1.
Hoorn
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Hoorn is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is located on the Markermeer,35 kilometres north of Amsterdam, Hoorn had a population of 71,888 in 2014. The area of the municipality is 53.25 km2 of which 33.00 km2 consists of water, the municipality consists of the following villages and/or districts, Blokker, Hoorn, Zwaag, and parts of Bangert and De Hulk. Cape Horn, the most southerly point of the Americas, was named after the town by Willem Schouten, the Hoorn Islands of the Oceanian nation of Wallis and Futuna are also named after this city. The origin of the name Hoorn, even in old spelling Hoern or Hoirne, is surrounded in myths, Hoorns name, according to Old Frisian legends, is derived from the stepson of King Redbad, called Hornus. A third version says that the name was derived from the shape of one of its first ports. The author of the Origo Civitatis Hornensis assumes that name Hoorn was derived from Damphoorn, Damphoorn is the medieval name for a weed that could be made into whistles, which grew in abundance in the area outside the dykes of Hoorn. Chronicler Velius rejects this statement because there are no old historical entries that Hoorn was called Damphoorn and he wrote, The name was from the start Hoorn, not derived from the weed Damphoorn, as the current sentiment holds. Velius also rejects the assertion that the origin is Dampter Horn, a neighbourhood of the village Dampten. The name is most probably derived from Hornicwed, a name that is popping up in early mediaeval documents, the medieval meaning of hornic is corner, with wed or wedor being the medieval word for water. Many places and neighbourhoods in the Netherlands are called, even today, Heurne, Huurne, Hornicwed would therefore refer to the location of a corner on the coastline, the location of Hoorn at the Zuiderzee. We see hornic in the meaning of corner also reflected in another municipality in the mediaeval County of Holland, Uithoorn, meaning uithoek and this area was abandoned and flooded after 1391, following the abandonment of the old dyke. A new dyke was built inland, resulting in a bay which is now the Hoornse Hop. Hoorn was already in existence then, founded in 716, Hoorn rapidly grew to become a major harbour town. During Hollands Golden Age, Hoorn was an important home base for the Dutch East India Company, the Hoorn fleet plied the seven seas and returned laden with precious commodities. Exotic spices such as pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and mace were sold at vast profits, with their skill in trade and seafaring, sons of Hoorn established the towns name far and wide. Jan Pieterszoon Coen is famous for his violent raids in Dutch Indies and he has a big statue on the Rode Steen square in the center of Hoorn. In 1618 Willem Bontekoe undertook his first and only voyage for the VOC, Bontekoe van Hoorn, begrijpende veel wonderlijcke en gevaerlijcke saecken hem daer in wedervaren
2.
Tucson, Arizona
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Tucson is a city and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States, and home to the University of Arizona. The 2010 United States Census put the population at 520,116, the Tucson MSA forms part of the larger Tucson-Nogales combined statistical area, with a total population of 1,010,025 as of the 2010 Census. Tucson is the second-largest populated city in Arizona behind Phoenix, both of which anchor the Arizona Sun Corridor, the city is located 108 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 mi north of the U. S. –Mexico border. Tucson is the 33rd largest city and the 53rd largest metropolitan area in the United States, Major incorporated suburbs of Tucson include Oro Valley and Marana northwest of the city, Sahuarita south of the city, and South Tucson in an enclave south of downtown. Communities in the vicinity of Tucson include Casas Adobes, Catalina Foothills, Flowing Wells, Midvale Park, Tanque Verde, Tortolita, towns outside the Tucson metro area include Benson to the southeast, Catalina and Oracle to the north, and Green Valley to the south. The Spanish name of the city, Tucsón, is derived from the Oodham Cuk Ṣon, meaning base of the black, Tucson is sometimes referred to as The Old Pueblo. Tucson was probably first visited by Paleo-Indians, known to have been in southern Arizona about 12,000 years ago, recent archaeological excavations near the Santa Cruz River have located a village site dating from 2100 BC. The floodplain of the Santa Cruz River was extensively farmed during the Early Agricultural Period and these people constructed irrigation canals and grew corn, beans, and other crops while gathering wild plants and hunting. The Early Ceramic period occupation of Tucson saw the first extensive use of vessels for cooking. The groups designated as the Hohokam lived in the area from AD600 to 1450 and are known for their vast irrigation canal systems and their red-on-brown pottery. Jesuit missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino visited the Santa Cruz River valley in 1692, a separate Convento settlement was founded downstream along the Santa Cruz River, near the base of what is now A mountain. Hugo OConor, the father of the city of Tucson, Arizona authorized the construction of a military fort in that location, Presidio San Agustín del Tucsón. During the Spanish period of the presidio, attacks such as the Second Battle of Tucson were repeatedly mounted by Apaches, eventually the town came to be called Tucson and became a part of Sonora after Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. Tucson was not included in the Mexican Cession and Cookes road through Tucson became one of the important routes into California during the California Gold Rush, Arizona, south of the Gila River, was obtained via treaty from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase on June 8,1854. Tucson became a part of the United States of America, although the American military did not formally take control until March 1856. In 1857, Tucson became a station on the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line. The Overland Mail Corporation attempted to continue running, however, following the Bascom Affair, devastating Apache attacks on the stations, from August 1861 to mid-1862, Tucson was the western capital of the Confederate Arizona Territory, the eastern capital being Mesilla. In 1862, the California Column drove the Confederate forces out of Arizona, Tucson and all of what is now Arizona were part of New Mexico Territory until 1863, when they became part of the new Arizona Territory
3.
University of Groningen
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The University of Groningen is a public research university in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1614 and is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands as well as one of its largest, since its inception more than 200,000 students have graduated. It is a member of the distinguished international Coimbra Group of European universities, in April 2013, according to the results of the International Student Barometer, the University of Groningen, for the third time in a row, has been voted the best university of the Netherlands. In 2014 the university celebrated its 400th anniversary, the University of Groningen has ten faculties, nine graduate schools,27 research centres and institutes, and more than 175 degree programmes. There were four faculties – Theology, Law, Medicine, the coat of arms of the university was confirmed by the States of the City and County of Groningen in 1615. It consists of the arms, charged with an open book inscribed with the abbreviated words VER/BVM/DNI LV/CER/NA. The shield is surmounted by a crown of five leaves. The first 75 years of its existence were very fruitful for the University with about 100 students enrolling every year, on average two to three hundred students were registered with the University at any one time during this period. Opportunities and threats followed on each other’s heels during the nineteenth century, in 1815, at the same time as Leiden and Utrecht, the University gained recognition as a national college of higher education, but this was followed by discussions about closure. The situation improved markedly when a new university building, the Academiegebouw, was constructed in 1850. This made the fire completely destroyed this building in 1906 even more poignant. In the meantime, the Higher Education Act of 1876 had radically improved the position of the University, teaching now took place in Dutch as well as in Latin and the University was given a research as well as an educational duty. This laid the foundations for the present research university, the University of Groningen developed apace during the first decades of the twentieth century. The number of faculties and courses grew steadily while the number of students showed an explosive growth, when the University celebrated its first 300 years in 1914 there were 611 registered students, this had already grown to 1000 by 1924. After a drop back during the Depression, and in particular during the Second World War, in 2016 the Dutch chemist Ben Feringa, who worked most of his career at the university, won the Nobel prize for his work on molecular motors. Other strong research groups are in, Nanoscience, Physics, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Medical Sciences, Neurosciences, Sociology, Philosophy, Theology, Archaeology and Arts. Every year more than 5,000 research publications go to print, the University of Groningen is a member of the so-called Excellence Group of the best universities in Europe. The Excellence Group has 56 members, which is 1.3 percent of the approximately 4,500 European institutions of higher education, the University of Groningen belongs to the top 100 large comprehensive research universities in the world
4.
Bok globule
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In astronomy, Bok globules are isolated and relatively small dark nebulae, containing dense cosmic dust and gas from which star formation may take place. Bok globules are found within H II regions, and typically have a mass of about 2 to 50 solar masses contained within a region about a year or so across. They contain molecular hydrogen, carbon oxides and helium, and around 1% silicate dust, Bok globules most commonly result in the formation of double or multiple star systems. Bok globules were first observed by astronomer Bart Bok in the 1940s and this hypothesis was difficult to verify due to the observational difficulties of establishing what was happening inside a dense dark cloud that obscured all visible light emitted from within it. An analysis of near infrared observations published in 1990 confirmed that stars were being born inside Bok globules, further observations have revealed that some Bok globules contain embedded warm sources, some contain Herbig–Haro objects, and some show outflows of molecular gas. Millimeter-wave emission line studies have provided evidence for the infall of material onto an accreting protostar, Bok globules are still a subject of intense research. Known to be some of the coldest objects in the universe, their structure. Methods applied so far have relied on column density derived from near infrared extinction, Bok globules that are irradiated by ultraviolet light from hot, nearby stars exhibit stripping of materials to produce a tail. These types are called cometary globules, molecular cloud Barnard 68 CG4 NGC281 IC2944 A Star in the Making
5.
Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
6.
Harvard University
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Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, james Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College, Harvards $34.5 billion financial endowment is the largest of any academic institution. Harvard is a large, highly residential research university, the nominal cost of attendance is high, but the Universitys large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages. Harvards alumni include eight U. S. presidents, several heads of state,62 living billionaires,359 Rhodes Scholars. To date, some 130 Nobel laureates,18 Fields Medalists, Harvard was formed in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it obtained British North Americas first known printing press, in 1639 it was named Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard an alumnus of the University of Cambridge who had left the school £779 and his scholars library of some 400 volumes. The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650 and it offered a classic curriculum on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. It was never affiliated with any denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational. The leading Boston divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701, in 1708, John Leverett became the first president who was not also a clergyman, which marked a turning of the college toward intellectual independence from Puritanism. When the Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan died in 1803 and the president of Harvard Joseph Willard died a year later, in 1804, in 1846, the natural history lectures of Louis Agassiz were acclaimed both in New York and on the campus at Harvard College. Agassizs approach was distinctly idealist and posited Americans participation in the Divine Nature, agassizs perspective on science combined observation with intuition and the assumption that a person can grasp the divine plan in all phenomena. When it came to explaining life-forms, Agassiz resorted to matters of shape based on an archetype for his evidence. Charles W. Eliot, president 1869–1909, eliminated the position of Christianity from the curriculum while opening it to student self-direction. While Eliot was the most crucial figure in the secularization of American higher education, he was motivated not by a desire to secularize education, during the 20th century, Harvards international reputation grew as a burgeoning endowment and prominent professors expanded the universitys scope. Rapid enrollment growth continued as new schools were begun and the undergraduate College expanded. Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as sister school of Harvard College, Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. In the early 20th century, the student body was predominately old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, by the 1970s it was much more diversified
7.
