National Veterans Awareness Ride, 2012. Flight 93 National Memorial. Photo credit: JR
A year ago today, I was celebrating one of the milestones of aviation history, the successful launch of the Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity, the Mars Rover). Today, I mourned one of aviation history’s greatest tragedies, the deliberate downing of Flight 93 in a field near Lambertsville, Pennsylvania.
If you’d like to see how I experienced the site this morning, you can watch the slideshow here.
Aurora Borealis, October 13, 2012, Hadseløya, Norwway. Image credit: Helge Korneliussen
Have you been chasing the northern lights? I’m considering un-following @AuroraMAX on twitter because it keeps taunting me. November has been particularly painful—all those light displays and I’m stuck below the 49th parallel.
If you’ve got a few hours to kill, I suggest doing a flickr search on the word “aurora” (don’t ask me about the kittens, I don’t know why they’re there). If you just want a beautiful image, click on the one above to go to the download page.
Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), Chajnantor Observatory, Chile. Photo credit: ESO/H.H.Heyer
Operating on the theory that I am eventually going to finish writing my first book, I’ve begun doing research for my next large project, on early twentieth-century solar and radio observatories. Flipping through the articles on my desk, I ran across one from the 1960s about instruments for observing in the submillimetre wavelength range.[1] Reading it prompted me to wonder if there was any recent news about the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope. The search for news from APEX led me to today’s wallpaper.
Every time I visit the ESO website, I’m newly impressed with the online archive. I’ve commented on the image collection before, but the instrument documentation is superb as well. So, too, is the video archive. If you want to learn more about millimetre and submillimetre observations, check out the APEX trailer. Or, you can watch it just because it’s beautiful.
Click on the image at the head of this post to download the wallpaper.
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[1] A. E. Salomonovich, “Some Problems and Instrumental Features of Submillimetre Astronomy,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Vol. 264, No. 1150, A Discussion on Infrared Astronomy (Apr. 24, 1969), pp.
283-291.
Most of the articles I’ve seen regarding tomorrow’s solar eclipse [11/13/12, 3:35 p.m. EST (2035 GMT)] have been pushing the SLOOH website and the USTREAM live eclipse broadcast from Cairns as the best online viewing options. Me, I’m going to try the Hot Air Balloon Cairns broadcast, just because it seems too good to be true.
April 12, 1986, Cosmonautics Day stamp featuring Konstantin Tsiolovsky
Here are a few examples from a collection of space-themed postage stamps that I bought during my first trip to the Soviet Union in 1988. “Cosmonautics Day” marks the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s space flight on April 12, 1961. You might recognize the portrait of Soviet rocket theorist Konstantin Tsiolovsky (b. 1857-d. 1935) on this stamp from 1986—I’m not sure why, but in every photo I’ve seen, his mouth is open.
I’m also not sure why the 5 kopeck stamp follows a different design than the 10 and 15 kopeck stamps from the same year:
April 12, 1986, Cosmonautics Day stamp featuring Sergei Korolev
S. P. Korolev…hm…his father was Russian, his mother Ukrainian, so I’m not going to pin down his ethnicity, other than to say he spent most of his early life in Ukraine. This stamp is such a whitewash of Soviet atrocities. Korolev looked to have a promising career as an engineer ahead of him, but was arrested by the NKVD in 1938. He ended up in a gulag in Siberia. The positive: he lived to tell the tale. The negative: it ruined his life and health. Eventually, he was “rehabilitated,” i.e., the Soviet state realized it was losing the rocketry war to the Germans because they were killing all the smart people, and was forced to admit it the arrest was a mistake. Much of Soviet space and rocketry (and weaponry) success can be attributed to Korolev’s dedication. Much of Soviet space failure can be attributed to the fact he and other scientists died early deaths due to mistreatment in the gulag. Putting Korolev on a 10-kopeck stamp in 1986 = too little, too late, if you ask me.
April 12, 1986, Cosmonautics Day stamp featuring Yuri Gagarin and Vostok-1
The 15-kopeck stamp features an idealization of Yuri Gagarin on the left and a drawing of his spacecraft, Vostok-1, on the right. The text on the right say XXV Years: The World’s First Manned Space Flight. If you’ve been to VDNKh, you might recognize that rocket swoop on the left.
1984 Twenty-Five Years of Space Television
This 5-kopeck stamps celebrates the 25th anniversary of Luna-3, the USSR’s third lunar probe. Luna-3 deserves a stamp, since it sent back the first ever photos of the far side of the moon. This stamp reminds me how easy it is to get caught up in the early 21st-century narrative of U.S. dominance in space. Dark Side of the Moon, first brought to you by the Soviet Union, only second by Pink Floyd.
