvan Clark (Cambridge, Massachusetts) built a 7" refracting telescope, which was restored for the observatory's sesquicentennial. In 1963 the planetarium projector was installed and named in memory of Willis Milham, professor of astronomy 1901-1942. The observatory's side rooms have become the Mehlin Museum of Astronomy in memory of Theodore Mehlin, professor of astronomy 1942-1971.


Estehlal Headquarters

Estehlal Headquarters (Persian: ستاد استهلال, romanised: Setade Estehlal) is an organization and command post based in Iran, that deploys groups to monitor the sky and identify the crescent of the moon on the first night(s) of the Lunar month, as per the Islamic tradition of Estehlal. This is undertaken to mark the first day of each month in the lunar calendar. Estehlal Headquarters was established by the decree of Iran's supreme leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, to regulate the practice of Estehlal. The Center consists of 150 groups with 700 members.
Similar headquarters.
Along with Iran's supreme leader, other Shia Marja' al-Taqlids have paid heed to the practice of Estehlal. Among them is Seyyed Ali Sistani, who established a related center in the city of Qom, and Mohammad Mohammadi Reishahri (the trusteeship of Shah Abdol-Azim Shrine), who established a similar center in Tehran.
Significance.
The significance of Estehlal pertains to the observation of the moon's crescent, referred to as Hilal. This practice is most notable at the annual beginning and end of Ramadan. Estehlal headquarters was established to clarify the existing disparities between similar organizations regarding the discernment of the beginning of lunar months; i.e. the Qamari months such as Ramadan, Shawwal, etc.


Gunn

Gunn may refer to:


Milwaukee Astronomical Society

The Milwaukee Astronomical Society (MAS) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization serving amateur astronomers in the greater Milwaukee area since 1932, making it one of the oldest continuously running astronomy clubs in the nation. The MAS operates an observatory, one of the largest amateur club observatories in the world. The current membership is 175.
History.
The MAS was formed in 1932 with an ad taken out in The Milwaukee Journal of September 18 announcing an organizational meeting the following Wednesday at the home of Luverne Armfield. As a result of that meeting, the Milwaukee Astronomical Society was formed with 18 charter members. The club had regular observing sessions in Armfield's backyard, where there was an emphasis on scientific observation programs, especially variable stars, meteors, and lunar occultations. Notable early members were Edward A. Halbach, Walter Scott Houston, and William Albrecht. Growth would continue month by month and by the end of 1933, there would be 130 members.
In January 1934 a member, M.J.W. Phillips offered an acre of land for the establishment of an observatory outside Milwaukee in the Town of New Berlin. The land bordered a quiet road which would one day be named Observatory Road. The next month, the AAVSO offered the MAS a 13-inch plate glass mirror which they could use as long as the club pursued the study of variable stars. A telescope for that mirror was completed in October, 1934 and was installed in Armfield's backyard since the remote observatory was not yet established.
In 1935, Luverne Armfield along with J. Wesley Simpson, Director of the Missouri-Southern Illinois Observers (MSIO), formed a national organization, the American Amateur Astronomers Association (AAAA). It was a confederation of local societies modeled after the British Astronomical Association with its own publication, "Amateur Astronomy" ("AA"). Initial members were the MAS, MSIO, and the Madison Astronomical Society. The individual clubs consolidated their own newsletters into "AA" and traded information on scientific observing programs and eventually observatories and telescope making. It grew to 15 societies from throughout the United States, but folded in late 1938 when the publication of "AA" stopped.
Development of the Milwaukee Astronomical Society Observatory began in 1936 with the installation of an 8-inch, f/15 reflector in a roll-away shed. In 1937, construction began on a domed observatory. It was completed in March 1938 and the 13-inch telescope was installed. The observatory was formally dedicated in June.
With the donation of a 12.5" f/7.4 Newtonian reflector by member Ralph Buckstaff, in 1949 another domed observatory was constructed to house that instrument. A Quonset Hut was obtained through the Milwaukee Public Museum in 1955 which has served as the meeting/lecture hall ever since. In 1963 two additional acres of adjacent land were added. The following year the Armfield building was extended for the addition of 2 restrooms and a darkroom.
Under the directorship of Edward Halbach, the MAS joined Operation Moonwatch (aka Project Moonwatch) as another way for the club to make useful scientific contributions. The highlight of the program came in the early morning of September 5, 1962, when members Gale Highsmith, Leonard Schaefer, and Raymond Zit observed the re-entry of Sputnik 4, which allowed the recovery of some of the pieces which fell in and around Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
In 1965 the MAS started a program of lunar grazing occultations. Observers were stationed along a 2-mile North-South line at 10th of a mile intervals for the timings. Because of largely inadequate telescopic equipment, from 1970–1974, the MAS designed and built 12 "portascopes," which were 10 inch f/5.6 reflectors on a fixed fork mount. Besides the grazes, they were used for general use, especially during the Open House nights. They also became the main instrumentation for the eclipsing binary program. The design won an award from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
In 1980, under the direction of Gerry Samolyk, construction began for another domed observatory to house a 26-inch reflector with a promise that a 22-foot dome would be donated by Delco. When that fell thru, the MAS was forced to build the dome which was done in place.
Observatory.
The Milwaukee Astronomical Society Observatory comprises at 18850 W Observatory Rd, in New Berlin, WI. The site currently has 9 observatories: 4 domed; 4 with a roll-off roof; and 1 flip-top. Viewing and imaging celestial objects is a major focus.
Membership.
Membership in the MAS is open to anyone interested in astronomy without any age restrictions. Membership types are Family, Individual, and Student (under the age of 18).
Meetings.
Meetings are held at the MAS Observatory in the Quonset Meeting Hall. The Board of Directors meets monthly, while membership meetings run from September through May. A summer picnic is held at the observatory, as well as a December Christmas party, both for members only.
Events.
The MAS holds a series of Open House nights at their observatory for the general public during the late Spring until early Fall.
Publications.
The MAS publishes a monthly newsletter called the "Focal Point".
Associated Organizations.
The MAS is affiliated with the Astronomical League and the Night Sky Network.


Gliese 682 c

Gliese 682 c was an exoplanet candidate believed to orbit the red dwarf Gliese 682. It is a super-Earth.
The planet has a mass of 4.4 ME and a radius of ~1.5 RE if rocky. Gliese 682 c was one of four planets discovered by researchers at the University of Hertfordshire and was discovered on March 4, 2014. The planet, at discovery, was the second-closest known planet in the so-called Goldilocks zone, at 17 light years.
It orbits Gliese 682 at 0.176AU, in a nearly circular orbit each 57.3 days.
The study in 2020 did not confirm the existence of Gliese 682 c, attributing radial velocity signal to the stellar activity instead.