Mount Stromlo Observatory
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Mount Stromlo Observatory located just outside Canberra, Australia, is part of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. The observatory was established in 1924 as The Commonwealth Solar Observatory, the dome built to house the Oddie telescope was the first Commonwealth building constructed in the newly established Australian Capital Territory. In 1911 a delegation for an Australian Solar Observatory went to London seeking Commonwealth assistance, the League of the Empire sought subscriptions to assist raising funds. Survey work to determine the sites suitability had begun as soon as the idea of a new Capital was established, by 1909 the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science was assisted in this effort by Hugh Mahon. Until World War II, the observatory specialised in solar and atmospheric observations, during the war the workshops contributed to the war effort by producing gun sights, and other optical equipment. After the war, the observatory shifted direction to stellar and galactic astronomy and was renamed The Commonwealth Observatory. Dr R. Wooley Director of the Observatory, worked to support for a larger reflector. The ANU was established in 1946 in nearby Canberra and joint staff appointments, on 18 January 2003, the devastating Canberra firestorm hit Mount Stromlo, destroying five telescopes, workshops, seven homes, and the heritage-listed administration building. The only telescope to escape the fires was the 1886 15-centimetre Farnham telescope, relics from the fire are preserved in the collection of the National Museum of Australia. They include a telescope mirror and a piece of melted optical glass. The latter has pieces of charcoal and wire fused into it from the heat of the fire. Redevelopment is completed and the Observatory is now a partner in the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope. The current observatory director is Matthew Colless, the directors residence, destroyed in the 2003 fire, was rebuilt and opened to the public as a memorial in 2015. The MACHO project detected the first instance of the gravitational lensing of one star by another, known as gravitational microlensing, in 1993. This discovery was made by repeated imaging of the Magellanic Clouds with the refurbished 50-inch Great Melbourne Telescope which was equipped with a mosaic of 82048 by 2048 pixel CCDs. The camera was constructed by the Centre for Particle Astrophysics in California, observations began in July 1992 and the project concluded in December 1999. In total, the MACHO project made over 200 billion stellar measurements, Brian Schmidt organised an international collaboration, known as the High-z Supernova Search Team, to study the rate of change of the Cosmic Expansion using type Ia supernovae. In 1998, the reach the conclusion that the cosmic expansion was accelerating
8.
Steward Observatory
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Steward Observatory is the research arm of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. Its offices are located on the UA campus in Tucson, Arizona, established in 1916, the first telescope and building were formally dedicated on April 23,1923. It now operates, or is a partner in telescopes at five locations in Arizona, one in New Mexico, one in Hawaii. It has provided instruments for three different space telescopes and numerous terrestrial ones, Steward also has one of the few facilities in the world that can cast and figure the very large primary mirrors used in telescopes built in the past decade. Steward Observatory owes its existence to the efforts of American astronomer, in 1906, Douglass accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Physics and Geography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Over the next 10 years, all of Douglass’ efforts to secure funding from the University and the Arizona Territorial Legislatures ended in failure. During this time period, Douglass served the University of Arizona as Head of the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Interim President, and finally Dean of the College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences. Then on October 18,1916, University President Rufus von KleinSmid announced that a donor had given the University $60,000 “…to be used to buy a telescope of huge size. ”That donor was later revealed to be Mrs. Lavinia Steward of Oracle. Mrs. Steward was a widow who had an interest in astronomy. Douglass made plans to use the Steward gift to construct a 36-inch diameter Newtonian reflecting telescope, the situation was further delayed by the fact that up until this time, the expertise in large telescope mirror making was in Europe. The war made it impossible to contract with a European company, so Douglass had to find an American glass company that was willing to develop this expertise. After a couple of failed castings, the Spencer Lens Co. of Buffalo, the telescope was finally installed in the observatory building in July 1922, and the Steward Observatory was officially dedicated on April 23,1923. This installation is to be devoted to scientific research, scientific research is business foresight on a large scale. It is knowledge obtained before it is needed and this I believe is the essence of education wherever such education is not strictly vocational. The student learns many facts and has much training, so it is with the research institutions. In this Observatory I sincerely hope and expect that the boundaries of knowledge will be advanced along astronomical lines. Astronomy was the first science developed by our primitive ancestors thousands of years ago because it measured time, Steward Observatory manages three different observing locations in southern Arizona, Mount Graham International Observatory, Mount Lemmon Observatory, and Catalina Station on Mount Bigelow. It also operates telescopes at two additional important observatories, Kitt Peak National Observatory and Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Steward is a partner in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III, which is located in New Mexico at Apache Point Observatory
9.
Astronomer
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An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who concentrates their studies on a specific question or field outside of the scope of Earth. They look at stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies, as well as other celestial objects — either in observational astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers work on include, planetary science, solar astronomy, there are also related but distinct subjects like physical cosmology which studies the Universe as a whole. Astronomers usually fit into two types, Observational astronomers make direct observations of planets, stars and galaxies, and analyze the data, theoretical astronomers create and investigate models of things that cannot be observed. They use this data to create models or simulations to theorize how different celestial bodies work, there are further subcategories inside these two main branches of astronomy such as planetary astronomy, galactic astronomy or physical cosmology. Today, that distinction has disappeared and the terms astronomer. Professional astronomers are highly educated individuals who typically have a Ph. D. in physics or astronomy and are employed by research institutions or universities. They spend the majority of their time working on research, although quite often have other duties such as teaching, building instruments. The number of astronomers in the United States is actually quite small. The American Astronomical Society, which is the organization of professional astronomers in North America, has approximately 7,000 members. This number includes scientists from other such as physics, geology. The International Astronomical Union comprises almost 10,145 members from 70 different countries who are involved in research at the Ph. D. level. Before CCDs, photographic plates were a method of observation. Modern astronomers spend relatively little time at telescopes usually just a few weeks per year, analysis of observed phenomena, along with making predictions as to the causes of what they observe, takes the majority of observational astronomers time. Astronomers who serve as faculty spend much of their time teaching undergraduate and graduate classes, most universities also have outreach programs including public telescope time and sometimes planetariums as a public service to encourage interest in the field. Those who become astronomers usually have a background in maths, sciences. Taking courses that teach how to research, write and present papers are also invaluable, in college/university most astronomers get a Ph. D. in astronomy or physics. Keeping in mind how few there are it is understood that graduate schools in this field are very competitive
10.
Milky Way
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The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains our Solar System. The descriptive milky is derived from the appearance from Earth of the galaxy – a band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be distinguished by the naked eye. The term Milky Way is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610, until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies, the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 100,000 light-years and 180,000 light-years. The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars, there are probably at least 100 billion planets in the Milky Way. The Solar System is located within the disk, about 26,000 light-years from the Galactic Center, on the edge of one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas. The stars in the inner ≈10,000 light-years form a bulge, the very center is marked by an intense radio source, named Sagittarius A*, which is likely to be a supermassive black hole. Stars and gases at a range of distances from the Galactic Center orbit at approximately 220 kilometers per second. The constant rotation speed contradicts the laws of Keplerian dynamics and suggests much of the mass of the Milky Way does not emit or absorb electromagnetic radiation. This mass has been termed dark matter, the rotational period is about 240 million years at the position of the Sun. The Milky Way as a whole is moving at a velocity of approximately 600 km per second with respect to frames of reference. The oldest stars in the Milky Way are nearly as old as the Universe itself, the Milky Way has several satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which is a component of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster. The Milky Way can be seen as a band of white light some 30 degrees wide arcing across the sky. Dark regions within the band, such as the Great Rift, the area of the sky obscured by the Milky Way is called the Zone of Avoidance. The Milky Way has a low surface brightness. Its visibility can be reduced by background light such as light pollution or stray light from the Moon. The sky needs to be darker than about 20.2 magnitude per square arcsecond in order for the Milky Way to be seen and it should be visible when the limiting magnitude is approximately +5.1 or better and shows a great deal of detail at +6.1
11.
The Boston Globe
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The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1872 by Charles H. Taylor, it was held until 1973. The company was acquired in 1993 by The New York Times Company, in 2011, a BostonGlobe. com subscription site was launched. In 2013, the newspaper and websites were purchased by John W. Henry, the Boston Globe has been awarded 26 Pulitzer Prizes since 1966, and its chief print rival is the Boston Herald. The Boston Globe was founded in 1872 by six Boston businessmen, including Charles H. Taylor and Eben Jordan, the first issue was published on March 4,1872, and cost four cents. Originally a morning daily, it began a Sunday edition in 1877, in 1878, The Boston Globe started an afternoon edition called The Boston Evening Globe, which ceased publication in 1979. By the 1890s, The Boston Globe had become a stronghold, in 1964, Tom Winship succeeded his father, Larry Winship, as editor. The younger Winship transformed The Globe from a local paper into a regional paper of national distinction. He served as editor until 1984, during which time the paper won a dozen Pulitzer Prizes, the Boston Globe was a private company until 1973 when it went public under the name Affiliated Publications. It continued to be managed by the descendants of Charles H. Taylor, in 1993, The New York Times Company purchased Affiliated Publications for US$1.1 billion, making The Boston Globe a wholly owned subsidiary of The New York Times parent. The Jordan and Taylor families received substantial New York Times Company stock, Boston. com, the online edition of The Boston Globe, was launched on the World Wide Web in 1995. Consistently ranked among the top ten websites in America, it has won numerous national awards. Under the helm of editor Martin Baron and then Brian McGrory, the Boston Globe is credited with allowing Peter Gammons to start his Notes section on baseball, which has become a mainstay in all major newspapers nationwide. In 2004, Gammons was selected as the 56th recipient of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing, given by the BBWAA, and was honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 31,2005. In 2007, Charlie Savage, whose reports on President Bushs use of signing statements made national news, the Boston Globe has consistently been ranked in the forefront of American journalism. The Boston Globe hosts 28 blogs covering a variety of topics including Boston sports, local politics, on April 2,2009, The New York Times Company threatened to close the paper if its unions did not agree to $20,000,000 of cost savings. Some of the cost savings include reducing union employees pay by 5%, ending pension contributions, the Boston Globe eliminated the equivalent of fifty full-time jobs, among buy-outs and layoffs, it swept out most of the part-time employees in the editorial sections. The papers other three major unions had agreed to concessions on May 3,2009, after The New York Times Company threatened to give the government 60-days notice that it intended to close the paper
12.