That brings me to the next stamp, which I can’t decipher just yet. It also celebrates the 25th anniversary of Luna-3, but seems to be doing it with an image of a space walk for repairs on solar panels. This is a 50-kopeck stamp, which is an incredible amount to pay for postage in 1984. This isn’t a stamp that would ever be used by Soviet citizens (most commemorative stamps weren’t, no matter what country printed them), so maybe it didn’t need to make sense, it only needed look cool so foreigners with hard currency would buy it.
1984, Twenty-Five Years of Space Television
Let me follow that with a set of stamps that has some relevance for current events:
1987 stamp celebrating Joint Soviet-Syrian Space Flight
In 1985, two Syrian astronauts began training for a mission to the Soviet space station Mir (МИР). In July 1987, Colonel Muhammad Ahmad Faris became the first Syrian in space, spending seven days aboard the space station. If that names sounds familiar, it may be because it was in the news recently. This past August, Faris defected to Turkey, declaring himself a member of the opposition. You’d think the Russian government would take that as a suggestion to reconsider its support for the Assad regime…
1987 International Space Flight, USSR-Syria
Probably only interesting to me: the red-and-gold circle in front of the Soviet-Syrian flags in the upper left of the 5-kopeck stamp (above) was also produced as a lapel pin. I know this because I own one. Only after looking at these stamps did I realize the “Intercosmos” symbol was part of the Soviet-Syrian love fest in space.
1987 International Space Flight, USSR-Syria
Without the flags, I wouldn’t have understood the 15-kopeck stamp (above). Nowhere does it say, “Syrians! With us!” but the astronaut on the right has a Syrian flag on his sleeve. I’m not sure whom the statue on the left represents. It looks more like Andrei Gromyko than Konstantin Chernenko, but it’s probably a Soviet rocket scientist, not a politician. I thought possibly cosmonaut Valery Ryumin, since he was the flight director for the joint mission, but the hair isn’t big enough.
1987 International Space Flight, USSR-Syria
This is my favorite Soviet-Syrian stamp. Five astronauts are hanging out on Mir, looking at a high-def image of architecture that looks like cross between the Umayyad Masjid and the Al Madraj building at Damascus University. Just in case you missed the purpose of the mission, arrows direct your attention from small likeness of Mir in the upper right corner to the locations of the USSR and Syria on a map.
I scanned the entire collection, so expect Part II sometime soon.
Today, I found a place that has coffee (!) and electricity (!) but no internet (!). Scouring the web for wallpaper images on my iPhone isn’t my idea of fun (have I mentioned how tired I am?), so I’m just going to copy a link from my e-mail for you. I hope space.com’s gallery of “Experts’ Favorite Space Photos” lives up to its headline.
The “Cosmos” Pavilion, VDNKh, Moscow, USSR/”Космос” павииьон, ВДНХ, Москва, СССР, 1988
A few months ago, while looking for something else, my partner came across a set of postcards I bought in the Soviet Union in 1988. They’ve been sitting on my desk ever since, waiting to be scanned, uploaded, and explained. I bought them on the penultimate day of my trip, when I made a solo journey out to VDNKh, or the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy (ВДНХ, Выставка Достижений Народного Хозяйства), in the northern suburbs of Moscow. At the time, VDNKh was a massive exhibition grounds dedicated to celebrating the technological and economic of accomplishments of the Soviet government and states. Anyone who has been to a World Expo would have no difficult recognizing the purpose and organization of the grounds—dramatic vistas, state pavilions subsumed into a national narrative, folk music and costumes at every corner, heavy emphasis progress in science and technology. It would’ve been a nice lesson in state propaganda had I not already been immersed in it for weeks. I spent my afternoon in the Cosmos Pavilion (except when I was outside listening to music and eating bubliki, which for some reason weren’t available in Leningrad). I was practically pulsating with energy, a far cry from my usual state of melancholy that summer. It was my first opportunity to see real spacecraft and I was going to do it even if it meant navigating the Metro solo. That the spacecraft happened to be Soviet didn’t matter at all to me. At least, I don’t remember sorting out the exhibits in the Space Pavilion in terms of US vs. USSR, Us vs. Them. I was just excited to see real satellites and a bit awed by their size. A few of the postcards and their captions (click on the images for a larger view):
A citizen of the USSR Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the earth in a space flight/The carrier rocket of the “Vostok” space ship//Первый космонавт–гражданин СССР Ю. А. Гагарин. Ракета космического корабеля “Восток”
The “Cosmos-1514” specialised biological satellite for the comprehensive study of animals and plants//Специализированный биологический спутник “Космос-1514” для комплексного исследования животных и растений
The “Lunakhod-2” remote-controlled lunar exploration vehicle transmitted 80,000 pictures of the lunar surface to the Earth//Автоматический самоходный аппарат “Луноход-2” передал на Землю 80 тысяч изображений луной поверхности
The Salyut long-term orbital station, docked with a “Soyuz” spaceship and a Progress cargo spacecraft, in flight//Долповременная орбитальная станция “Салют”, состыкованная с кораблем “Союз” и грузовозом “Прогресс” в полете
The “Cosmos-1500” artificial satellite of the earth for studying the World Ocean and the land surface; the “Luna-24” automatic interplanetary station delivered samples of moon rock to the Earth//Иссуственный спутник Земли “Космос-1500” для исследования Мирового океана и поверхности суши; Автоматическая межпланетная станция “Луна-24” обеспечала доставку образцов лунного грунта
Power’s back on, internet is up. I planned ahead so I could work without electricity for a few days, but now that I have it, I feel compelled to do some more efficient writing on the book manuscript. I’ll be back by next Wednesday, hopefully with a clear head and some fresh insight into the history of astronomy.