C. H. Mullan

Charles Heron Mullan CBE DL (17 February 1912 – 26 October 1996), known as C. H. Mullan, was a judge and unionist politician in Northern Ireland.
Mullan studied at Rossall School, then read law at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1934. He joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1937 and was called up on the outbreak of World War II, soon becoming a lieutenant. He served on and HMS "Lewes" before becoming a naval liaison officer with the Royal Norwegian Navy.
At the 1945 Northern Ireland general election, Mullan unsuccessfully contested South Down for the Ulster Unionist Party. However, he was elected to the Westminster Parliament at the 1946 Down by-election. He then became a member of the Ulster Unionist Council. In 1948, he qualified as a solicitor. He was also promoted to Lieutenant Commander.
The Down was abolished in 1950, and Mullan did not stand for an alternative seat. In 1951, he left the Royal Navy. He remained a member of the Ulster Unionist Council until 1960, when he became a magistrate. In 1974, he served as Deputy Lieutenant of County Down, and in 1979 he was appointed a CBE.


Raymond M. Patterson

Raymond Murray Patterson (1898 - 1984) was an Oxford educated writer and explorer of the Canadian northwest.
Life and career.
"R.M. Patterson is recognized by many as one of the finest writers on the Canadian wilderness. While his writing skills earned him a wide and appreciative audience, he was more than a skilled wordsmith. He was also a careful and sympathetic observer, an intrepid explorer and a meticulous historian. Orville Prescott, in the New York Times, described his "Dangerous River" as "a modest book which betrays no indication that Mr. Patterson realizes what a remarkable man he is.” It is through his autobiographical writings, a blended mix of history, adventure and vivid description, that we can appreciate this remarkable individual. He published five books over a span of 14 years: "Dangerous River" (1954), "Buffalo Head" (1961), "Far Pastures" (1963), "Trail to the Interior" (1966) and "Finlay’s River" (1968)."
Patterson was born in England in 1898. He was educated at Rossall School and later attended Oxford University, where he trained for a career at the Bank of England. He served in World War I as an artillery officer until he was captured, and he remained a POW until the end of the War.
In 1924, longing for adventure, Patterson went to Canada where he obtained a homestead on the Peace River. In 1927 he explored the Nahanni River in a canoe. Many years later, he wrote his most famous book "Dangerous River", about his two trips into the Nahanni River Valley during the late 1920s.
Patterson married Marigold Portman in 1929, the same year he sold his homestead and moved to Buck Spring Ranch near Cochrane, Alberta. From this location, for the next four years, he completed a series of explorations throughout the region. Of particular note was his exploration of the Highwood River, Highwood Pass and the Lower and Upper Kananaskis Lakes region.
In 1933 he purchased the Buffalo Head Ranch in the Highwood Valley from George Pocaterra. From this location, between 1933 and 1945 he explored the Highwood and Elk Valley region. In 1945, aggrieved over the opening of a road into the Highwood Valley and the aftermath of a 1936 fire, he sold the ranch and resettled to Victoria, British Columbia. Over the next twenty-five years he wrote a series of articles for "Blackwood's Magazine" and "The Beaver" and five books about his explorations and adventures. He died in 1984.


Walter Ferreri

Walter Ferreri (born 1948), originally from Buddusò in Sardinia, is an astronomer at the Italian Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino, science writer and discoverer of minor planets.
He is a member of the "Division III Commission 20 Positions & Motions of Minor Planets, Comets & Satellites" and the "Division III Planetary Systems Sciences" at the IAU. He is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 15 numbered minor planets he made at the La Silla Observatory site in Chile between 1984 and 1988.
The outer main-belt asteroid 3308 Ferreri, discovered by astronomers Henri Debehogne and Giovanni de Sanctis, is named after him for his contributions for and popularization of astronomy. Naming citation was published on 14 April 1987 ().


Aomawa Shields

Aomawa L. Shields is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine. Her research is focused on exploring the climate and habitability of small exoplanets, using data from observatories including NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Shields was a 2015 TED Fellow, and is active in science communication and outreach. She develops interactive workshops to encourage self-esteem and teach about astronomy, combines her training in theater and her career in astronomy.
Early life and education.
Shields describes watching the movie "Space Camp" at age 12 as sparking the question "Are We Alone?" Shields attended Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1993. As a student there, she and others interested in physics often rose early in the morning to look at Jupiter's moons. From Exeter, Shields attended MIT, gaining a degree in Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. While she began a PhD in physics, she deferred and attended UCLA for an MFA in acting. She acted for a while, including a part in the 2005 film, Nine Lives.
However, she still felt the pull from space and science. As a day job, Shields worked at Caltech on the helpdesk operator for the Spitzer Space Telescope. Conversations on this job led her to audition and ultimately co-host for a TV Show called Wired Science, run by PBS and Wired Magazine. After exploring future careers both in science-TV hosting and interests in astronaut training, Shields realized that she would need a PhD for further growth. After an eleven-year break from her undergraduate, she attended the University of Washington, receiving a masters in 2011 and then a PhD in 2014 in Astronomy and Astrobiology. She was advised by Victoria Meadows and Cecilia Bitz, and her dissertation was titled, "The Effect of Star-Planet Interactions on Planetary Climate."
Career and research.
After receiving her PhD, Shields received an NSF Postdoctoral fellowship to work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In 2016, she was awarded the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professorship at UC Irvine. Shields current research focuses on understanding the habitability of small, Earth-sized planets orbiting low-mass stars. She takes climate models designed for modelling the climate and weather patterns on earth, and adapts and applies these to exoplanets. Her work includes analyzing a number of factors, including the distance and type of star a planet orbits, the eccentricity and obliquity of that orbit, the atmosphere of the planet, and the rate of rotation. By exploring the parameter space of what can affect a planet's climate, scientists can narrow the candidates for sustaining life.
Science communication and Outreach.
Shields has been involved in the public communication of science since before her PhD, through her role in Wired Science, as well as an appearance on the documentary, The Universe. Most recently, Shields has appeared in a NOVA episode.
Shields postdoctorate grant also funded her to develop an outreach program. Shields sought a way to encourage girls from non-traditional backgrounds to consider Astronomy as a career, using her unique background. She developed the workshop, Universe: More than Meets the Eye. This workshop is an interactive, metaphorical workshop geared toward middle school girls. It encourages them to think about how planets initial appearance may hide the actual suitability of habitation. At the same time, girls are encouraged to think more about themselves and how they see their peers.
Shields recently founded and leads Rising Stargirls, an outreach program that combines theater, writing, and visual arts with astronomy. The organization seeks to encourage girls from all different backgrounds and colors to be interested in astronomy.
Shields founded the Rising Stargirls program in 2015 to encourage middle school girls of all colours and backgrounds to explore the universe.
Essays and poems.
2006: Universe: The Sequel in the Anthology "She's such a geek : women write about science, technology, and other nerdy stuff"
2011: Nefertiti with a Calculator
Awards and honours.
2017-2020: NASA Habitable Worlds Program Grant
2016: Clare Boothe Luce Professorship
2016: The Origins Project Postdoctoral Award Lectureship
2015: Kavli Fellow
2015: TED Fellow
2014: NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship
2014: UC President's Postdoctoral Program Fellowship (2014-2015)