Asteroid
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Asteroids are minor planets, especially those of the inner Solar System. The larger ones have also been called planetoids and these terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disc of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet. As minor planets in the outer Solar System were discovered and found to have volatile-based surfaces that resemble those of comets, in this article, the term asteroid refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System including those co-orbital with Jupiter. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the remnants of planetesimals. The large majority of known asteroids orbit in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, or are co-orbital with Jupiter. However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth objects, individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main groups, C-type, M-type, and S-type. These were named after and are identified with carbon-rich, metallic. The size of asteroids varies greatly, some reaching as much as 1000 km across, asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition, while asteroids are composed of mineral and rock, comets are composed of dust. In addition, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of the aforementioned cometary ice, the difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size, meteoroids have a diameter of less than one meter, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter. Finally, meteoroids can be composed of either cometary or asteroidal materials, only one asteroid,4 Vesta, which has a relatively reflective surface, is normally visible to the naked eye, and this only in very dark skies when it is favorably positioned. Rarely, small asteroids passing close to Earth may be visible to the eye for a short time. As of March 2016, the Minor Planet Center had data on more than 1.3 million objects in the inner and outer Solar System, the United Nations declared June 30 as International Asteroid Day to educate the public about asteroids. The date of International Asteroid Day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid impact over Siberia, the first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres, was found in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, and was originally considered to be a new planet. In the early half of the nineteenth century, the terms asteroid. Asteroid discovery methods have improved over the past two centuries. This task required that hand-drawn sky charts be prepared for all stars in the band down to an agreed-upon limit of faintness. On subsequent nights, the sky would be charted again and any moving object would, hopefully, the expected motion of the missing planet was about 30 seconds of arc per hour, readily discernible by observers
13.
Royal Netherlands Army
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The Royal Netherlands Army is the land forces element of the military of the Netherlands. The Royal Netherlands Army was raised on 9 January 1814—however, its origins back to 1572. Therefore, the Netherlands has one of the oldest standing armies in the world, dating back to the 16th century. It fought during the Napoleonic Wars, World War II, the Indonesian War of Independence, Korean War,2 of 3 Dutch Army Brigades are now under German Command. In 2014 the 11th Airmobile Brigade, was integrated into the German Division of fast forces, also the Dutch 43rd Mechanized Brigade, will be integrated into the 1st Panzer Division of the German army. With the integration starting at the beginning of 2016, and the unit becoming operational at the end of 2019, the Dutch-German military cooperation are seen as an example for setting up a European defense union. The Royal Netherlands Army was raised on 9 January 1814, but its origins back to 1572. Therefore, the Netherlands operates one of the worlds oldest standing armies, the Staatse Leger was replaced by the army of the Batavian Republic in 1795, which in turn was replaced by the army of the Kingdom of Holland in 1806. It fought alongside the French in the Anglo-Russian Invasion of Holland in 1799 and several campaigns in Germany, Austria, the independent army was disbanded in 1810 when Napoleon decided to reunite Holland into France. The army units became part of the Grande Armée, the present day French 126th Infantry Regiment has Dutch origins. Dutch army elements participated in the French invasion of Russia in 1812, most notable were the actions of the Pontonniers company under Captain Benthien at the Berezina River. New research points out that, contrary to what is currently believed, an independent Dutch army was resurrected by the new Kingdom of the United Netherlands in 1814, following the Orangist uprising against Napoleonic rule in 1813. This new force, the Netherlands Mobile Army, formed a part of the allied army during the Hundred Days Campaign that culminated in the Battle of Waterloo. Units such as Baron Chassés were key in securing victory for the allied army, since 1814, the army have been involved in several military conflicts (Waterloo campaign 1815, several colonial wars 1825–1925, and the Belgian Revolution 1830–1832. At the beginning of the Second World War, the I Corps was the strategic reserve and was located in the Vesting Holland, around The Hague, Leiden, Haarlem. The Royal Netherlands Army was defeated in May 1940 and only began to rise again with the formation of the Princess Irene Brigade Group in exile, in the Far East, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army was defeated by the Japanese in 1942, few elements managed to escape. The army then fought in the Indonesian War of Independence 1945–1949, in Korea in 1950-53, the Royal Netherlands Navy and an army battalion were sent to Korea between 1950 and 1954. In total,3,972 Soldiers were sent to fight the war in Korea,123 died in combat, the I Corps stood watch alongside its NATO allies in Germany during the Cold War
14.
Haarlem
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Haarlem is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland and is situated at the edge of the Randstad. Haarlem had a population of 155,758 in 2014 and it is a 15-minute train ride from Amsterdam, and many residents commute to the countrys capital for work. Haarlem was granted city status or stadsrechten in 1245, although the first city walls were not built until 1270, the modern city encompasses the former municipality of Schoten as well as parts that previously belonged to Bloemendaal and Heemstede. Apart from the city, the municipality of Haarlem also includes the part of the village of Spaarndam. Newer sections of Spaarndam lie within the municipality of Haarlemmerliede en Spaarnwoude. The city is located on the river Spaarne, about 20 km west of Amsterdam and it has been the historical centre of the tulip bulb-growing district for centuries and bears the nickname Bloemenstad, for this reason. Haarlem has a history dating back to pre-medieval times, as it lies on a thin strip of land above sea level known as the strandwal. The people on this strip of land struggled against the waters of the North Sea from the west, and the waters of the IJ. Haarlem became wealthy with toll revenues that it collected from ships, however, as shipping became increasingly important economically, the city of Amsterdam became the main Dutch city of North Holland during the Dutch Golden Age. The town of Halfweg became a suburb, and Haarlem became a bedroom community. Nowadays many of them are on the Dutch Heritage register known as Rijksmonuments, the list of Rijksmonuments in Haarlem gives an overview of these per neighbourhood, with the majority in the old city centre. The oldest mentioning of Haarlem dates from the 10th century, the name probably comes from Haarlo-heim. This name is composed of three elements, haar, lo and heim, there is not much dispute about the meaning of lo and heim, in Old Dutch toponyms lo always refers to forest and heim to home or house. Haar, however, has several meanings, one of them corresponding with the location of Haarlem on a sand dune, the name Haarlem or Haarloheim would therefore mean home on a forested dune. There was a stream called De Beek, dug from the peat grounds west of the river Spaarne as a drainage canal, over the centuries the Beek was turned into an underground canal, as the city grew larger and the space was needed for construction. Over time it began to silt up and in the 19th century it was filled in, the location of the village was a good one, by the river Spaarne, and by a major road going south to north. By the 12th century it was a town, and Haarlem became the residence of the Counts of Holland
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The Hague
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The Hague is a city on the western coast of the Netherlands, and the capital city of the province of South Holland. With a population of 520,704 inhabitants and more than one million including the suburbs, it is the third-largest city of the Netherlands. The Rotterdam The Hague Metropolitan Area, with a population of approximately 2.7 million, is the 12th-largest in the European Union and the most populous in the country. Located in the west of the Netherlands, The Hague is in the centre of the Haaglanden conurbation and lies at the southwest corner of the larger Randstad conurbation. The Hague is the seat of the Dutch government, parliament, the Supreme Court, and the Council of State, but the city is not the capital of the Netherlands, which constitutionally is Amsterdam. King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands plans to live at Huis ten Bosch and works at Noordeinde Palace in The Hague, the Hague is also home to the world headquarters of Royal Dutch Shell and numerous other major Dutch companies. The Hague originated around 1230, when Count Floris IV of Holland purchased land alongside a pond, in 1248, his son and successor William II, King of the Romans, decided to extend the residence to a palace, which would later be called the Binnenhof. He died in 1256 before this palace was completed but parts of it were finished by his son Floris V, of which the Ridderzaal and it is still used for political events, such as the annual speech from the throne by the Dutch monarch. From the 13th century onwards, the counts of Holland used The Hague as their administrative centre, the village that originated around the Binnenhof was first mentioned as Haga in a charter dating from 1242. In the 15th century, the smarter des Graven hage came into use, literally The Counts Wood, with connotations like The Counts Hedge, s-Gravenhage was officially used for the city from the 17th century onwards. Today, this name is used in some official documents like birth. The city itself uses Den Haag in all its communication and their seat was located in The Hague. At the beginning of the Eighty Years War, the absence of city walls proved disastrous, in 1575, the States of Holland even considered demolishing the city but this proposal was abandoned, after mediation by William of Orange. From 1588, The Hague also became the seat of the government of the Dutch Republic, in order for the administration to maintain control over city matters, The Hague never received official city status, although it did have many of the privileges normally granted only to cities. In modern administrative law, city rights have no place anymore, only in 1806, when the Kingdom of Holland was a puppet state of the First French Empire, was the settlement granted city rights by Louis Bonaparte. After the Napoleonic Wars, modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands were combined in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands to form a buffer against France, as a compromise, Brussels and Amsterdam alternated as capital every two years, with the government remaining in The Hague. After the separation of Belgium in 1830, Amsterdam remained the capital of the Netherlands, when the government started to play a more prominent role in Dutch society after 1850, The Hague quickly expanded. The growing city annexed the rural municipality of Loosduinen partly in 1903, the city sustained heavy damage during World War II
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Scout leader
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A Scout leader or Scouter generally refers to the trained adult leader of a Scout unit. The terms used vary from country to country, over time, there are many different roles a leader can fulfill depending on the type of unit. Positions are usually voluntary and are divided between uniform and lay roles. For many, this volunteerism is an avocation, uniformed Scout Leaders are primarily responsible for organizing the activities of the group, and training the youth members through the Scout program. Other roles include liaison with parents, districts, or other such as the units sponsoring organization. Lay supporters are not always termed Scout Leaders, although they may assist with activities and training, they do not always hold a formal position and may not have received training. Beyond the Scout programme, lay supporters may take responsibility for administrative tasks such as budgets, managing properties, recruitment, equipment, transport, and many other roles. Beyond the group are further uniformed positions at such as district, county, council or province. They also work along with lay teams and professionals, Training teams and other related functions are often formed at these levels. Some countries appoint a Chief Scout or Chief Commissioner as the most senior uniformed member, Scout Leaders participate in a series of training courses, typically aiming for the Wood Badge as the main qualification of an adult leader in Scouting. In most countries, Wood Badge holders can wear a Gilwell scarf, Turks head knot woggle, Scout Leaders are given a formal appointment. Before appointing a leader, most associations perform background checks on candidates to ensure their suitability for working with children. Robert Baden-Powell initially used the terms Scoutmaster and Cubmaster for adult leaders, in Scouts Australia, all five sections have a Leader, although a Joey Leader has a much more driving role than a Venturer Leader, who should be standing back and assisting the elected Unit Chair. Rover Leaders stepped back during the 1970s, becoming Rover Advisors, there are several different types of Leader in Australia, all of them have the opportunity to complete the Wood Badge training scheme Sectional Leaders Run a Troop, Pack, Unit or Mob each week. They are the ones who go away every weekend with the Scouts, Group Leaders Run the Group as a whole, liaising between the Committee, who see to the needs of the Group, hall, power, gear, etc. and the Sectional Leaders. Activity Leaders Have qualifications in activities from Water Activities to Abseilling to Radio and Four Wheel Driving and First Aid and these leaders often have another role in Scouting at the same time. Leader Trainers Provide the Training to other Leaders and usually have been in Scouting for several years, Training is not usually their only role in Scouting. District Leaders Provide help and assistance to local groups, most Districts try to have at least one District Leader for each Section, as well as Public Relations, Adult Training & Development and Water Activities
17.
