Today, The Grandma has been reading about William Lassell, the English astronomer, who discovered Umbriel and Ariel,on a day like today in 1851.
William Lassell (18 June 1799-5 October 1880) was an English merchant and astronomer,well-known for his improvements to the reflecting telescope and ensuing discoveries of four planetary satellites.
William Lassell was born in Bolton, Lancashire, on 18 June 1799. He received his early education in Bolton and later attended Rochdale Academy. After the death of his father, William Lassell was apprenticed to a merchant in Liverpool from 1814 to 1821. He later made his fortune as a beer brewer, which afforded him the means to pursue his passion for astronomy.
He built an observatory at his house Starfield in West Derby, a suburb of Liverpool. There he had a 610 mm aperture metal mirror reflector telescope, aka the two-foot telescope, for which he pioneered the use of an equatorial mount for easy tracking of objects as the Earth rotates. He ground and polished the mirror himself, using equipment he constructed. The observatory was later (1854) moved further out of Liverpool, to Bradstones.
In 1846, Lassell discovered Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle, using his self-built instrument.
In 1848, he independently co-discovered Hyperion, a moon of Saturn.
In 1851, he discovered Ariel and Umbriel, two moons of Uranus.
In 1855, he built a 1,200 mm telescope, which he installed in Malta because of the observing conditions that were better than in often-overcast England. While in Malta his astronomical observing assistant was Albert Marth. On his return to the UK after several years in Malta, he moved to Maidenhead and operated his 24-inch (610 mm) telescope in an observatory there. The telescope was dismantled and was eventually scrapped. The 24-inch telescope was later moved to Royal Observatory, Greenwich in the 1880s, but eventually dismantled.
Lassell was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS) from 1839, won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1849, and served as its president for two years starting in 1870.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1849 and won their Royal Medal in 1858. Lassell was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL). He was furthermore elected an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (HonFRSE) and of the Society of Sciences of Upsala, and received an honorary LL.D. degree from the University of Cambridge in 1874.
Lassell died in Maidenhead in 1880 and is buried at St. Luke's Church. Upon his death, he left a fortune of £80,000, roughly equivalent to £10,100,000 in 2023. His telescope was presented to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
The crater Lassell on the Moon, a crater on Mars, the asteroid 2636 Lassell and a ring of Neptune are named in his honour. At the University of Liverpool, the WilliamLassell prize is awarded to the student with the highest grades graduating the B.Sc. program in Physics with Astronomy each year.
Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closestfriends, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, wholoves Science and Astronomy, and they have talked about Luna 21, the Soviet space mission that was launched on a day like today in 1973.
Luna 21 (Ye-8 series) wasanunmanned space mission, and its spacecraft, of the Luna program, also called Lunik 21, in 1973.
The spacecraft landed on the Moonand deployed the second Soviet lunarrover, Lunokhod 2. The primaryobjectives of the mission were to collect images of the lunar surface, examine ambient light levels to determine the feasibility of astronomical observations from the Moon, perform laser ranging experiments from Earth, observe solar X-rays, measure local magnetic fields, and study mechanical properties of the lunar surface material.
Luna 21 carried the second successful Soviet lunar rover, Lunokhod 2, and was launched less than a month after the last Apollo lunar landing. The Proton-K/D launcher put the spacecraft into Earth parking orbit followed by translunar injection.
On 12 January 1973, Luna 21 was braked into a 90×100 km orbit about the Moon, at a 60° inclination. On 13 and 14 January, the perilune was lowered to 16 km altitude.
On 15 January after 40 orbits, the braking rocket was fired at 16 km altitude, and the craft went into free fall. At an altitude of 750 meters the main thrusters began firing, slowing the fall until a height of 22 meters was reached. At this point the main thrusters shut down and the secondary thrusters ignited, slowing the fall until the lander was 1.5 meters above the surface, where the engine was cut off. Landing occurred at 23:35 UT in Le Monger crater at 25.85° N, 30.45° E, between Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity) and the Taurus Mountains. The lander carried a bas-relief of Vladimir Lenin and the Soviet coat-of-arms.
Less than three hours later, at 01:14 UT on 16 January, the rover disembarked onto the lunar surface. The 840 kilogram Lunokhod 2 was an improved version of its predecessor and was equipped with a third TV camera, an improved eight-wheel traction system, and additional scientific instrumentation. By the end of its first lunar day, Lunokhod 2 had already traveled further than Lunokhod 1 in its entire operational life.
On 9 May, the rover inadvertently rolled into a crater and dust covered its solar panels and radiators, disrupting temperatures in the vehicle. Attempts to save the rover failed, and on 3 June, the Soviet news agency announced that its mission was over. Before last contact, the rover took 80,000 TV pictures and 86 panoramic photos and had performed hundreds of mechanical and chemical surveys of the soil.