Edward Riddle

Edward Riddle (1788 – 31 March 1854) was an English mathematician and astronomer, known for "A Treatise on Navigation and Nautical Astronomy".
Life.
Riddle, a son of John Riddell, an agricultural labourer, and his wife Mary, was born at Troughend in Northumberland, where he received his early education. He afterwards attended a school nearby at West Woodburn, kept by Cuthbert Atkinson, father of the mathematician Henry Atkinson. At eighteen he became a schoolmaster, and soon opened his own school in Otterburn.
In 1807 he moved to Whitburn in Durham, and in 1810 began contributing to "The Ladies' Diary", winning in 1814 and 1819 the prizes given by the editor, Charles Hutton. It was through the latter that, in September 1814, Riddle was appointed master of Trinity House School, Newcastle-on-Tyne. While here he made an extensive series of observations to ascertain the longitude of the school and the trustworthiness of certain lunar observations.
In September 1821, again through Charles Hutton, he was appointed master of the upper mathematical school, Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich, where he remained till September 1851. His abilities as a nautical educator were highly appreciated by the admiralty. Riddle was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society; he contributed several papers to the "Transactions" of the Society, and from 1825 to 1851 was an active member of the council.
After his retirement his bust in marble, sculpted by William Theed, was publicly presented to him by a large number of friends ("Illustrated London News", 29 May 1852). He died from paralysis at Greenwich on 31 March 1854.
Family.
He married in 1814 Elizabeth Wallace. He was survived by his wife and two married daughters, Jane and Eliza, and by his son John Riddle (1816–1862), who was headmaster of Greenwich Hospital schools, and examiner in navigation to the Department of Science and Art.
Publications.
Riddle's most valuable work was "A Treatise on Navigation and Nautical Astronomy" (1824; 4th edition 1842; 8th edition 1864), forming a complete course of mathematics for sailors, and combining practice and theory in just proportion, which was not usually done at that time in books of this class; the tables of logarithms were issued separately in 1841 and 1851. He re-edited Hutton's "Mathematical Recreations" (1840, 1854).
He also published some sixteen papers on astronomical subjects, of which eight are in the "Philosophical Magazine", 1818–22, 1826, 1828, five in "Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society", 1829, 1830, 1833, 1840, 1842, and three in "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society", 1833–9, 1845–7. The most important are those on chronometers (in which the author shows how to find the rates without the help of a transit instrument) (cf. "Philosophical Magazine" 1818; "Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society" 1829); "On the Present State of Nautical Astronomy" ("Philosophical Magazine" 1821, and published separately); "On a Simplification of Ivory's Solution of the Doublealtitude Problem" ("Philosophical Magazine" 1822); and "On the Longitude of Madras" ("Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society" 1842), a paper containing valuable formulæ and remarks.
References.
Attribution


Kevin Hand

Kevin Hand is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at JPL.
He is also the founder of Cosmos Education and was its president until 2007.
He was working at NASA Ames when he was inspired to form Cosmos Education in 1999 after getting a grant from the Earth and Space Foundation to tour African schools to talk about how education relates to space research.
Education and career.
Hand studied psychology and physics as an undergraduate at Dartmouth.
He earned a master's degree at Stanford University in mechanical engineering while also working as a public policy research associate at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).
He chose the question of whether Europa's putative ocean could harbor life as his Geological & Environmental Sciences PhD dissertation topic, under the direction of Christopher Chyba,
earning the doctorate in 2007.
While a PhD student, he was chosen by James Cameron to take marine biology samples from hydrothermal vents in subsea expeditions to the mid-Atlantic ridge and East Pacific Rise. He was a featured scientist in Cameron's 2005 IMAX documentary, "Aliens of the Deep".
At a 2014 NASA panel discussion, Hand predicted that extraterrestrial life would be found within 20 years.
Hand published the book "Alien Oceans" in 2020.


Solar eclipse of February 7, 2073

A partial solar eclipse will occur on February 7, 2073. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth. A partial solar eclipse occurs in the polar regions of the Earth when the center of the Moon's shadow misses the Earth.