International Astronomical Union
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The International Astronomical Union is an international association of professional astronomers, at the PhD level and beyond, active in professional research and education in astronomy. Among other activities, it acts as the recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies. The IAU is a member of the International Council for Science and its main objective is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation. The IAU maintains friendly relations with organizations that include amateur astronomers in their membership, the IAU has its head office on the second floor of the Institut dAstrophysique de Paris in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. The IAU is also responsible for the system of astronomical telegrams which are produced and distributed on its behalf by the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, the Minor Planet Center also operates under the IAU, and is a clearinghouse for all non-planetary or non-moon bodies in the Solar System. The Working Group for Meteor Shower Nomenclature and the Meteor Data Center coordinate the nomenclature of meteor showers, the IAU was founded on July 28,1919, at the Constitutive Assembly of the International Research Council held in Brussels, Belgium. The 7 initial member states were Belgium, Canada, France, Great Britain, Greece, Japan, the first executive committee consisted of Benjamin Baillaud, Alfred Fowler, and four vice presidents, William Campbell, Frank Dyson, Georges Lecointe, and Annibale Riccò. Thirty-two Commissions were appointed at the Brussels meeting and focused on topics ranging from relativity to minor planets, the reports of these 32 Commissions formed the main substance of the first General Assembly, which took place in Rome, Italy, May 2–10,1922. By the end of the first General Assembly, ten nations had joined the Union. Although the Union was officially formed eight months after the end of World War I, the first 50 years of the Unions history are well documented. Subsequent history is recorded in the form of reminiscences of past IAU Presidents, twelve of the fourteen past General Secretaries in the period 1964-2006 contributed their recollections of the Unions history in IAU Information Bulletin No.100. Six past IAU Presidents in the period 1976–2003 also contributed their recollections in IAU Information Bulletin No.104, the IAU includes a total of 12,664 individual members who are professional astronomers from 96 countries worldwide. 83% of all members are male, while 17% are female, among them the unions current president. Membership also includes 79 national members, professional astronomical communities representing their countrys affiliation with the IAU, the sovereign body of the IAU is its General Assembly, which comprises all members. The Assembly determines IAU policy, approves the Statutes and By-Laws of the Union, the right to vote on matters brought before the Assembly varies according to the type of business under discussion. On budget matters, votes are weighted according to the subscription levels of the national members. A second category vote requires a turnout of at least two-thirds of national members in order to be valid, an absolute majority is sufficient for approval in any vote, except for Statute revision which requires a two-thirds majority. An equality of votes is resolved by the vote of the President of the Union, since 1922, the IAU General Assembly meets every three years, with the exception of the period between 1938 and 1948, due to World War II
18.
Leiden
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Leiden is a city and municipality in the Dutch province of South Holland. Leiden is located on the Oude Rijn, at a distance of some 20 kilometres from The Hague to its south, the recreational area of the Kaag Lakes lies just to the northeast of Leiden. A university city since 1575, Leiden houses Leiden University, the oldest university of the Netherlands, Leiden is a city with a rich cultural heritage, not only in science, but also in the arts. One of the worlds most famous painters, Rembrandt, was born, other famous Leiden painters include Lucas van Leyden, Jan van Goyen and Jan van Steen. The city has one of Europes most prominent scientific centres for more than four centuries. Modern scientific medical research and teaching started in the early 18th century in Leiden with Boerhaave, many important scientific discoveries have been made here, giving rise to Leiden’s motto, ‘City of Discoveries’. It is twinned with Oxford, the location of the United Kingdoms oldest university, Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences together have around 35,000 students. Leiden is a university city, university buildings are scattered throughout the city. Leiden was formed on a hill at the confluence of the rivers Oude. In the oldest reference to this, from circa 860, the settlement was called Leithon, the name is said to be from Germanic *leitha- canal. Leiden has in the past erroneously been associated with the Roman outpost Lugdunum Batavorum and this particular castellum was thought to be located at the Burcht of Leiden, and the citys name was thought to be derived of the Latin name Lugdunum. However the castellum was in closer to the town of Katwijk. The landlord of Leiden, situated in a stronghold on the hill, was subject to the Bishop of Utrecht. This county got its name in 1101 from a domain near the stronghold, Leiden was sacked in 1047 by Emperor Henry III. Early 13th century, Ada, Countess of Holland took refuge here when she was fighting in a war against her uncle, William I. He besieged the stronghold and captured Ada, Leiden received city rights in 1266. In 1389, its population had grown to about 4,000 persons, burgrave Filips of Wassenaar and the other local noblemen of the Hook faction assumed that the duke would besiege Leiden first and send small units out to conquer the surrounding citadels. But John of Bavaria chose to attack the citadels first and he rolled the cannons with his army but one which was too heavy went by ship
19.
Pieter Johannes van Rhijn
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Pieter Johannes van Rhijn was a Dutch astronomer. Born in Gouda, he studied at Groningen and he served as director at the Sterrenkundig Laboratorium in Groningen and later served for many years as president of the International Astronomical Union. The crater van Rhijn on the Moon is named after him, stamboom geslacht Van Rhijn Biografie van Rhijn, Pieter Johannes van
20.
Harlow Shapley
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Harlow Shapley was an American astronomer. He used RR Lyrae stars to correctly estimate the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, in 1953 he proposed his liquid water belt theory, now known as the concept of a habitable zone. Shapley was born on a farm in Nashville, Missouri, to Willis and Sarah Shapley, after studying at home and covering crime stories as a newspaper reporter, Shapley returned to complete a six-year high school program in only two years, graduating as class valedictorian. In 1907, Shapley went to journalism at the University of Missouri. When he learned that the opening of the School of Journalism had been postponed for a year, rejecting Archaeology, which Harlow later explained he couldnt pronounce, he chose the next subject, Astronomy. He was instrumental in moving away from the idea that Cepheids were spectroscopic binaries. He realized the Milky Way Galaxy was far larger than previously believed, and this discovery by Shapley is a part of the Copernican principle, according to which the Earth is not at the center of our Solar System, our galaxy, or our Universe. Shapley participated in the Great Debate with Heber D. Curtis on the nature of nebulae and galaxies, the debate took place on April 26,1920, in the hall of the United States National Academy of Sciences in Washington D. C. This issue and debate are the start of extragalactic astronomy, while the detailed arguments and data, often with ambiguities, however, Shapleys actual talk and argument given during the Great Debate was completely different from the published paper. Historian Michael Hoskin says His decision was to treat the National Academy of Sciences to an address so elementary that much of it was necessarily uncontroversial. With Shapleys motivation being only to impress a delegation from Harvard who were interviewing him for an offer as the next Director of Harvard College Observatory. With the default by Shapley, Curtis won the debate, the astronomical issues were soon resolved in favor of Curtis position when Edwin Hubble discovered Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda Galaxy. At the time of the debate, Shapley was working at the Mount Wilson Observatory, after the debate, however, he was hired to replace the recently deceased Edward Charles Pickering as director of the Harvard College Observatory. He is also known to have incorrectly opposed Edwin Hubbles observations that there are additional galaxies in the other than the Milky Way. Shapley fiercely critiqued Hubble and regarded his work as junk science, however, after he received a letter from Hubble showing Hubbles observed light curve of V1, he withdrew his criticism. He reportedly told a colleague, Here is the letter that destroyed my universe and he also encouraged Hubble to write a paper for a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Hubbles findings went on to reshape fundamentally the scientific view of the universe and he served as director of the HCO from 1921 to 1952. During this time, he hired Cecilia Payne, who, in 1925, became the first person to earn a doctorate at Radcliffe College in the field of astronomy and he wrote many books on astronomy and the sciences
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Harvard College Observatory
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The Harvard College Observatory is an institution managing a complex of buildings and multiple instruments used for astronomical research by the Harvard University Department of Astronomy. It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and was founded in 1839, with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, it forms part of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. HCO houses a collection of approximately 500,000 astronomical plates taken between the mid-1880s and 1989 and this 100-year coverage is a unique resource for studying temporal variations in the universe. The Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard project is digitally scanning and archiving these photographic plates, in 1839, the Harvard Corporation voted to appoint William Cranch Bond, a prominent Boston clockmaker, as Astronomical Observer to the University. This marked the founding of the Harvard College Observatory, hCOs first telescope, the 15-inch Great Refractor, was installed in 1847. That telescope was the largest in the United States from installation until 1867, on the night of July 16–17,1850, Whipple and Bond made the first daguerreotype of a star. Cannon and Leavitt were hired initially as computers to perform calculations and examine stellar photographs, from 1898 to 1926, a series of Bulletins were issued containing many of the major discoveries of the period. These were then replaced by Announcement Cards which continued to be issued until 1952, in 1908, the observatory published the Harvard Revised Photometry Catalogue, which gave rise to the HR star catalogue, now maintained by the Yale University Observatory as the Bright Star Catalogue. Field 1971–1972 Harvard Computers Sears Tower – Harvard Observatory The Minor Planet Center credits many asteroid discoveries to Harvard Observatory, see List of largest optical refracting telescopes, for other great refractors Dava Sobel. The Glass Universe, How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, HCO home page Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Harvard College Observatory Bulletins Harvard College Announcement Cards
22.
