July 16 – Countdown to Moon Day 50!!!!

Posted on July 16, 2019

This year, we will have reached the half-century mark of the first time a human walked on another world!

Yep, it's been almost 50 years since Neil Armstrong said those famous words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Moon Day's 50th Anniversary will be this Saturday, July 20, 2019. So - why am I posting this today?

Today is the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. Here is a video of the actual countdown. And here are some other "counts" involved in this famous launch:

Apollo 11 had three astronauts:

• Neil Armstrong - the first human to step onto another world.
• Buzz Aldrin - the second human to do so.
• Michael Collins - who had to stay up in space while his crew mates did the famous stuff.

Apollo 11, the spacecraft, was made up of three parts:

• A command module with a cabin for the three astronauts - this is the only part that returned to Earth.
• A service module, which supported the command module with electrical power, oxygen, water, and fuel.
• A lunar module designed to separate from the rest of the spacecraft in order to descend to and land on the Moon and then eventually return to orbit. 

Above, the command module.
Below, the lunar module.

The spacecraft was launched by a Saturn V rocket. This huge rocket had three stages of liquid propellant.

How much weight was launched 50 years ago today?

• The Saturn V rocket had a launch weight of 6,540,000 pounds (2,970,000 kg).

• The Command and Service Modules had a launch weight of 32,390 pounds (14,690 kg).

• And the Lunar Module had a launch weight of 33,500 pounds (15,200 kg).

That means that, altogether, the vehicle that slowly lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida weighed (at launch time) 6,605,890 pounds (2,999,890 kg). 

Check out the slo-mo and closeups of the launch in the middle of this longer video. (If you want to skip to it, go to Minute 2 of the video.) Awe-some!

Talk about climbing into the heavens on a pillar of fire!!

And here is a super slo-mo.

Also on this date:

Fiesta Virgen del Carmen in Peru 

NAACP founder Ida B. Wells's birthday










 

La Paz Local Holiday

Global Hug Your Kids Day

World Snake Day

Medical researcher Joseph Goldberger's birthday

Unaine (Elderly Woman Day) on Kiribati

Singer / actor Rain Pryor's birthday

Tennis player Anna Smashnova's birthday

Opening of Chicago's Millennium Park

Bagel Fest

(Varying Dates)

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• July holidays
• July birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in July

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• August holidays
• August birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in August

September 30 – Happy Birthday, Phil Plait

Posted on September 30, 2016

Is it a compliment to be called The Bad Astronomer?

One would think that Phil Plait, an astronomer who lives in Boulder, Colorado, would feel insulted when people call him The Bad Astronomer. But actually, it's a name he embraces and uses himself.

You see, in the late nineties, working astronomer Phil Plait noticed that there was a lot of public interest in astronomical topics – but also a lot of misconceptions, conspiracy theories, and muddled thinking. He saw astronomical goofs in movies, in the news, in articles, and especially on the Internet.

He decided to do something about it. In 1998 he launched a website he called Bad Astronomy. On that website, he provided correct information and good sources plus some all-important critical thinking about news items and conspiracy theories. Some of the topics he discussed on Bad Astronomy included the so-called Moon landing “hoax” (newsflash – not a hoax, people really have landed on the Moon) and the predictions of a Planet X cataclysm.

One would think that whoever made this claim had never seen his
own looooonnng, skinny shadow when the Sun is near the horizon.

Get out more, dude!

The silliness of claiming that the Apollo moon landings were faked
has been debunked, but of course more silliness keeps cropping up.

Remember when people were convinced the world was going
to end in 2008 (when we turned on the Large Hadron Collider)? 

And then the world was going to end again, in December of 2012,
due to a so-called prediction from a Mayan calendar?

Plait's website got a lot of attention, especially after he criticized a Fox Network special. He started getting a lot of thanks from average citizens who weren't sure what to make of crazy-sounding claims and doomsday predictions, and he started getting thanks from others in the scientific community as well.

Soon Plait started a blog – also called Bad Astronomy – and to some extent he branched out from astronomy. Soon he was working with NASA and Discover Magazine, becoming a person of interest at skeptics' conferences, becoming a speaker... He has since appeared on TV and other media, given TED talks, hosted a TV series, written books, served as president of the James Randi Educational Foundation - well, he has since done LOTS of things! He's won several awards and honors and has even had an asteroid named after him (165347 Philplait)!