The Soviets later revealed that during a conference on planetary exploration in Moscow, 29 January to 2 February 1973 (that is, after the landing of Luna 21), an American scientist had given photos of the lunar surface around the Luna 21 landing site to a Soviet engineer in charge of the Lunokhod 2 mission. These photos, taken prior to the Apollo 17 landing, were later used by the driver team to navigate the new rover on its mission on the Moon.
-Launch Date/Time: 1973-01-08 at 06:55:38 UTC.
-On-orbit dry mass: 4850 kg.
Luna 21 and Lunokhod 2, still on the Moon, were purchased by Richard Garriott in December 1993 at a Sotheby's auction in New York.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Joseph de Ca'th Lon.
Joseph loves Atronomy and they have been talking about Ranger9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes that was launched on a day like today in 1965.
Ranger 9 was a Lunar probe, launched in 1965 by NASA. It was designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact. The spacecraft carried six television vidicon cameras -two wide-angle (channel F, cameras A and B) and four narrow-angle (channel P)- to accomplish these objectives. The cameras were arranged in two separate chains, or channels, each self-contained with separate power supplies, timers, and transmitters so as to afford the greatest reliability and probability of obtaining high-quality television pictures. These images were broadcast live on television to millions of viewers across the United States. No other experiments were carried on the spacecraft.
Rangers 6, 7, 8, and 9 were the so-called Block 3 versions of the Rangerspacecraft. The spacecraft consisted of a hexagonal aluminium frame base 1.5 m across on which was mounted the propulsion and power units, topped by a truncated conical tower which held the TV cameras.
Two solar panel wings, each 739 mm wide by 1537 mm long, extended from opposite edges of the base with a full span of 4.6 m, and a pointable high-gain dish antenna was hinge mounted at one of the corners of the base away from the solar panels. A cylindrical quasiomnidirectional antenna was seated on top of the conical tower. The overall height of the spacecraft was 3.6 m.
Propulsion for the mid-course trajectory correction was provided by a 224-N thrust monopropellant hydrazine engine with four jet-vane thrust vectoring. Orientation and attitude control about three axes was enabled by 12 nitrogen gas jets coupled to a system of three gyroscopes, four primary Sun sensors, two secondary Sun sensors, and an Earth sensor.
Power was supplied by 9792 Si solar cells contained in the two solar panels, giving a total array area of 2.3 square meters and producing 200 W. Two 1,200 watt-hour batteries rated at 26.5 V with a capacity for 9 hours of operation provided power to each of the separate communication/TV camera chains. Two 1,000 watt-hour batteries stored power for spacecraft operations.
Communications were through the quasiomnidirectional low-gain antenna and the parabolic high-gain antenna. Transmitters aboard the spacecraft included a 60 W TV channel F at 959.52 MHz, a 60 W TV channel P at 960.05 MHz, and a 3 W transponder channel 8 at 960.58 MHz.
The telecommunications equipment converted the composite video signal from the camera transmitters into an RF signal for subsequent transmission through the spacecraft high-gain antenna. Sufficient video bandwidth was provided to allow for rapid framing sequences of both narrow and wide-angle television pictures.
The Atlas 204D and Agena B 6007 boosters performed nominally, injecting the Agena and Ranger 9 into an Earth parking orbit at 185-kilometre altitude. A 90-second Agena second burn put the spacecraft into lunar transfer trajectory. This was followed by the separation of the Agena and Ranger. Seventy minutes after launch, the command was given to deploy solar panels, activate attitude control, and switch from the omniantenna to the high-gain antenna.
The accuracy of the initial trajectory enabled delay of the planned mid-course correction from 22 to 23 March when the maneuver was initiated at 12:03 UT. After orientation, a 31-second rocket burn at 12:30 UT, and reorientation, the maneuver was completed at 13:30 UT.
Ranger 9 reached the Moon on 24 March 1965. At 13:31 UTC, a terminal maneuver was executed to orient the spacecraft so the cameras were more in line with the flight direction to improve the resolution of the pictures. 20 minutes before impact, the one-minute camera system warm-up began. The first image was taken at 13:49:41 UTC at an altitude of 2,363 kilometres.
Transmission of 5,814 good contrast photographs was made during the final 19 minutes of flight. The final image taken before impact has a resolution of 0.3 metres. The spacecraft encountered the lunar surface with an incoming asymptotic direction at an angle of -5.6 degrees from the lunar equator.