Star cluster
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Star clusters or star clouds are groups of stars. Star clusters visible to the eye include Pleiades, Hyades. Globular clusters, or GC, are roughly spherical groupings of from 10,000 to several million stars packed into regions of from 10 to 30 light years across. They commonly consist of very old Population II stars—just a few hundred years younger than the universe itself—which are mostly yellow and red. Such stars predominate within clusters because hotter and more stars have exploded as supernovae. Yet a few rare blue stars exist in globulars, thought to be formed by mergers in their dense inner regions. In our galaxy, globular clusters are distributed roughly spherically in the halo, around the galactic centre. Super star clusters, such as Westerlund 1 in the Milky Way, may be the precursors of globular clusters. Our galaxy has about 150 globular clusters, some of which may have captured from small galaxies disrupted by the Milky Way. Some galaxies are much richer in globulars, the giant elliptical galaxy M87 contains over a thousand. A few of the brightest globular clusters are visible to the eye, with the brightest, Omega Centauri, having been known since antiquity. The best known globular cluster in the northern hemisphere is M13, in 2005, astronomers discovered a completely new type of star cluster in the Andromeda Galaxy, which is, in several ways, very similar to globular clusters. Currently, there are not any intermediate clusters discovered in the Milky Way, the three discovered in Andromeda Galaxy are M31WFS C1 M31WFS C2, and M31WFS C3. These new-found star clusters contain hundreds of thousands of stars, a number of stars that can be found in globular clusters. The clusters also share characteristics with globular clusters, e. g. the stellar populations. What distinguishes them from the clusters is that they are much larger – several hundred light-years across –. The distances between the stars are, therefore, much greater within the newly discovered extended clusters, parametrically, these clusters lie somewhere between a globular cluster and a dwarf spheroidal galaxy. How these clusters are formed is not yet known, but their formation might well be related to that of globular clusters, why M31 has such clusters, while the Milky Way has not, is not yet known
23.
Magnitude (astronomy)
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In astronomy, magnitude is a logarithmic measure of the brightness of an object, measured in a specific wavelength or passband, usually in the visible or near-infrared spectrum. An imprecise but systematic determination of the magnitude of objects was introduced in ancient times by Hipparchus, astronomers use two different definitions of magnitude, apparent magnitude and absolute magnitude. This distance is 10 parsecs for stars and 1 astronomical unit for planets, a minor planets size is typically estimated based on its absolute magnitude in combination with its presumed albedo. The brighter an object appears, the lower the value of its magnitude, with the brightest objects reaching negative values. The Sun has an apparent magnitude of −27, the full moon −13, the brightest planet Venus measures −5, and Sirius, an apparent magnitude can also be assigned to man-made objects in Earth orbit. The brightest satellite flares are ranked at −9, and the International Space Station, ISS, the scale is logarithmic, and defined such that each step of one magnitude changes the brightness by a factor of the fifth root of 100, or approximately 2.512. For example, a magnitude 1 star is exactly a hundred times brighter than a magnitude 6 star, the magnitude system dates back roughly 2000 years to the Greek astronomer Hipparchus who classified stars by their apparent brightness, which they saw as size. To the unaided eye, a prominent star such as Sirius or Arcturus appears larger than a less prominent star such as Mizar. For all the other Stars, which are seen by the Help of a Telescope. Note that the brighter the star, the smaller the magnitude, Bright first magnitude stars are 1st-class stars, the system was a simple delineation of stellar brightness into six distinct groups but made no allowance for the variations in brightness within a group. He concluded that first magnitude stars measured 2 arc minutes in apparent diameter, with second through sixth magnitude stars measuring 1 1⁄2′, 1 1⁄12′, 3⁄4′, 1⁄2′, the development of the telescope showed that these large sizes were illusory—stars appeared much smaller through the telescope. However, early telescopes produced a spurious disk-like image of a star that was larger for brighter stars, early photometric measurements demonstrated that first magnitude stars are about 100 times brighter than sixth magnitude stars. Thus in 1856 Norman Pogson of Oxford proposed that a scale of 5√100 ≈2.512 be adopted between magnitudes, so five magnitude steps corresponded precisely to a factor of 100 in brightness. Every interval of one magnitude equates to a variation in brightness of 5√100 or roughly 2.512 times. Consequently, a first magnitude star is about 2.5 times brighter than a second star,2.52 brighter than a third magnitude star,2.53 brighter than a fourth magnitude star. This is the modern system, which measures the brightness, not the apparent size. Using this logarithmic scale, it is possible for a star to be brighter than “first class”, so Arcturus or Vega are magnitude 0, and Sirius is magnitude −1.46. As mentioned above, the scale appears to work in reverse, the larger the negative value, the brighter
24.
Hubble Space Telescope
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The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, with a 2. 4-meter mirror, Hubbles four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra. Hubbles orbit outside the distortion of Earths atmosphere allows it to take extremely high-resolution images, Hubble has recorded some of the most detailed visible light images ever, allowing a deep view into space and time. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as determining the rate of expansion of the universe. The HST was built by the United States space agency NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute selects Hubbles targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center controls the spacecraft. Space telescopes were proposed as early as 1923, Hubble was funded in the 1970s, with a proposed launch in 1983, but the project was beset by technical delays, budget problems, and the Challenger disaster. When finally launched in 1990, Hubbles main mirror was found to have been ground incorrectly, the optics were corrected to their intended quality by a servicing mission in 1993. Hubble is the telescope designed to be serviced in space by astronauts. After launch by Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990, five subsequent Space Shuttle missions repaired, upgraded, the fifth mission was canceled on safety grounds following the Columbia disaster. However, after spirited public discussion, NASA administrator Mike Griffin approved the fifth servicing mission, the telescope is operating as of 2017, and could last until 2030–2040. Its scientific successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is scheduled for launch in 2018, the history of the Hubble Space Telescope can be traced back as far as 1946, to the astronomer Lyman Spitzers paper Astronomical advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory. In it, he discussed the two advantages that a space-based observatory would have over ground-based telescopes. First, the resolution would be limited only by diffraction, rather than by the turbulence in the atmosphere. Second, a telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light. Spitzer devoted much of his career to pushing for the development of a space telescope, space-based astronomy had begun on a very small scale following World War II, as scientists made use of developments that had taken place in rocket technology. An orbiting solar telescope was launched in 1962 by the United Kingdom as part of the Ariel space program, oAO-1s battery failed after three days, terminating the mission. It was followed by OAO-2, which carried out observations of stars and galaxies from its launch in 1968 until 1972. The continuing success of the OAO program encouraged increasingly strong consensus within the community that the LST should be a major goal
25.
Cosmic dust
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Cosmic dust, or Extraterrestrial dust, is dust which exists in outer space, as well as all over planet Earth. Most cosmic dust particles are between a few molecules to 0.1 µm in size, a smaller fraction of all dust in space consists of larger refractory minerals that condensed as matter left the stars. It is called stardust and is included in a section below. The dust density falling to Earth is approximately 10−6/m3 with each grain having a mass between 10−16kg and 10−4 kg, cosmic dust can be further distinguished by its astronomical location, intergalactic dust, interstellar dust, interplanetary dust and circumplanetary dust. In the Solar System, interplanetary dust causes the zodiacal light, sources of Solar System dust include comet dust, asteroidal dust, dust from the Kuiper belt, and interstellar dust passing through the Solar System. The terminology has no application for describing materials found on the planet Earth except for dust that has demonstrably fallen to Earth. By one estimate, as much as 40,000 tons of cosmic dust reaches the Earths surface every year, in October 2011, scientists reported that cosmic dust contains complex organic matter that could be created naturally, and rapidly, by stars. In August 2014, scientists announced the collection of interstellar dust particles from the Stardust spacecraft since returning to Earth in 2006. In March 2017, scientists reported that extraterrestrial dust particles have been identified all over planet Earth. According to one of the researchers, “Once I knew what to look for, I found them everywhere. ”Cosmic dust was once solely an annoyance to astronomers, when infrared astronomy began, those dust particles were observed to be significant and vital components of astrophysical processes. Their analysis can reveal information about phenomena like the formation of the Solar System, for example, cosmic dust can drive the mass loss when a star is nearing the end of its life, play a part in the early stages of star formation, and form planets. In the Solar System, dust plays a role in the zodiacal light, Saturns B Ring spokes, the outer diffuse planetary rings at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These disparate research areas can be linked by the following theme, the astronomers accumulate observational ‘snapshots’ of dust at different stages of its life and, over time, form a more complete movie of the Universes complicated recycling steps. Parameters such as the initial motion, material properties, intervening plasma. Slightly changing any of these parameters can give significantly different dust dynamical behavior, therefore, one can learn about where that object came from, and what is the intervening medium. Cosmic dust can be detected by indirect methods utilizing the properties of cosmic dust. Cosmic dust can also be detected using a variety of collection methods. Estimates of the influx of extraterrestrial material entering the Earths atmosphere range between 5 and 300 tonnes
26.
