December 9, 2013 - Annie, Get Your Spectroscope
Annie, Get Your Spectroscope The daunting task of developing a scheme to categorize the stars in the sky was accomplished by one of the most famous female astronomers, Annie Jump Cannon, born 150 years ago this week. Cannon, a Wellesley graduate, joined the staff of the Harvard College Observatory in 1896 to help develop a meaningful way to classify stars according to their spectra. Over the next forty years, Cannon studied the spectroscopic images of over 250,000 stars and devised the O, B, A, F, G, K, M system (from the hottest blue “O” stars to the coolest red “M” stars) that is still in use today, along with the phrase coined to remember the order, “Oh, Be A Fine Girl - Kiss Me.” In this image, the core of globular cluster 47 Tucanae, unlike most globulars, displays a variety of stellar types.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Meylan (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne)
Weekly Calendar
December 9-15, 2013
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 9
First Quarter Moon 10:12 AM
1978: Pioneer-Venus 2 probes enter atmosphere of Venus
2006: STS-116 Discovery launched
Tuesday 10
1963: Dyna-Soar project canceled
1999: Newton X-Ray Multi-Mirror Telescope launched
Wednesday 11
Uranus 3° south of Moon
1863: Annie Jump Cannon born
1972: Apollo 17 lands on Moon
1993: Sotheby’s holds first auction of Soviet space hardware & artifacts
Thursday 12
1961: OSCAR 1 launched, first amateur radio satellite
1970: Italian ground crew becomes first to launch satellite for America, Explorer 42
Friday 13
Geminid meteor shower
2001: Final drop test of the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle prototype
Saturday 14
Geminid meteor shower
1546: Tycho Brahe born
1962: Mariner 2 first planet flyby (Venus)
1972: Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan becomes last human to walk on Moon
2013: Chang'e-3 spacecraft lands on Moon, deploys Yutu rover
Sunday 15
1965: Gemini VI launched
1970: Venera 7 makes first landing on Venus
1984: Vega 1 launched to study Venus and Halley’s Comet
2003: National Air & Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center opens
2010: Soyuz TMA-20 launched carrying ISS Expedition 26/27 crew