The orbit plane was inclined 15.6 degrees to the lunar equator. After 64.5 hours of flight, impact occurred at 14:08:19.994 UTC at approximately 12.83 S latitude, 357.63 E longitude in the Alphonsus crater. Impact velocity was 2,670 metres per second.
The spacecraft performance was excellent. Real-time television coverage with live network broadcasts of many of the F-channel images, primarily camera B but also some camera A pictures, were provided for this flight.
Modern science says: 'The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.' From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.
Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends,Joseph de Ca'th Lon.
Joseph loves astronomy, and they have been talking about Amalthea, the third closest and fifth found moon of Jupiter,that was discovered by EdwardEmersonBarnard on a day like today in 1892.
Amalthea is a moon of Jupiter. It has the third-closest orbit around Jupiter among known moons and was the fifth moon of Jupiter to be discovered, so it is also known as Jupiter V.
It is also the fifth-largest moon of Jupiter, after the four Galilean Moons.
Edward Emerson Barnard discovered the moon on 9 September 1892 and named it after Amalthea of Greek mythology. It was the last natural satellite to be discovered by direct visual observation; all later moons were discovered by photographic or digital imaging.
Amalthea is in a close orbit around Jupiter and is within the outer edge of the Amalthea Gossamer Ring, which is formed from dust ejected from its surface.
Jupiter would appear 46.5 degrees in diameter from its surface. Amalthea is the largest of the inner satellites of Jupiter and is irregularly shaped and reddish. It is thought to consist of porous water ice with unknown amounts of other materials. Its surface features include large craters and ridges.
Close range images of Amalthea were taken in 1979 by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, and in more detail by the Galileo orbiter in the 1990s.
Amalthea was discovered on 9 September 1892 by Edward Emerson Barnard using the 91 cm refractor telescope at Lick Observatory.
It was the last planetary satellite to be discovered by direct visual observation, as opposed to photographically, and was the first new satellite of Jupiter since Galileo Galilei's discovery of the Galilean satellites in 1610.
Amalthea is named after the nymph Amalthea from Greek mythology, who nursed the infant Zeus, the Greek equivalent of Jupiter, with goat's milk. Its Roman numeral designation is Jupiter V.
The name Amalthea was not formally adopted by the IAU until 1976, although it had been in informal use for many decades. The name was initially suggested by Camille Flammarion. Before 1976, Amalthea was most commonly known simply as Jupiter V.
The surface of Amalthea is very red. This colour may be due to sulphur originating from Io or some other non-ice material. Bright patches of less red tint appear on the major slopes of Amalthea, but the nature of this colour is currently unknown.
The surface of Amalthea is slightly brighter than surfaces of other inner satellites of Jupiter. There is also a substantial asymmetry between leading and trailing hemispheres: the leading hemisphere is 1.3 times brighter than the trailing one.
The asymmetry is probably caused by the higher velocity and frequency of impacts on the leading hemisphere, which excavate a bright material -presumably ice- from the interior of the moon.
There are four named geological features on Amalthea: two craters and two faculae (bright spots). The faculae are located on the edge of a ridge on the anti-Jupiter side of Amalthea.
Craters are named after characters in Greek mythology associated with Zeus and Amalthea, faculae after locations in associated with Zeus.
During 1979, the unmanned Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes obtained the first images of Amalthea to resolve its surface features, they also measured the visible and infrared spectra and surface temperature.
Later, the Galileo orbiter completed the imaging of Amalthea's surface. Galileo made its final satellite fly-by at a distance of approximately 244 km from Amalthea's centre at a height of about 160–170 km on 5 November 2002, permitting the moon's mass to be accurately determined, while changing Galileo's trajectory so that it would plunge into Jupiter in September 2003 at the end of its mission.
In 2006, Amalthea's orbit was refined with measurements from New Horizons.
Jupiter is so big and its gravitational pull so strong that man would find it difficult to move about on the surface. The answer is to whittle it down to proper size with terrajets and nuclear power, using the debris to increase the size of Jupiter's moons so they, too, can be colonized.
Today, The Grandma wants to pay homage to MichaelCollins, the Americanastronaut who flew the Apollo 11 command module Columbia around the Moon in 1969, who has died in Naples, Florida at the age of 90.
Michael Collins (October 31, 1930-April 28, 2021) was an Americanastronaut who flew the Apollo 11command module Columbia aroundthe Moon in 1969 while his crewmates, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, made the first crewed landing on the surface.
He was also a test pilot and major general in the U.S. Air Force Reserves.
Collins graduated from the United States Military Academy with the Class of 1952. He joined the United States Air Force, and flew F-86 Sabre fighters at Chambley-Bussières Air Base, France. He was accepted into the U.S. Air Force Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in 1960, also graduating from the Aerospace Research Pilot School (Class III).