Gravitational collapse
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Gravitational collapse is the contraction of an astronomical object due to the influence of its own gravity, which tends to draw matter inward toward the center of mass. Gravitational collapse is a mechanism for structure formation in the universe. A star is born through the gravitational collapse of a cloud of interstellar matter. The star then exists in a state of dynamic equilibrium, once all its energy sources are exhausted, a star will again collapse until it reaches a new equilibrium state. An interstellar cloud of gas will remain in equilibrium as long as the kinetic energy of the gas pressure is in balance with the potential energy of the internal gravitational force. Mathematically this is expressed using the theorem, which states that, to maintain equilibrium. If a pocket of gas is enough that the gas pressure is insufficient to support it. The mass above which a cloud will undergo such collapse is called the Jeans mass and this mass depends on the temperature and density of the cloud, but is typically thousands to tens of thousands of solar masses. At what is called the death of the star, it will undergo a contraction that can be halted if it reaches a new state of equilibrium. If it has a star, a white dwarf-sized object can accrete matter from the companion star until it reaches the Chandrasekhar limit at which point gravitational collapse takes over again. While it might seem that the white dwarf might collapse to the stage, they instead undergo runaway carbon fusion. Neutron stars are formed by collapse of the cores of larger stars. They are so compact that a Newtonian description is inadequate for an accurate treatment, hence, the collapse continues with nothing to stop it. Once a body collapses to within its Schwarzschild radius it forms what is called a black hole and it follows from a theorem of Roger Penrose that the subsequent formation of some kind of singularity is inevitable. On the other hand, the nature of the kind of singularity to be expected inside a hole remains rather controversial. According to some theories, at a stage, the collapsing object will reach the maximum possible energy density for a certain volume of space or the Planck density. This is when the laws of gravity cease to be valid. There are competing theories as to what occurs at this point, the radii of larger mass neutron stars are estimated to be about 12-km, or approximately 2.0 times their equivalent Schwarzschild radius
27.
Visible spectrum
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The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 700 nm, in terms of frequency, this corresponds to a band in the vicinity of 430–770 THz. The spectrum does not, however, contain all the colors that the human eyes, unsaturated colors such as pink, or purple variations such as magenta, are absent, for example, because they can be made only by a mix of multiple wavelengths. Colors containing only one wavelength are called pure colors or spectral colors. Visible wavelengths pass through the window, the region of the electromagnetic spectrum that allows wavelengths to pass largely unattenuated through the Earths atmosphere. An example of this phenomenon is that clean air scatters blue light more than red wavelengths, the optical window is also referred to as the visible window because it overlaps the human visible response spectrum. The near infrared window lies just out of the vision, as well as the Medium Wavelength IR window. In the 13th century, Roger Bacon theorized that rainbows were produced by a process to the passage of light through glass or crystal. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton discovered that prisms could disassemble and reassemble white light and he was the first to use the word spectrum in this sense in print in 1671 in describing his experiments in optics. The result is red light is bent less sharply than violet as it passes through the prism. Newton divided the spectrum into seven named colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, the human eye is relatively insensitive to indigos frequencies, and some people who have otherwise-good vision cannot distinguish indigo from blue and violet. For this reason, some commentators, including Isaac Asimov, have suggested that indigo should not be regarded as a color in its own right. However, the evidence indicates that what Newton meant by indigo, comparing Newtons observation of prismatic colors to a color image of the visible light spectrum shows that indigo corresponds to what is today called blue, whereas blue corresponds to cyan. In the 18th century, Goethe wrote about optical spectra in his Theory of Colours, Goethe used the word spectrum to designate a ghostly optical afterimage, as did Schopenhauer in On Vision and Colors. Goethe argued that the spectrum was a compound phenomenon. Where Newton narrowed the beam of light to isolate the phenomenon, Goethe observed that a wider aperture produces not a spectrum but rather reddish-yellow, the spectrum appears only when these edges are close enough to overlap. Young was the first to measure the wavelengths of different colors of light, the connection between the visible spectrum and color vision was explored by Thomas Young and Hermann von Helmholtz in the early 19th century
28.
Infrared
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It extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers, to 1000000 nm. Most of the radiation emitted by objects near room temperature is infrared. Like all EMR, IR carries radiant energy, and behaves both like a wave and like its quantum particle, the photon, slightly more than half of the total energy from the Sun was eventually found to arrive on Earth in the form of infrared. The balance between absorbed and emitted infrared radiation has an effect on Earths climate. Infrared radiation is emitted or absorbed by molecules when they change their rotational-vibrational movements and it excites vibrational modes in a molecule through a change in the dipole moment, making it a useful frequency range for study of these energy states for molecules of the proper symmetry. Infrared spectroscopy examines absorption and transmission of photons in the infrared range, Infrared radiation is used in industrial, scientific, and medical applications. Night-vision devices using active near-infrared illumination allow people or animals to be observed without the observer being detected, Infrared thermal-imaging cameras are used to detect heat loss in insulated systems, to observe changing blood flow in the skin, and to detect overheating of electrical apparatuses. Thermal-infrared imaging is used extensively for military and civilian purposes, military applications include target acquisition, surveillance, night vision, homing, and tracking. Humans at normal body temperature radiate chiefly at wavelengths around 10 μm, Infrared radiation extends from the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum at 700 nanometers to 1 mm. This range of wavelengths corresponds to a range of approximately 430 THz down to 300 GHz. Below infrared is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sunlight, at a temperature of 5,780 kelvins, is composed of near thermal-spectrum radiation that is slightly more than half infrared. At zenith, sunlight provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level, of this energy,527 watts is infrared radiation,445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet radiation. Nearly all the radiation in sunlight is near infrared, shorter than 4 micrometers. On the surface of Earth, at far lower temperatures than the surface of the Sun, almost all thermal radiation consists of infrared in mid-infrared region, much longer than in sunlight. Of these natural thermal radiation processes only lightning and natural fires are hot enough to produce much visible energy, thermal infrared radiation also has a maximum emission wavelength, which is inversely proportional to the absolute temperature of object, in accordance with Wiens displacement law. Therefore, the band is often subdivided into smaller sections. Due to the nature of the blackbody radiation curves, typical hot objects, such as exhaust pipes, the three regions are used for observation of different temperature ranges, and hence different environments in space
29.
Oak Ridge Observatory
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The Oak Ridge Observatory, also known as the George R. Agassiz Station, is located at 42 Pinnacle Road, Harvard, Massachusetts. It was operated by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a facility of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory until August 19,2005, the observatory was established in 1933. Through its first 40 years, its research focus was on tracking minor planets. Starting in the 1980s, astronomers began to use the facility to measure stars over long periods of time, surveys at Oak Ridge found many such distant planets. The largest telescope east of Texas in the United States is the 61-inch reflector, however, most of its projects were discontinued in 2005. Harvard Universitys Optical SETI program continues at the site and it also housed an 84-foot steerable radio telescope once used in Project BETA, a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The George R. Agassiz radio telescope of Harvard Observatory, Astronomical Journal, Vol.62, p.8,1957
30.
Australian National University
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The Australian National University is a national research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, founded in 1946, it is the only university to have been created by the Parliament of Australia. ANU enrolls 10,052 undergraduate and 10,840 postgraduate students, the universitys endowment stood at A$1.13 billion in 2012. ANU is ranked 22nd in the world by the 2016/17 QS World University Rankings, ANU was named the worlds 7th most international university in a 2017 study by Times Higher Education. In the 2016 Times Higher Education Global Employability University Ranking, a ranking of university graduates employability. ANU is ranked 100th in the CWTS Leiden ranking, ANU counts six Nobel laureates and 49 Rhodes scholars among its faculty and alumni. The university has educated two prime ministers,30 current Australian ambassadors and more than a dozen current heads of Government departments of Australia, calls for the establishment of a national university in Australia began as early as 1900. After the location of the capital, Canberra, was determined in 1908. A group of eminent Australian scholars returned from overseas to join the university, including Sir Howard Florey, Sir Mark Oliphant, Sir Keith Hancock, economist Sir Douglas Copland was appointed as ANUs first Vice-Chancellor and former Prime Minister Stanley Bruce served as the first Chancellor. ANU was originally organised into four centres—the Research Schools of Physical Sciences, Social Sciences and Pacific Studies, the first residents’ hall, University House, was opened in 1954 for faculty members and postgraduate students. Mount Stromlo Observatory, established by the government in 1924. The first locations of the ANU Library, the Menzies and Chifley buildings, the Australian Forestry School, located in Canberra since 1927, was amalgamated by ANU in 1965. Canberra University College was the first institution of education in the national capital, having been established in 1929. Its founding was led by Sir Robert Garran, one of the drafters of the Australian Constitution, CUC was affiliated with the University of Melbourne and its degrees were granted by that university. Academic leaders at CUC included historian Manning Clark, political scientist Finlay Crisp, in 1960, CUC was integrated into ANU as the School of General Studies, initially with faculties in arts, economics, law and science. Faculties in Oriental studies and engineering were introduced later, Bruce Hall, the first residential college for undergraduates, opened in 1961. The Canberra School of Music and the Canberra School of Art were amalgamated by ANU in 1992, ANU established its Medical School in 2002, after obtaining federal government approval in 2000. On 18 January 2003, the Canberra bushfires largely destroyed the Mount Stromlo Observatory, ANU astronomers now conduct research from the Siding Spring Observatory, which contains 10 telescopes including the Anglo-Australian Telescope
31.
