September 17, 2018 - Sister Acts
Sister Acts In 1772, twenty-two-year-old Caroline Lucretia Herschel left her native Germany to join her brother William in England, hoping to avoid a traditional life of dreary domestic servitude. Herschel helped her brother, an amateur astronomer, record his numerous observations, but soon she learned advanced mathematics and optics, and she became an accomplished observer in her own right. Among her many discoveries were eight comets and over a dozen “nebulae,” including NGC 253 (above), which she observed 235 years ago this week. NGC 253 is actually a spiral galaxy 10 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. Caroline, who never married, lived until the ripe old age of 98. Both the lunar crater “C. Herschel” and the asteroid “281 Lucretia” were named in honor of her accomplishments.
Image credit: ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/ R. Gendler, U. G. Jørgensen, J. Skottfelt, K. Harpsøe
Weekly Calendar
September 17 - 23, 2018
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 17
Saturn 2° south of Moon
1789: William Herschel discovers Mimas
1857: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky born
1930: Ed Mitchell born
1959: First powered flight of X-15
1976: First rollout of space shuttle Enterprise
Tuesday 18
Yom Kippur begins at sunset
1964: Saturn SA-7 launched
1977: Voyager 1 takes photo of Earth and Moon together in space
2006: Anousheh Ansari becomes first woman space tourist
2013: Cygnus 1 supply ship launched to ISS
Wednesday 19
Moon at apogee
Thursday 20
Mars 5° south of Moon
Mercury in superior conjunction
1945: Wernher von Braun arrives in United States
1966: Surveyor 2 launched
1970: Luna 16 lands on Moon
1979: HEAO-3 launched
1988: Israel launches its first satellite
Friday 21
Venus at greatest illuminated extent
1866: H. G. Wells born
1874: Gustav Holst born
1974: Mariner 10 flies by Mercury for second time
2003: Galileo mission ends
Saturday 22
Equinox 9:54 PM ET
1990: Pioneer 10 reaches 50 AU from Sun
2006: Hinode spacecraft launched
2014: MAVEN spacecraft enters orbit around Mars
Sunday 23
Neptune 2° north of Moon
1783: Caroline Herschel discovers NGC 253
1846: J. G. Galle discovers Neptune
1962: “The Jetsons” premieres
1977: Third glide test of space shuttle Enterprise