Enjoy some wisdom, Plait style:

Also on this date:

Save the Koala Day

(last Friday in September)

Anniversary of the premiere of The Flintstones 

Independence Day in Botswana

Anniversary of the first tooth extraction with anesthesia

Chewing-gum mogul William Wrigley's birthday

Anniversary of the commissioning of the world's first nuclear submarine

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• September holidays
• September birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in September

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• October holidays
• October birthdays
• Historical anniversaries in October

May 9, 2012 - First Laser Beam to the Moon!

Before humans walked on the moon...

We crashed landed some probes onto the moon (starting with the U.S.S.R.'s Luna 3 in 1959, and we also bounced a laser beam off of the moon!

On this date in 1962, MIT scientists bounced laser light—a series of high-intensity red flashes—off of the surface of the moon, and then detected the reflections back here on Earth. It was the first time that a laser beam had crossed space.

Nowadays we can can aim our lasers at the retroreflectors Apollo astronauts positioned on the moon. This is an amazing feat, because the reflectors are so small compared to the distance crossed, and of course the moon is always in motion, orbiting around the Earth; the accuracy of hitting the reflectors is like using a rifle to hit a moving dime two miles away! By measuring the time it takes the reflected light to return to Earth, we can measure the distance from the Earth to the moon.

And we can measure this very large distance incredibly accurately! It's like measuring the distance between Los Angeles and New York to one hundredth of an inch.

We have discovered that the moon is spiraling away from the Earth at a rate of 38 millimeters per year. Granted, this isn't an incredibly fast retreat—but some scientists say that it is faster than expected.

The very precise, multiple measurements of the moon's distance have been used as evidence that Einstein's general theory of relativity is correct, as the theory predicts the lunar orbit discovered through these measurements. Also, the presence of the reflectors has been used as evidence that humans actually went to the moon. You wouldn't think anybody would need to build a case that people went to the moon—everybody knows about the Apollo program and the moon rocks and the “one giant leap for mankind,” right?—but some people have claimed that the moon landings were faked! There was even a television show—supposedly non-fiction—that claimed to prove that American astronauts never went to the moon. (Let that be proof that you really, really, really can't believe everything you see on TV—not even the news or “documentaries.”) Check out this website that debunks the bad science in the moon-landing conspiracy theories. 

Also on this date:

Anniversary of the first American cartoon 

July 20, 2010

Moon Day

On this day in 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to land on the moon. During the 21 hours that the two astronauts were on the moon, they planted a U.S. Flag on the lunar surface, spoke to President Richard Nixon through a telephone-radio connection, took the first real moon walks, and collected more than 47 pounds of lunar rocks.

And they did it all on TV! I was among the more than 600 million people watching―and for me it was THE highlight of TV in my childhood! (You Tube has copies of the first broadcast from another world.)

Armstrong, Aldrin and astronaut Michael Collins flew to the moon on the space flight called Apollo 11. Once there, Collins stayed with the command ship, Columbia, while Aldrin steered the landing craft, Eagle, to the lunar surface, landing in the so-called Sea of Tranquility. (There is no liquid water on the moon, so it isn't really a sea.) NASA personnel in Houston, Texas, stayed in touch with the astronauts through radio transmissions and cheered them on.

Some of the big moments included Neil Armstrong announcing, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” and, when he first stepped down onto the dusty moon, “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Did you know...?

• One of the first things Aldrin did on the moon was to take communion privately and quietly. His church in Webster, Texas, still has the chalice used in the Lunar Communion.

• The astronauts were supposed to sleep for five hours after landing on the moon, before they went outside. But like little kids too excited to sleep, they skipped the sleep period.

• Recordings of the original transmission of that first moonwalk were accidentally destroyed. Of course, there are lots of copies of the video in broadcast format, but NASA was happy when copies of the original footage were located in Australia, in one of the places that originally received the lunar broadcast.

• Some people have concocted a crazy conspiracy theory that humans have never really flown to and walked on the moon. They claim that all of the moon landings (there were five more after Apollo 11) were hoaxes! One of the moon-landing deniers was bugging Buzz Aldrin for several minutes―in his face, over and over again accusing him of being a liar and a thief, and even calling him a coward―when Aldrin finally, famously, punched him in the face. The moon-landing denier sued Aldrin for the attack, but the lawsuit was quickly thrown out of court. (If you want to watch this widely-viewed incident, here it is.) And here is a website that briefly shows why the the moon-landing deniers are wrong.

Learn more about the moon landing

This website was created by NASA to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of Apollo 11―now it's been 41 years since humans landed on the moon!

If you would rather read a more personal account, this website was created by a man who turned 13 on the day humans first walked on the moon.

Take a quiz on the moon at the National Geographic website.