Canberra
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Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of 381,488, it is Australias largest inland city, the city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory,280 km south-west of Sydney, and 660 km north-east of Melbourne. A resident of Canberra is known as a Canberran, the site of Canberra was selected for the location of the nations capital in 1908 as a compromise between rivals Sydney and Melbourne, Australias two largest cities. It is unusual among Australian cities, being a planned city outside of any state, similar to Washington, D. C. in the United States. Following an international contest for the design, a blueprint by American architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin was selected. The Griffins plan featured geometric motifs such as circles, hexagons and triangles, the citys design was influenced by the garden city movement and incorporates significant areas of natural vegetation that have earned Canberra the title of the bush capital. Although the Australian Capital Territory is now self-governing, the Commonwealth Government retains some influence through the National Capital Authority, the Australian Armys officer corps is trained at the Royal Military College, Duntroon and the Australian Defence Force Academy is also located in the capital. The ACT is independent of any state to prevent any one state from gaining an advantage by hosting the seat of Commonwealth power, the ACT has voting representation in the Commonwealth Parliament, and has its own independent Legislative Assembly and government, similar to the states. Compared to the averages, the unemployment rate is lower. Property prices are high, in part due to comparatively restrictive development regulations. An 1830s map of the region by Major Mitchell indeed does mark the Sullivans Creek floodplain between two mountains as Nganbra. Nganbra or Nganbira could readily have been anglicised to the name Canberry, survey plans of the district dated 1837 refer to the area as the Canberry Plain. Although popularly pronounced /ˈkænbərə/ or /ˈkænbɛrə/, the pronunciation at its official naming in 1913 was /ˈkæn. brə/. Before white settlement, the area in which Canberra would eventually be constructed was seasonally inhabited by Indigenous Australians, archaeological evidence of settlement in the region includes inhabited rock shelters, rock paintings and engravings, burial places, camps and quarry sites, and stone tools and arrangements. Artefacts suggests early human activity occurred at some point in the area 21,000 years previously, European exploration and settlement started in the Canberra area as early as the 1820s. There were four expeditions between 1820 and 1824, white settlement of the area probably dates from 1823, when a homestead or station was built on what is now the Acton peninsula by stockmen employed by Joshua John Moore. He formally applied to purchase the site on 16 December 1826, on 30 April 1827, Moore was told by letter that he could retain possession of 1,000 acres at Canberry. The European population in the Canberra area continued to grow throughout the 19th century
32.
Prime Minister of Australia
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The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the head of government of Australia. The individual who holds the office is the most senior Minister of the Crown, the leader of the Cabinet, the office is not mentioned in the Constitution of Australia and exists only through longstanding political convention and tradition. Despite this, in practice it is the most powerful position in Australia. The individual who holds the office is commissioned by the Governor-General of Australia, almost always and according to convention, the Prime Minister is the leader of the majority party or largest party in a coalition of parties in the House of Representatives. However, there is no requirement that the prime minister sit in the House of Representatives. The only case where a member of the Senate was appointed minister was John Gorton. Malcolm Turnbull has held the office of Prime Minister since 15 September 2015, the Prime Minister and Treasurer are traditionally members of the House, but the Constitution does not have such a requirement. Before being sworn in as a Minister of the Crown, a person must first be sworn in as a member of the Federal Executive Council if they are not already a member. Membership of the Federal Executive Council entitles the member to the style of The Honourable for life, the senior members of the Executive Council constitute the Cabinet of Australia. The Prime Minister is, like ministers, normally sworn in by the Governor-General. When defeated in an election, or on resigning, the Prime Minister is said to hand in the commission, in the event of a Prime Minister dying in office, or becoming incapacitated, the Governor-General can terminate the commission. Despite the importance of the office of minister, the Constitution does not mention the office by name. The conventions of the Westminster system were thought to be entrenched in Australia by the authors of the Constitution that it was deemed unnecessary to detail them. The formal title of the portfolio has always been simply Prime Minister, except for the period of the Fourth Deakin Ministry, Page was the leader of the smaller party in the governing coalition, the Country Party. He held the office for three weeks until the UAP elected a new leader, Robert Menzies, in August 1941 Menzies resigned as prime minister. In July 1945 John Curtin died suddenly and his deputy, Frank Forde, was sworn in the next day as prime minister, although the Labor Party had not had an opportunity to meet and elect a new leader. Forde served for eight days until Ben Chifley was elected leader, Chifley was then sworn in, replacing Forde, who became Australias shortest-serving prime minister. Harold Holt disappeared while swimming on 17 December 1967 and was declared presumed dead on 19 December, the governor-general, Lord Casey, commissioned the Leader of the Country Party, John McEwen, to form a government until the Liberal Party elected a new leader
33.
Robert Menzies
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Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, KT, AK, CH, PC, QC, FAA, FRS, was the Prime Minister of Australia from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1949 to 1966. He is Australias longest-serving prime minister, serving over 18 years in total, Menzies studied law at the University of Melbourne and became one of Melbournes leading lawyers. He was Deputy Premier of Victoria from 1932 to 1934, and then transferred to federal parliament, subsequently becoming Attorney-General, in April 1939, following Lyons death, Menzies was elected leader of the United Australia Party and sworn in as prime minister. He authorised Australias entry into World War II in September 1939, on his return to Australia in August 1941, Menzies found that he had lost the support of his party and consequently resigned as prime minister. He subsequently helped to create the new Liberal Party, and was elected its leader in August 1945. At the 1949 federal election, Menzies led the Liberal–Country coalition to victory, after 1955, his government also received support from the Democratic Labor Party, a breakaway group from the Labor Party. Menzies won seven consecutive elections during his term, eventually retiring as prime minister in January 1966. Robert Gordon Menzies was born to James Menzies and Kate in Jeparit and he was the fourth of six children, with one sister and three brothers. His maternal grandfather, John Sampson, was a Cornish miner from Penzance who also came to seek his fortune on the goldfields and his father was elected to the Victorian State Parliament for the seat of Lowan in 1911 and moved with the family to Melbourne after selling the farm. His middle name, Gordon, was given to him in honour and memory of Charles George Gordon, Menziess formal education began at Humffray Street State School in Bakery Hill, Ballarat, then later at private school in Ballarat. He attended Wesley College in Melbourne and studied law at the University of Melbourne, when World War I began, Menzies was 19 years old and held a commission in the universitys militia unit. He resigned his commission at the very time others of his age and it was later stated that, since the family had made enough of a sacrifice to the war with the enlistment of two of three eligible brothers, Menzies should stay to finish his studies. Menzies himself never explained the reason why he chose not to enlist and it should be noted that the two brothers, James and Frank, who did enlist did not do so until 1915 after the landings at Anzac which belies the alleged reason. Subsequently, he was prominent in undergraduate activities and won prizes and declared himself to be a patriotic supporter of the war. In 1916 he became the editor of the Melbourne University Magazine, establishing a reputation as an unusually bright and articulate member of the undergraduate community. After graduating from the University of Melbourne in 1916 with First Class Honours in Law, Menzies was admitted to the Victorian Bar and to the High Court of Australia in 1918. Establishing his own practice in Melbourne, Menzies specialised chiefly in Constitutional law which he had read with the leading Victorian jurist and future High Court judge, Sir Owen Dixon. In 1920 Menzies served as an advocate for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers which eventually took its appeal to the High Court of Australia, the case became a landmark authority for the positive reinterpretation of Commonwealth powers over those of the States
34.
Siding Spring Observatory
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The observatory is situated 1,165 metres above sea level in the Warrumbungle National Park on Mount Woorat, also known as Siding Spring Mountain. Siding Spring Observatory is owned by the Australian National University and is part of the Mount Stromlo, more than A$100 million worth of research equipment is located at the observatory. There are 52 telescopes on site, the original Mount Stromlo Observatory was set up by the Commonwealth Government in 1924. After duty supplying optical components to the military in World War II, between 1953 and 1974, the 74-inch reflecting telescope at Mount Stromlo was the largest optical telescope in Australia. Already in the 1950s, the lights of Canberra, ACT, had brightened the sky at Mount Stromlo to such an extent that many faint astronomical objects had been overwhelmed by light pollution. The search for a new site was initiated by Bart Bok, after a site survey was undertaken the number of possible locations was narrowed down to two — Siding Spring and Mount Bingar near Griffith, also in New South Wales. Siding Spring was first suggested for astronomy by Harley Wood, the New South Wales Government Astronomer at the time, arthur Hogg did much of the preliminary site testing. The Siding Spring site was selected by the ANU in 1962 from many possible locations because of the dark. By the mid-1960s the ANU had set up three telescopes, together with supporting facilities, such as sealed roads, staff accommodation, electricity and water. In 1984, the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, opened the ANUs largest telescope, since the 1950s, and quite independently of developments at Siding Spring, the Australian and British governments had been negotiating about the construction of a very large telescope. During the construction of the AAT in the early 1970s, the British Science Research Council also built the UK Schmidt Telescope,1 kilometre to the northeast of the AAT dome. The considerably wider field of view of the Schmidt optical design complements the narrower field of the AAT, interesting objects so discovered are then studied in greater detail on the larger instrument. In 1987, the Schmidt Telescope was amalgamated with the AAT, Siding Spring Observatory also houses many telescopes from institutions across the world including, Korea, America, the U. K. Poland, Hungary, Germany and Russia. In 1990, the earth-satellite tracking facility of the Royal Greenwich Observatory was closed down after 10 years of operation, las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network operate a 2-metre Ritchey Chretien telescope used for research, citizen science, and education purposes by users across the globe. Currently there are one thousand registered users of the Faulkes Telescopes. The wide field of view and the fast response permit measurements inaccessible to conventional instruments. HAT-South is a project to search for transiting planets in the Southern Hemisphere. It uses a network of telescopes to monitor hundreds of thousands of bright stars
35.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is Australias national public broadcaster, owned and funded by the government. The ABC plays a role in the history of broadcasting in Australia. With a total budget of A$1. Founded in 1929 as the Australian Broadcasting Company, it was made a state-owned corporation on 1 July 1932 as the Australian Broadcasting Commission. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 changed the name of the organisation to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, although funded and owned by the government, the ABC remains editorially independent as ensured through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983. The ABC is sometimes referred to as Aunty, originally in imitation of the British Broadcasting Corporations nickname. The first public station in Australia opened in Sydney on 23 November 1923 under the call sign 2SB with other stations in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth. It also nationalised the Australian Broadcasting Company which had created by entertainment interests to supply programs to various radio stations. Over the next four years the stations were reformed into a broadcasting organisation through regular program relays. The Australian broadcast radio spectrum was constituted of the ABC and the commercial sector, in 1942 The Australian Broadcasting Act was passed, giving the ABC the power to decide when, and in what circumstances, political speeches should be broadcast. Directions from the Minister about whether or not to broadcast any matter now had to be made in writing and it was used only once, in 1963. In the same year, Kindergarten of the Air began on ABC Radio in Perth, cater argues that reform was urgently needed in 1945, By the end of World War II, the ABC was a decadent, hollow institution. Its authority had been compromised by a poorly drafted charter and further undermined by timid management, poor governance, in April 1945, Boyer refused to accept the post of chairman until Prime Minister Curtin issued a mandate of independence which Boyer drafted itself. The ABC commenced television broadcasting in 1956, and followed the earlier practice of naming the station after the first letter of the base state. ABN-2 Sydney was inaugurated by Prime Minister Robert Menzies on 5 November 1956, with the first broadcast presented by Michael Charlton, aBV-2 followed two weeks later, on 18 November 1956. Stations in other cities followed, ABQ-2, ABS-2, ABW-2. ABC-3 Canberra opened in 1961, and ABD-6 started broadcasting in 1971, although radio programs could be distributed nationally by landline, television relay facilities were not in place until the early 1960s. This meant that news bulletins had to be sent to each city by teleprinter, to be prepared and presented separately in each city, with filmed materials copied manually
36.