Lynnae Quick

Lynnae C. Quick, Ph.D. is an American planetary geophysicist and Ocean Worlds Planetary Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Her research centers on theoretical modeling of cryovolcanic processes on the icy moons and dwarf planets in our solar system as well as modeling volcanic activity on Venus and the Moon. Quick is a member of the Dawn, Europa Clipper, and Dragonfly Mission science teams. She is also a member of the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) Toolbox for Research and Exploration (TREX) team, and a member of NASA's Roadmaps to Ocean Worlds (ROW) team.
Education.
Quick was raised in Greensboro, North Carolina and graduated from James Benson Dudley High School. In high school, she became interested in astronomy after learning about the death of stars and the creation of supermassive black holes. Her high school physics teacher, John M. Brown, encouraged her interests, suggesting she pursue a post-graduate degree in astronomy or astrophysics, and connected her with astrophysicist Reva Williams who also encouraged her to pursue a Ph.D. Quick received her Bachelor of Science degree in physics from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, graduating summa cum laude. As an undergraduate, she was accepted into the Research Experiences for Undergraduates and NASA Academy programs and pursued research at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, respectively. There, she became interested in characterizing exoplanets and in planetary geology. After graduating, she followed this interest to an internship at the Applied Physics Laboratory, with encouragement from astrophysicist Beth A. Brown. There, she spent the summer studying Europa, one of Jupiter's moons.
Quick then attended The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she received her Master of Science degree in physics with a concentration in astrophysics. There, she pursued research at both the Applied Physics Laboratory, with mentorship from Louise Prockter, and at Goddard Space Flight Center. Quick received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from Johns Hopkins University in 2013. While there she was advised by igneous petrologist Bruce D. Marsh and was a Bromery Fellow and an APL Graduate Fellow. Quick specialized in planetary magmatism and volcanology, and her dissertation was entitled "Europa: Cryomagmatic Processes & Cryovolcanic Surface Expressions". As a Bromery Fellowship recipient, Quick had the opportunity to meet Randolph Bromery while pursuing her Ph.D.
Career.
After her completing her doctoral degree, Quick became a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center, studying volcanic domes on Venus and Europa and later expanding her research to include studying cryovolcanic activity on Saturn's moon Enceladus. During that time, she became a co-investigator on the Europa Imaging System, conducting analyses on the moon's geyser-like plumes and beginning her work as a team member on NASA's Europa Mission. Both Europa and Enceladus shoot water through their plumes, which is evidence of an ocean that lies below their icy surfaces. Quick's postdoctoral work centered on characterizing these geologic processes and understanding how they differ across planets and satellites.
Following her postdoctoral fellowship, Quick worked as a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. She then became a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, making her the first African American staff scientist in the Center's history. In May 2019, Quick joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center as an Ocean Worlds Planetary Scientist, specializing in the study of ocean worlds in our solar system and beyond. Quick continues her research program studying cryovolcanic activity and other geophysical processes on moons and planets in our own solar system and has expanded that work to study activity in extrasolar planetary systems. She has applied her expertise to characterizing the surface of the crater-laden dwarf planet Ceres, located in our solar system's asteroid belt. Ceres is thought to have once had a global ocean, which is hypothesized to have slowly frozen over time. Quick and her colleagues have found evidence to support this hypothesis, analyzing patterns of spots of varying brightness across Ceres surface, which correspond to pockets of ocean brine under the asteroid's surface that have been exposed by craters. Quick undertook this work as an Associate Scientist on NASA's Dawn Mission.
In 2020, Quick was the lead author on a NASA study that analyzed 53 terrestrial exoplanets that were all of a similar size to Earth. Her team mathematically modeled the geologic activity of these planets by estimating their internal heating rates as a proxy for potential volcanic activity. They compared these estimates, as well as considerations like density and temperature, to Earth as well as Enceladus and Europa, which are known to be ocean worlds, containing significant amounts of water beneath their surfaces. They found that all 53 exoplanets likely have volcanic activity and that more than a quarter of these exoplanets could be ocean worlds — and could thus potentially sustain extraterrestrial life. Future missions, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, can make more observations of these exoplanets to better understand their geologic activity and look for signs of life. In addition to continuing her work as a team member on NASA's "Europa Clipper" Mission, Quick is also a science team member and Lead for the Student and Early Career Investigator Program on NASA's Dragonfly Mission.
Personal.
Quick is a third generation alum of North Carolina A&T State University. She and her husband, Lamar, live near Washington, DC.


Karl Christian Bruhns

Karl Christian Bruhns (22 November 1830 – 25 July 1881) was a German astronomer.
Biography.
He was the son of a locksmith, and in 1851 went as locksmith and mechanic, first to Borsig, and then to Berlin with the firm of Siemens and Halske. In Berlin, he attracted the attention of Johann Encke, then director of the Berlin Observatory, by his remarkable powers as a computer. In 1852 Bruhns was appointed as assistant, and in 1854 as observer, in the Observatory, and in 1859 as instructor in the university. In 1860 he was called to the University of Leipzig as professor of astronomy and director of the new observatory to be constructed there, which, under his skilful direction, grew into one of the finest structures of its kind in Europe.
He is known as the discoverer of five comets, an able computer of cometary and planetary orbits, and for his important work in geodesy in connection with the European triangulation.


Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth

The ICG is a research institute at the University of Portsmouth devoted to topics in cosmology, galaxy evolution and gravitation. It has nearly 50 staff, post-docs and students working on subjects from inflation in the early Universe to understanding the stellar populations in galaxies.
Research at the Institute is supported by grants from STFC (the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council), the Royal Society and the European Union.
History.
The Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, or ICG, was established as an independent research department by the University of Portsmouth in January 2002. It was formed from members of the Relativity and Cosmology Group that had been set up by Prof David Matravers, head of the School of Mathematical Studies at the University of Portsmouth, following the arrival of Roy Maartens as a lecturer in 1994. David Wands joined the group as a research fellow in 1996.
The group won their first major research grant from PPARC (the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council) in 1998 to study the evolution of cosmological structure. In the UK Research Assessment Exercise in 2001 (RAE2001) research submitted by the group was awarded a grade 5, recognising the international excellence of their work in applied mathematics, and leading to the establishment of the ICG the next year. Bob Nichol joined the ICG from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh) in 2004 initiating a research programme in observational cosmology.
In the 2008 UK government Research Assessment Exercise (RAE2008), 75% of the ICG research was judged to be "Internationally Excellent" or better (3* or 4* status, with 4* being the highest). This ranking places the ICG in the top 6 Applied Maths groups in the UK.
In 2009 the Institute moved from offices in Mercantile House to purpose-built rooms for nearly 50 researchers on the top floor of the Dennis Sciama Building. The building was officially opened by the Astronomer Royal, and former student of Dennis Sciama, Prof Martin Rees.
Roy Maartens was the director of the ICG from January 2002 until October 2010 when he took up a Square Kilometre Array research chair at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, dividing his time between Portsmouth (30%) and Cape Town (70%). Since October 2010 the directors of the ICG are Bob Nichol and David Wands.
Resources.
The ICG is a member of the following projects:
In addition, the University of Portsmouth is home to the SCIAMA supercomputer


Erik Ian Asphaug

Erik Ian Asphaug (born October 19, 1961 in Oslo, Norway) is a Norwegian American planetary science professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at University of Arizona. Asphaug received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and English from Rice University and his PhD in planetary science from the University of Arizona.
Until 2012, Asphaug served as a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
The 1998 recipient of the Harold C. Urey Prize from the American Astronomical Society, Asphaug is at the forefront of scientists studying the "rubble pile" composition of most asteroids and the implications of such composition on efforts to divert asteroids from striking the Earth. Asphaug has also worked with Urey Prize winner Robin M. Canup to develop new theories on how the Moon was formed. Recently he has studied the genesis of diverse small planets and asteroids in the aftermath of collisions between similar-sized planetoids during the middle to late stages of terrestrial planet formation.
Asphaug was involved in NASA's Galileo and LCROSS missions. He is currently a principal advocate of a mission strategy to obtain a medical-like scan of the detailed interior structure of a Jupiter-family comet, which would reveal its origin, evolution and structure using techniques of 3D radar imaging and tomography.
Asteroid 7939 Asphaug was named in his honor.
Asphaug is an Eagle Scout.


