October 19, 2020 - Chandra Celebration
Chandra Celebration Originally called the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, NASA’s third “Great Observatory” was renamed to honor Indian Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar prior to its 1999 launch. Known to the world as Chandra (which means “moon” or “luminous” in Sanskrit), he was born 110 years ago this week and was widely regarded as one of the foremost astrophysicists of the twentieth century. Chandrasekhar made fundamental contributions to the study of stellar evolution, black holes, and other high-energy phenomena that the Chandra X-ray observatory was designed to explore. In this Chandra-Hubble composite image, X-ray data (in blue) shows that the central star of the Cat’s Eye planetary nebula is surrounded by a delicately structured cloud of multimillion-degree gas.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / SAO; Optical: NASA / STScI
Weekly Calendar
October 19 - 25, 2020
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 19
1910: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar born
1967: Mariner 5 flies past Venus
2005: Final Titan IV rocket launched
2016: ExoMars arrives at Mars
2016: Soyuz MS-02 launched carrying ISS Expedition 49/50 crew
2018: BepiColombo spacecraft launched
Tuesday 20
1970: Zond 8 launched
1995: STS-73 Columbia launched
Wednesday 21
Orionid meteor shower
1923: First public planetarium show, Deutsches Museum in Munich
1998: Hubble Heritage Project website launched
2008: Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe launched
Thursday 22
Ceres stationary
Orionid meteor shower
Jupiter 2° north of Moon
2136 BCE: First record of solar eclipse
1905: Karl Jansky born
1966: Luna 12 launched
1975: Venera 9 orbits Venus
1992: STS-52 Columbia launched
Friday 23
Saturn 3° north of Moon
First Qtr Moon 9:23 AM ET
1968: First powered flight of the HL-10 lifting body
2007: STS-120 Discovery launched
2012: Soyuz TMA-06M launched carrying ISS Expedition 33/34 crew
Saturday 24
1851: William Lassell discovers Uranus moons Umbriel & Ariel
1946: First photo of Earth taken from space
1968: 199th and final X-15 flight
1998: Deep Space 1 launched
2001: Mars Odyssey arrives at Mars
2007: Chang'e-1 lunar spacecraft launched
Sunday 25
Mercury in inferior conjunction
1671: Giovanni Cassini discovers Iapetus, moon of Saturn
1877: Henry Norris Russell born
1975: Venera 10 lands on Venus
2006: STEREO spacecraft launched