If you’ve got flash (sorry, iPhone users), you can visit the nifty interactive site that NASA posted to celebrate 50 years of Americans in orbit. I’m kind of sad that it didn’t come with a Wally Schirra action figure or at least a vintage board game.
l’Observatoire de Paris-Meudon. Photo credit: Matthieu Bourdon
Today’s image is an HDR photograph of the Observatory of Paris–Meudon. In 1875, when this branch of the Paris Observatory was founded, Meudon stood outside Paris, in a wooded area against the Seine. Today, Meudon is more of a Parisian suburb (though officially in the arrondissement of Boulogne-Billancourt) and probably best known to foreign tourists as the location of the Musée Rodin Meudon at the Villa des Brillants.
While I was doing research on an unrelated topic this week, I came across several mentions of the Meudon observatory in old astronomical bulletins. I am a big fan of the 19th-century version of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Each edition is a snapshot of the state of astronomy at the time. The A.S.P.’s founder and president, Edward S. Holden, was a prolific writer (well, he had help from observatory staff) and he culled information from other scientific publications, correspondence with other astronomers, and his own travel and research notes to add to each issue of the Publications. For example, here’s a description of the Meudon observatory as reported by Lieutenant Winterhalter:
The Physical Observatory of Meudon (near Paris).*
The accompanying cut is copied from Lieut. Winterhalter’s Report on European Observatories by the kind permission of the Superintendent of the U. S. Naval Observatory (See Publ. A. S. P., Vol. Ill, page 40). The note here given is condensed from the text of Lieut. Winterhalter’s Report.
The Observatory was founded in 1875 and is established in the park of Meudon, not far from Paris. It is by no means completed, so far as instruments are concerned, but its present facilities are employed in spectroscopic and photographic observations. Its distinguished Director and his assistants have taken part in many eclipse expeditions to all parts of the world, and M. Janssen has prosecuted his spectroscopic observations at all altitudes from the level of the sea, to the tops of the Eiffel tower, of the Pic du Midi and of Mont Blanc. The solar photographs of the Meudon Observatory are unrivalled. No description of them need be given here, because members of the society can see a beautiful glass copy of one of them which was presented to the Lick Observatory by M.
Janssen, in a conspicuous place in the main hall of the Lick Observatory. E. S. H.
*M. Jules Jannsen, Director [2]
And here is a paragraph Holden reprinted from Scientific American:
Large Refractor for the Observatory of Meudon.
A great refractor has just been finished and placed in position for Dr. Janssen at Meudon. It is a combined photographic and visual telescope. The two lenses were made by the celebrated Henry Brothers, of the Paris Observatory. The mounting is by Gauthier, of Paris. Both lenses will be mounted in the same tube, which is square and of steel. The visual objective is 82 cm. (32.3 English inches) in diameter, while the photographic objective is 63 cm. (24.8 English inches) diameter. Both lenses are of the same focal length, 17 meters (669 English inches.) The large objective will be the guiding part of the instrument when used for photography. This great telescope is housed in the ruins of the old royal palace, a part of the ruins serving as the tower for the great dome, which dome is 20 meters (66 English feet) in diameter and weighs some 60 or 80 tons. The dome is to be moved by a gas engine of 1 2 horse-power. The observing chair is attached to the dome and moves with it. All the fine circles are to be read from the eye-end by means of electric lights, the electricity for which is generated by an 8-horse-power engine half a mile distant, in what was formerly the royal stables.—Scientific American, November 18, 1893 [1]
That’s a lot of information packed into one small paragraph.
If any of my students are paying attention, this is how I start a research project, by tracking back through scholarly publications to the earliest mention of a building (that I can find, at least). I know web searches are tempting, but it’s usually more profitable (and more interesting) in the long run to spend some time paging through back issues of trade journals and professional bulletins instead. Even more interesting would be tracking back through old French publications, but I’m prepared to give you a break on that. This time.
As always, click on the image of l’Observatoire de Paris-Meudon to download wallpaper for your computer.
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[1] Edward S. Holden, “Large Refractor for the Observatory of Meudon,” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 6, No. 34 (January 27, 1894), pp. 46-47
[2] Members of the Staff and E. S. H., “The Physical Observatory of Meudon (Near Paris),” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 4, No. 25 (September 3, 1892), p. 181
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