Lunar north pole

The lunar north pole is the point in the Northern Hemisphere of the Moon where the lunar axis of rotation meets its surface.
The lunar North Pole is the northernmost point on the Moon, lying diametrically opposite the lunar south pole. It defines latitude 90° North. At the lunar north pole all directions point south; all lines of longitude converge there, so its longitude can be defined as any degree value.
Craters.
Notable craters in the lunar north polar region (between 60° North latitude and the North pole) include: Avogadro, Bel'kovich, Brianchon, Emden, Gamow, Goldschmidt, Hermite, J. Herschel, Meton, Nansen, Pascal, Petermann, Philolaus, Plaskett, Pythagoras, Rozhdestvenskiy, Schwarzschild, Seares, Sommerfeld, Stebbins, Sylvester, Thales, Van't Hoff, W. Bond
Exploration.
The Astrobotic Technology Icebreaker mission was a mission concept planned for a 2015 mission, then delayed to 2016, and then cancelled. It was meant as a competition to win the
Google Lunar X Prize.


Lunar meteorite

A lunar meteorite is a meteorite that is known to have originated on the Moon. A meteorite hitting the Moon is normally classified as a transient lunar phenomenon.
Discovery.
In January 1982, John Schutt, leading an expedition in Antarctica for the ANSMET program, found a meteorite that he recognized to be unusual. Shortly thereafter, the meteorite now called Allan Hills 81005 was sent to Washington, DC, where Smithsonian Institution geochemist Brian Mason recognized that the sample was unlike any other known meteorite and resembled some rocks brought back from the Moon by the Apollo program. Several years later, Japanese scientists recognized that they had also collected a lunar meteorite, Yamato 791197, during the 1979 field season in Antarctica. , 371 lunar meteorites have been discovered, perhaps representing more than 30 separate meteorite falls (i.e., many of the stones are "paired" fragments of the same meteoroid). The total mass is more than . All lunar meteorites have been found in deserts; most have been found in Antarctica, northern Africa, and the Sultanate of Oman. None have yet been found in North America, South America, or Europe.
Lunar origin is established by comparing the mineralogy, the chemical composition, and the isotopic composition between meteorites and samples from the Moon collected by Apollo missions.
Transfer to Earth.
Most lunar meteorites are launched from the Moon by impacts making lunar craters of a few kilometers in diameter or less. No source crater of lunar meteorites has been positively identified, although there is speculation that the highly anomalous lunar meteorite Sayh al Uhaymir 169 derives from the Lalande impact crater on the lunar nearside.
Cosmic-ray exposure history established with noble-gas measurements have shown that all lunar meteorites were ejected from the Moon in the past 20 million years. Most left the Moon in the past 100,000 years. After leaving the Moon, most lunar meteoroids go into orbit around Earth and eventually succumb to Earth's gravity. Some meteoroids ejected from the Moon get launched into orbits around the Sun. These meteoroids remain in space longer, but eventually intersect the Earth's orbit and land.
Scientific relevance.
All six of the Apollo missions on which samples were collected landed in the central nearside of the Moon, an area that has subsequently been shown to be geochemically anomalous by the Lunar Prospector mission. In contrast, the numerous lunar meteorites are random samples of the Moon and consequently provide a more representative sampling of the lunar surface than the Apollo samples. Half the lunar meteorites, for example, likely sample material from the farside of the Moon.
At the time the first meteorite from the Moon was discovered in 1982, there was speculation that some other unusual meteorites that had been found previously originated from Mars. The positive identification of lunar meteorites on Earth supported the hypothesis that meteoroid impacts on Mars could eject rocks from that planet. There are also speculations about the possibility of finding "Earth meteorites" on the surface of the Moon. This would be very interesting because in this case stones from Earth older than 3.9 billion years, which are destroyed on Earth by various geological processes, may have survived on the Moon. Thus some scientists propose new missions to the Moon to search for ancient rocks from Earth.
Observation history.
About one in every thousand newly discovered meteorites is a lunar meteorite, whereas the vast majority of meteorites are from the asteroid belt. In the early 19th century most scientists believed that all meteorites falling towards the Earth were from the Moon. Although today supported only by a minority of researchers, there are also theories that tektites are from the Moon and should therefore also be regarded as lunar meteorites. However, most scientists regard such theories as outdated.
Private ownership.
Lunar meteorites collected in Africa and Oman are, for all practical purposes, the only source of moon rocks available for private ownership. This is because all rocks collected during the Apollo moon-landing program are property of the United States government or of other nations to which the U.S. conveyed them as gifts. Similarly, all lunar meteorites collected by the U.S. and Japanese Antarctic programs are, by treaty, held by those governments for research and education purposes only. Although there is no U.S. law specifically against the ownership of Apollo moonrocks, none has ever been (or is likely to ever be) given or sold by the U.S. government to private citizens. Even in the cases of plaques containing genuine Apollo moonrocks given in 2004 to astronauts and Walter Cronkite, NASA retained ownership of the rocks themselves. Most of the moonrocks collected by the Luna 16 probe are also unavailable for private ownership, although three tiny samples were sold at auction for $442,500 in 1993.


The Sunlight League

The Sunlight League was founded in England in 1924 by C. W. Saleeby. Its aim was: "to point to the light of day, to advocate its use for the cure of disease—"helio-therapy"; and, immeasurably better, for preventive medicine and constructive health, the building of whole and happy bodies from the cradle and before it, which we may call helio-hygiene".
The League was closely associated with The Men's Dress Reform Party. It was also an early campaigner against air pollution from coal smoke. Although the Sunlight League did not overtly promote nudism Saleeby did confide to friends that the idea behind it was to stimulate the nudist movement.
The League was dissolved in 1940, following the death of Saleeby. In modern times, there is concern about the risk of skin cancer from excessive exposure to sunlight. However, The Sunlight League was recalled in a 1996 article in The Independent newspaper, which argued that fear of sunlight may have gone too far.
New Zealand.
Cora Wilding founded a Sunlight League in New Zealand in 1930. It is not known whether this was connected with the League in England.


Timeline of solar astronomy

Timeline of solar astronomy


Whipple

Whipple may refer to:


Aymar de la Baume Pluvinel

Count Aymar Eugène de la Baume Pluvinel (6 November 1860 – 18 July 1938) was a French astronomer and professor in the "Grandes écoles SupOptique" ("École supérieure d'optique"). He belonged to an old noble family, whose most famous descendant was Antoine de Pluvinel, King Louis XIII's master of equitation.
He was a pioneer of astrophotography on the French expedition to Haiti to observe the transit of Venus in 1882 and on several French expeditions to observer solar eclipses.
He was a member of the Société Astronomique de France from 1889 and its president from 1913 to 1919. He was awarded the Valz Prize in 1909 by the French Academy of Sciences. In 1923, he received the Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society.