Selected as part of NASA's third group of 14 astronauts in 1963, Collins flew in space twice. His first spaceflight was on Gemini 10 in 1966, in which he and Command Pilot John Young performed orbital rendezvous with two spacecraft and undertook two extravehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks).
On the 1969 Apollo 11 mission he became one of 24 people to fly to the Moon, which he orbited thirty times. He was the fourth person (and third American) to perform a spacewalk, the first person to have performed more than one spacewalk, and, after Young, who flew the command module on Apollo 10, the second person to orbit the Moon alone.
After retiring from NASA in 1970, Collins took a job in the Department of State as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. A year later, he became the director of the National Air and Space Museum, and held this position until 1978, when he stepped down to become undersecretary of the SmithsonianInstitution. In 1980, he took a job as vice president of LTV Aerospace. He resigned in 1985 to start his own consulting firm.
Along with his Apollo 11 crewmates, Collins was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2011.
Collins was born on October 31, 1930, in Rome, Italy. He was the second son of James Lawton Collins (1882-1963), a career U.S. Army officer, who was the U.S. military attaché there from 1928 to 1932, and Virginia C. née Stewart (1895-1987). Collins had an older brother, James Lawton Collins Jr. (1917-2002), and two older sisters, Virginia and Agnes.
Collins' decision to join the United States Air Force (USAF) was motivated by both the wonder of what the next fifty years might bring in aeronautics, and to avoid accusations of nepotism had he joined the Army -where his brother was already a colonel, his father had reached the rank of major general and his uncle, General J. Lawton Collins (1896-1987), was the Chief of Staff of the United States Army.
Collins began basic flight training in the T-6 Texan at Columbus Air Force Base in Columbus, Mississippi, in August 1952, then moved on to San Marcos Air Force Base in Texas to learn instrument and formation flying, and finally to James Connally Air Force Base in Waco, Texas, for training in jet aircraft. Flying came easily to him, and unlike many of his colleagues, he had little fear of failure. He was awarded his wings upon completion of the course at Waco, and in September 1953, he was chosen for advanced day-fighter training at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, flying F-86 Sabres.
The inspiration for Collins in his decision to become a NASA astronaut was the Mercury Atlas 6 flight of John Glenn on February 20, 1962, and the thought of being able to circle the Earth in 90 minutes.
Collins applied for the second group of astronauts that year. To raise the numbers of Air Force pilots selected, the Air Force sent their best applicants to a charm school. Medical and psychiatric examinations at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas, and interviews at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston followed. In mid-September, he found out he had not been accepted. It was a blow even though he did not expect to be selected.
Collins rated the second group of nine as better than the Mercury Seven who preceded them, or the five groups that followed, including his own.
After this basic training, the third group were assigned specializations. Collins received his first choice: pressure suits and extravehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks). His job was to monitor development and act as a liaison between the Astronaut Office and contractors. He was disturbed by the secretive planning of Ed White's EVA on Gemini 4, because he was not involved despite being the person with the greatest knowledge of the subject.
Shortly after Gemini 10, Collins was assigned to the backup crew for the second crewed Apollo flight, with Borman as commander (CDR), Stafford as command module pilot (CMP), and Collins as lunar module pilot (LMP). Along with learning the new Apollo command and service module (CSM) and the Apollo Lunar Module (LM), Collins received helicopter training, as these were thought to be the best way to simulate the landing approach of the LM.
The mission patch of Apollo 11 was the creation of Collins. Jim Lovell, the backup commander, mentioned the idea of eagles, a symbol of the United States.
Collins liked the idea and found a painting by artist Walter A. Weber in a National Geographic Society book, Water, Prey, and Game Birds of North America, traced it and added the lunar surface below and Earth in the background. The idea of an olive branch, a symbol of peace, came from a computer expert at the simulators. The call sign Columbia for the CSM came from Julian Scheer, the NASA Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs. He mentioned the idea to Collins in a conversation and Collins could not think of anything better.
On August 12, 1946, Congress passed an authorization bill for a National Air Museum, to be administered by the Smithsonian Institution, and located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Under the U.S. legislative system, authorization is insufficient; Congress also has to pass an appropriation bill allocating funding. Since this was not done, there was no money for the museum building.
Collins held the directorship until 1978, when he stepped down to become undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution. During this time, although no longer an active-duty USAF officer after he joined the State Department in 1970, he remained in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He attained the rank of major general in 1976, and retired in 1982.
On April 28, 2021, Collins died in Naples, Florida, at the age of 90.
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