Frances Bagenal

Frances "Fran" Bagenal (born 1954) is a Professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder and a researcher in the fields of space plasmas and planetary magnetospheres.
Career.
Bagenal has worked on a number of planetary science missions including the Voyager Plasma Science (PLS) experiment, "Galileo", Deep Space 1, "New Horizons" mission to Pluto, and the "Juno" mission to Jupiter. Usually in her work on different missions, she is a member of the science team as a plasma scientist. Bagenal chairs NASA's Outer Planet Assessment Group that provides input from the scientific community on exploration of the outer Solar System.
She appeared in "The Farthest", a 2017 documentary on the Voyager program, and in multiple television documentaries including the NOVA 2019 miniseries The Planets.


Living Reviews in Solar Physics

Living Reviews in Solar Physics is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal publishing reviews on all areas of solar and heliospheric physics. It was founded and published at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research from 2004-2015. After it was sold by the Max Planck Society in June 2015, it is now published by the academic publisher Springer Science+Business Media.
The articles in "Living Reviews" provide critical reviews of the current state of research in the fields they cover. Articles also offer annotated insights into the key literature and describe other available resources. "Living Reviews" is unique in maintaining a suite of high-quality reviews, which are kept up-to-date by the authors through regularly adding the latest developments and research findings. This is the meaning of the word "living" in the journal's title.
It is central to the concept of Living Reviews in Solar Physics that it be a fully electronic journal, this allows to update its articles regularly and with minimum effort. The journal's reference database provides indexes of useful resources. Thus, in addition to a review journal, "Living Reviews" can be used by its readers as a database, an encyclopedia, or a resource letter. Living Reviews in Solar Physics has become a valuable tool for the scientific community and one of the first places a researcher looks for information about current work in solar and heliospheric physics.


Platteville Atmospheric Observatory

The Platteville Atmospheric Observatory located near Platteville, Colorado was one of the first major ionospheric heaters in the world. Operating from 1968 through 1984, it expanded knowledge of ionospheric processes greatly. The observatory continues operation, but now focuses on wind profiling. The first studies were made of HF heater induced airglow, heater-induced spread F, wide band heater-induced absorption, and heater created field-aligned ionization.


Meteorite fall statistics

Meteorite fall statistics are frequently used by planetary scientists to approximate the true flux of meteorites on Earth. Meteorite falls are those meteorites that are collected soon after being witnessed to fall, whereas meteorite finds are discovered at a later time. Although there are 30 times as much finds than falls, their raw distribution of types does not accurately reflect what falls to Earth. The reasons for this include the following:
There have been many attempts to correct statistical analyses of meteorite finds for some of these effects, especially to estimate the frequency with which rare meteorite types fall. For example, there are over 100 known lunar meteorite finds, but none has ever been observed to fall. However, for abundant types, meteorite fall statistics are generally preferred.
These statistics are current through June 9, 2012.
Statistics by material.
For most meteorite falls, even those that occurred long ago or for which material has never received complete scientific characterization, it is known whether the object was a stone, stony iron, or iron meteorite. Here are the numbers and percentages of each type, based on literature data.
Statistics by major category.
The traditional way of subdividing meteorites (see Meteorites classification) is into irons, stony-irons, and two major groups of stony meteorites, chondrites and achondrites. For some of the less-studied stony meteorite falls, it is not known whether the object is chondritic; thus the number of meteorites that can be so grouped is 4% lower than shown above. These numbers are shown in the next table. One could make a slight correction for the undercounting of stony meteorites (e.g., the percentage of irons would decrease by a 0.2%), but this was not done.
Statistics by meteorite group.
Probably the most useful statistical breakdown of meteorite falls is by group, which is the fundamental way that meteorites are classified. About 5% of the meteorites in the table just above have not been sufficiently classified to allow them to be put into such groups. Again, a small adjustment could be made to the percentages to correct for this effect, but it does not greatly change the results. Note that a number of meteorite groups are only represented by a small number of falls; the percentages of falls belonging to these groups have a large uncertainty.


Segue 3

Segue 3 is a faint star cluster of the Milky Way galaxy discovered in 2010 in the data obtained by Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It is located in the Pegasus constellation at the distance of about 17 kpc from the Sun and moves away from it with the velocity of .
Segue 3 is extremely faint—its visible absolute magnitude is estimated at −1.2 or even at about , which means that the cluster is only 100 to 250 times brighter than the Sun. Its small radius—of about 2.1 pc—is typical for the galactic globular clusters. The cluster has a slightly flattened shape and shows some evidence of the tidal disruption.
The metallicity of Segue's 3 stars is , which means that they contain 70 times less heavy elements than the Sun. These stars are more than 12 billion year old. Segue 3 appears to be one of the faintest globular clusters of the Milky Way.


Tetrad (astronomy)

In astronomy, a tetrad is a set of four total lunar eclipses within two consecutive years.


Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen

Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen is a professor of astrophysics in the department of Space, Earth and Environment at Chalmers University of Technology. Her research concerns galaxy formation and evolution.
She is a member of the Swedish Young Academy and the International Astronomical Union (IAU)
Early life and education.
Knudsen studied at the University of Copenhagen, and at the University of Leiden where she received a PhD.
Research and career.
Kirsten Knudsen's research focuses particularly on star forming galaxies at cosmological distances. She uses large, modern telescopes such as ALMA, VLT, IRAM PdBI, and VLA to study the properties of redshift z=2-7 (lensed) submillimeter galaxies and quasar host galaxies.


Reshmi Mukherjee

Reshmi Mukherjee is an Indian-American astrophysicist known for her research on gamma-ray astronomy and blazars, involving work based on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, VERITAS, Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET), and Cherenkov Telescope Array collaborations. She is Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Barnard College.
Education and career.
Mukherjee writes that she was inspired to go into physics by her father, who encouraged her in it despite his own lack of a college education.
She graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics from Presidency College, at the time part of the University of Calcutta, in 1986, and earned a master's degree there in 1989. She went to Columbia University for graduate study, under the supervision of Elena Aprile, and completed her Ph.D. in physics at Columbia in 1993.
After postdoctoral research with the EGRET project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and a visiting position at McGill University, she joined the Barnard faculty in 1997.
Mukherjee teaching includes introducing undergraduates to research by bringing them on visits to the ground-based observatories she works with and by including them in the analysis of data from the observatories.
As a faculty member at Barnard, she also teaches physics at Columbia University.
Recognition.
Mukherjee was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2017, after a nomination from the APS Division of Astrophysics, "for advancing multifrequency strategies for the identification of gamma-ray sources and contributing significant leadership in blazar studies between the GeV and TeV gamma-ray bands".


Ethanimine

Ethanimine is an organonitrogen compound classified as an imine. It is formed by reacting acetaldehyde and ammonia but rapidly polymerizes to acetaldehyde ammonia trimer. It has two tautomers: ethanimine and aminoethylene, an amine. Ethanimine places the extra hydrogen on the carbon, while aminoethylene has it on the nitrogen atom.
Occurrence.
It is not well known terrestrially, but has been detected in abundance towards Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2), a dense interstellar cloud in between stars towards the galactic center of the Milky Way. The distance between the Sgr B2 cloud and center of galaxy is 100 pc (1 pc = 3.26 ly). Ethanimine is mainly found in hot cores of ISM clouds; in case of Sgr B2, the region would be the Sgr B2 N and Sgr B2 M. Radio telescopes such as the Green Bank Observatory's Green Bank Telescope and those operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (measuring radio frequency light lambda ranging from 1–300 GHz) are able to detect organic molecules such as ethanimines because its internal energy transition, more specifically the rotational transition is within the radio frequency of 14085 MHz = 140.8 GHz.


Minggatu

Minggatu (Mongolian script: ; , c.1692-c. 1763), full name Sharavyn Myangat () was a Mongolian astronomer, mathematician, and topographic scientist at the Qing court. His courtesy name was Jing An (静安).
Minggatu was born in Plain White Banner (now Plain and Bordered White Banner, Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia) of the Qing Empire. He was of the Sharaid clan. His name first appeared in official Chinese records in 1713, among the Kangxi Emperor's retinue, as a "shengyuan" (state-subsidized student) of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau. He worked there at a time when Jesuit missionaries were in charge of calendar reforms. He also participated in the work of compiling and editing three very important books in astronomy and joined the team of China's area measurement.
From 1724 up to 1759, he worked at the Imperial Observatory. He participated in drafting and editing the calendar and the study of the armillary sphere.
His seminal work "The Quick Method for Obtaining the Precise Ratio of Division of a Circle" (), which was completed after his death by his son Mingshin, and students (among them his most gifted pupil Chen Jihin and an intendant in the minister of finance, Zhang), was a significant contribution to the development of mathematics in China.
He was the first person in China who calculated infinite series and obtained more than 10 formulae. In the 1730s, he first established and used what was later to be known as Catalan numbers. The Jesuit missionaries' influence can be seen by many traces of European mathematics in his works, including the use of Euclidean notions of continuous proportions, series addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, series reversion, and the binomial theorem. Minggatu's work is remarkable in that expansions in series, trigonometric and logarithmic were apprehended algebraically and inductively without the aid of differential and integral calculus.
In 1742 he participated in the revision of the "Compendium of Observational and Computational Astronomy". In 1756, he participated in the surveying of the Dzungar Khanate (renamed Xinjiang), which was incorporated into the Qing Empire by the Qianlong Emperor. It was due to his geographical surveys in Xinjiang that the Complete Atlas of the Empire (the first atlas of China drawn with scientific methods) was finished.
From 1760-1763, shortly before his death, he was administrator of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau.
Later recognition.
In 1910, Japanese mathematician Yoshio Mikami mentioned that Minggatu was the first Chinese who had ever entered into the field of analytical research methods.
Mathematician Dr. P. J. Larcombe of Derby University published 7 papers on Minggatu and his work in 1999, including the stimulus of Jesuit missionary, engineer, mathematician and geographer Pierre Jartoux, who brought three infinite series to China early in the 1700s.
On May 26, 2002, the minor planet 28242 was named after Minggatu as 28242 Mingantu. The nomination ceremony and traditional meeting were held in Minggatu's hometown in August 2002. More than 500 delegates and 20,000 local residents gathered together to celebrate and a conference on "The Science Contribution of Ming Antu" was held. The Chinese government named Ming’s hometown as "Ming Antu Town".


Marc Buie

Marc William Buie (; born 1958) is an American astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets who works at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado in the Space Science Department. Formerly he worked at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission Scientist for the B612 Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impact events.
Early life and education.
Buie grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and received his B.Sc. in physics from Louisiana State University in 1980. He then switched fields and earned his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1984. Buie was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii from 1985 to 1988. From 1988 to 1991, he worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute where he played a key role in the planning and scheduling of the first planetary observations ever made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Buie joined the staff at Lowell Observatory in 1991.
Career.
Since 1983, Pluto has been a central theme of research done by Buie, who has published over 85 scientific papers and journal articles. His first result was to prove that the methane visible on Pluto was on its surface and not part of its atmosphere. Since then he has worked on albedo maps of the surface, composition maps of Pluto and Charon, refinement of the orbits of Charon in addition to the much more recently discovered satellites, measurements of the structure of the atmosphere, and other measurements of the properties of the surfaces of Pluto and Charon—just to name a few. He is also one of the co-discoverers of Pluto's moons, Nix and Hydra.
He has been working with the Deep Ecliptic Survey team who have been responsible for the discovery of over 1,000 Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). Beyond the work of just locating these objects, he additionally seeks to develop a better picture of the structure and nature of them. A spin-off project from this endeavor was his participation in the project to locate a Kuiper belt object that was within the range of NASA's New Horizons mission after it passed by Pluto. This search led to the discovery of over 50 new KBOs, including 486958 Arrokoth, the object that New Horizons would eventually perform a close fly-by of on 1 January 2019. In the lead up to the fly-by, Buie also led a successful occultation campaign in Argentina and South Africa to observe Arrokoth as it passed in front of a distant star to refine the estimates of its size, shape, and orbit. Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science at the time, called the effort "the most historic occultation on the face of the Earth."
In addition to his research into all aspects of Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Buie also works on studying transitional objects like 2060 Chiron and 5145 Pholus and occasionally comets, such as the recent Deep impact mission that went to Comet Tempel 1. In an effort closer to home, he also studies near-Earth asteroids to try to understand more about these potentially dangerous solar system neighbors. Most of these research efforts involve the use of Lowell Observatory telescopes in addition to occasional use of the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. He is also active in the development of state-of-the-art astronomical instrumentation having just completed the construction of an infrared imaging spectrograph, Mimir, in collaboration with Dan Clemens of Boston University.
Buie is a member of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and its Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the International Astronomical Union (IAU), and the International Dark-Sky Association.
The inner main-belt asteroid 7553 Buie was named in the astronomer's honor on 28 July 1999 (). He is also profiled as part of an article on Pluto in "Air & Space Smithsonian" magazine.


James Trotter (British Army officer)

Major-General Sir James Keith Trotter (24 July 1849 – 30 September 1940) was a senior British Army officer.
Military career.
Educated at Rossall School, Durham School and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, Trotter was commissioned into the Royal Artillery on 7 January 1870. He became Deputy Director of Mobilisation and Military Intelligence at the War Office in 1903, Brigadier in charge of Administration at Western Command in 1905 and commander of the troops in Sierra Leone in September 1906. He went on to be General Officer Commanding the South Coast Defences in April 1908 and retired from the army in July 1911 before taking up a civilian role in the Secret Intelligence Service where he set up G (German) Branch to expose subversion among trade unionists and pacifists.
He was recalled to become General Officer Commanding 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division in February 1915 during the First World War. He handed over his command and returned to retirement in December 1915.
Family.
In 1878 he married Alice Crow; they had one son.


Lunar limb

The lunar limb is the edge of the visible surface (disc) of the Moon as viewed from Earth. Libration of the Moon, with its irregular surface, leads to small changes in its profile; this complicates the task of precisely calculating eclipse times and durations. However, data from the mapping of the lunar surface allows astronomers to predict the lunar profile for any given time with a high degree of certainty. The irregularity of the lunar limb is the cause of Baily's beads, which are collimated rays of sunlight that shine through in some places while not in others during a solar eclipse.
The contrast of the lunar disc, brightly illuminated by direct sunlight, against a black night sky makes it a popular target when testing telescope (including binocular) optics.


Octavius Leigh-Clare

Octavius Leigh Leigh-Clare (6 July 1841 – 16 July 1912) was a British barrister and Conservative politician.
Originally known as Octavius Leigh Clare, he was the son of William Clare, a Liverpool banker, and his wife Elizabeth née Leigh. He was educated at Rossall School and St John's College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1864 with a BA in the mathematical tripos. Clare was called to bar at the Inner Temple in January 1866. Initially he practised as conveyancer and equity draftsman. He built up an expertise in mining law, which led to him being retained as counsel in a number of Lancashire mining cases. He was also the principal lawyer employed by the Manchester Ship Canal company. He was made a bencher in 1900, and became a member of the General Council of the Bar.
In 1868 he married Harriet Huson, who died in 1885. He was married for a second time in 1889 to Jane Maria Wigan. In the same year he assumed the additional surname of "Leigh".
He stood as Conservative candidate for the parliamentary constituency of Eccles at the 1892 general election, but was unsuccessful. Three years later another election was held, and Leigh-Clare was elected to serve as member of parliament for Eccles. In 1905 he was appointed as Vice Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. At the ensuing general election in 1906, he did not seek re-election.


Institute of Space and Planetary Astrophysics

The Institute of Space and Planetary Astrophysics, also known as by its abbreviation ISPA, is a premier and national research institute of the University of Karachi, engaging the theoretical and applied studies and research into topics pertaining to Astronomy, Astrophysics, Satellite Communication, Space Flight Dynamics, Atmospheric Science, Climatology, GIS & Remote Sensing and other related subjects. The institute has network of various mathematics and physics laboratories located in various universities of Pakistan, while it operates a single Karachi University Astrophysics Observatory.
History.
The institute was established by Karachi University's Department of Mathematics in 1994. It was established as an autonomous research institute with the idea for a space science astrophysics programme and an astronomical observatory was conceived right at the inception of the Karachi University. However, the trace of establishing such institute came in place in 1960, when Professor A.B.A Haleem, Professor of Political Science and Vice-Chancellor of the Karachi University, first obtained and procured the powerful astronomical telescope with relevant equipment from a West-German company. Known as Karachi University Astrophysics Observatory, an astronomical observatory was initiated under the administrative supervision of the Department of Mathematics of the Karachi University. Later in time, the Federal Government of Pakistan built a building to install the observatory which initially belonged to the Department of Mathematics. In 1994, the building and the observatory became a part of the ISPA with Prof. Dr. Jawaid Quamar as its first founding director.
Prof. Dr. Jawaid Quamar is credited for leading the institute at an academic and international level as he had attracted many students to do their research under his supervision and he also introduced new programmes in the relevant field in the country. The new metallic dome of the observatory was an evidence of Dr. Quamar's hard work and dedication.
Later, after the retirement of Dr. Quamar, Mr. M. Shahid Qureshi took charge of the institute in 2002. He regularized the academic programs at ISPA and lead the institute till 2010. Mr Qureshi earned his PhD from the same institute under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Nasiruddin Khan (of department of Mathematics, UOK). In Fact Dr. Qureshi was the third PhD of the institute, first being Prof. Dr. M. Ayub Khan Yousufzai, second Prof. Dr. M. Jawed Iqbal (the current Director of ISPA).
On June 4, 2015, a brief inaugural session took place at ISPA where, Prof. Dr. Jawaid Quamar inaugurate the ISPA Seminar Library in the memory of "Prof. Dr. Irshad Ahmed Khan Afridi", who was involved in the foundation of ISPA. The new name of ISPA seminar library (Dr. Irshad Ahmed Khan Afridi Seminar Library) was approved by the Syndicate of Karachi University.
Academic.
The ISPA offers undergraduate and graduate (even the doctoral level) programmes in particle physics, theoretical physics, astrophysics, plasma physics, and mathematics.


Vista Variables in the Via Lactea

VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea –The VVV Survey– is observing the Milky Way's bulge and southern disk in the near-infrared using the capabilities of the VISTA Telescope at Paranal, Chile.
The survey started in February 2010 and was completed in 2016. On 2015 the VVV Science Team applied to the second cycle of Public Surveys for VISTA as the VVV eXtended Survey –VVVX– and started observing the second semester of 2016, to be completed by 2020.
Goals.
The VVV Survey is a public infrared (IR) variability survey of the Milky Way bulge and an adjacent section of the mid-plane where star formation activity is high. To complete this survey it will take 1929 hours, covering 109 stars within an area of 520 square degrees, including 33 known globular clusters and around 350 open clusters. The final products will be: a deep IR atlas in 5 passbands and a catalogue of 106 variable stars. These will produce a 3-D map of the surveyed region (unlike single-epoch surveys that only give 2-D maps) using well-understood primary distance indicators such as RR Lyrae stars. It will yield important information on the ages of the stellar populations.
The observations will be combined with data from MACHO, OGLE, EROS, VST, SPITZER, HST, CHANDRA, INTEGRAL, and ALMA for a complete understanding of the variable sources in the inner Milky Way. Several important implications for the history of the Milky Way, for globular cluster evolution, for the population census of the bulge and center, and for pulsation theory would follow from this survey.