Anglo-Australian Telescope
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In 2009, the telescope was ranked as the fifth highest-impact of the worlds optical telescopes. In 2001–2003, it was considered the most scientifically productive 4 metre-class optical telescope in the based on scientific publications using data from the telescope. The telescope was commissioned in 1974 with a view to allowing high quality observations of the sky from the southern hemisphere, at the time, most major telescopes were located in the northern hemisphere, leaving the southern skies poorly observed. It was the largest telescope in the Southern hemisphere from 1974-1976, then a second to the Victor M. Blanco Telescope from 1976 until 1998. The AAT was credited with stimulating a resurgence in British optical astronomy and it was constructed by Australia and the United Kingdom but has been entirely funded by Australia since 2010. Observing time is available to astronomers worldwide, the AAT was one of the last large telescopes built with an equatorial mount. More recent large telescopes have instead adopted the compact and mechanically stable altazimuth mount. The AAT was, however, one of the very first telescopes to be fully computer-controlled, richard van der Riet Woolley pushed for a large optical telescope for the southern hemisphere in 1959. A Joint Policy Committee started work on planning in August 1967. It took until September 1969 for plans to be finalised, the agreement initially committed the specification to a telescope design based on the Kitt Peak telescope until its deficiencies were known. Both the horseshoe mount and the system needed improvements. Although the revised system was considerably more expensive it was significantly more accurate. The mirror was made by Owens-Illinois in Toledo, Ohio and it was then transported to Newcastle, England where Sir Howard Grubb, Parsons and Co took two years to grind and polish the mirrors surface. Mitsubishi Electric built the mount which was constructed by August 1973, first light occurred on 27 April 1974. The telescope was opened by Prince Charles on 16 October 1974. The telescope is housed within a seven-story, circular, concrete building and it was designed to withstand the high winds prevailing at that location. The dome is required to move with the telescope to avoid obstruction, the dome structure is 118 feet high. The University College London Échelle Spectrograph, a high-resolution optical spectrograph which has used to discover many extrasolar planets
37.
Jan Oort
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Jan Hendrik Oort ForMemRS was a Dutch astronomer who made significant contributions to the understanding of the Milky Way and who was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy. ”In 1955, Oort’s name appeared in Life Magazine’s list of the 100 most famous living people. He has been described as “putting the Netherlands in the forefront of postwar astronomy. ”Oort determined that the Milky Way rotates and overturned the idea that the Sun was at its center. He discovered the galactic halo, a group of stars orbiting the Milky Way but outside the main disk. ”The Oort cloud, the Oort constants, and the Asteroid,1691 Oort, were all named after him. Oort was born in Franeker, a town in the Dutch province of Friesland, on April 28,1900. ”Several of Oort’s uncles were pastors. “My mother kept up her interests in that, at least in the years of her marriage. “But my father was interested in Church matters. ”In 1903 Oort’s parents moved to Oegstgeest, near Leiden. Oorts father, “was a medical director in a sanitorium for nervous illnesses. We lived in the house of the sanitorium, in a small forest which was very nice for the children, of course, to grow up in. ”Oort’s younger brother, John. In addition to John, Oort had two sisters and an older brother who died of diabetes when he was a student. Oort attended primary school in Oegstgeest and secondary school in Leiden, Oort later said that he had become interested in science and astronomy during his high-school years, and conjectured that his interest was stimulated by reading Jules Verne. His one hesitation about studying pure science was the concern that it “might alienate one a bit from people in general, ” as a result of which “one might not develop the human factor sufficiently. Oort chose Groningen partly because a well known astronomer, Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, was teaching there, after studying with Kapteyn, Oort decided on astronomy. “It was the personality of Professor Kapteyn which decided me entirely, “He was quite an inspiring teacher and especially his elementary astronomy lectures were fascinating. ”Oort began working on research with Kapteyn early in his third year. According to Oort one professor at Groningen who had influence on his education was physicist Frits Zernike. At Yale, Oort was responsible for making observations with the Observatory’s zenith telescope. “I worked on the problem of variation, ” he later recalled, “which is quite far away from the subjects I had so far been studying. ”Personally, he “felt somewhat lonesome in Yale, ” but also said that “some of my very best friends were made in these years in New Haven. ”In 1924, Oort returned to the Netherlands to work at Leiden University, where he served as a research assistant, becoming Conservator in 1926, Lecturer in 1930. In 1926, he received his doctorate from Groningen with a thesis on the properties of high-velocity stars, Oort provided two formulae that described galactic rotation, the two constants that figured in these formulae are now known as “Oort’s constants. He also showed that stars lying in the regions of the galactic disk rotated more slowly than those nearer the center
38.
Australian Astronomical Observatory
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The Australian Astronomical Observatory, formerly the Anglo-Australian Observatory, is an optical/near-infrared astronomy observatory with its headquarters in North Ryde in suburban Sydney, Australia. Originally funded jointly by the United Kingdom and Australian governments, it is now managed wholly by Australias Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. The AAO operates the 3. 9-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope and 1. 2-metre UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, located near the town of Coonabarabran, UK involvement in the AAO ceased in June 2010, with the change of name and management arrangements effective from 1 July 2010. In the years immediately after World War II optical observational astronomy in the UK was toiling due to a lack of modern infrastructure, there were no large telescopes in the southern hemisphere despite some of the most intriguing astronomical objects being best placed for study from these latitudes. In the 1950s Richard Woolley, Director of Mount Stromlo Observatory from 1939–1956 and Astronomer Royal from 1956–1971 and it was finally agreed in April 1967 that the building of a 150 telescope, the Anglo-Australian Telescope, should proceed. The telescope was to be located on Siding Spring Mountain in the Warrumbungles, which was owned by the Australian National University, the Anglo-Australian Telescope Agreement was signed on 25 September 1969 and came into effect on 22 February 1971. As construction of the AAT gathered pace, a debate ensued as to the details of the management structure which would control the telescope. The matter was not settled until June 1973 when the Australian government endorsed the AATBs decision for an independent staff, the first Director, Joe Wampler, took up his post in September 1974. To date there have been five Directors, in late-1967 the contract for the primary mirror blank was awarded to Owens-Illinois Inc. USA and the 27.5 ton structure was cast from zero-expansion Cervit glass in April 1969, the blank was shipped to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England to be figured and polished by Sir Howard Grubb, Parsons and Co. Ltd. The final product has a diameter of 3. 9m and a length of 12. 7m. Construction of the building and dome, undertaken by the Australian companies Leighton Constructions and Evans-Deakin Industries respectively, the building was manufactured from concrete, stands 26m high and has seven floors housing offices, labs and a mirror aluminising chamber. The telescope stands on a pier with is a separate foundation to the main building. The double skinned dome is manufactured from steel and aluminium and weighs 570 tonnes. The telescope is mounted equatorially, loosely following the design of the 4m Kitt Peak National Observatory telescope, the mount was manufactured in Muroran, Japan by Mitsubishi Electric. It was shipped to Australia in early 1973 before being assembled at Siding Spring Mountain in April of that year, the telescope drive system was also produced by Mitsubishi Electric and delivered at this time. It was one of the first to be controlled by computer, an Interdata Model 70, Assembly of the AAT was completed by 1974 and commissioning of the telescope began in April of that year. In total it took approximately 8 years to build at a cost of A$16 million and it was inaugurated by HRH Prince Charles on 16 October 1974 and went into general use in June 1975
39.
University of Arizona
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The University of Arizona is a public research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885, the UA was the first university in the Arizona Territory, the university operates two medical schools and is affiliated with the regions only academic medical centers. The university is home to the James E. Rogers College of Law and numerous other nationally ranked graduate. During the 2015-2016 academic year, there was an enrollment of 43,088 students. The University of Arizona is governed by the Arizona Board of Regents, the University of Arizona is one of the elected members of the Association of American Universities and is the only representative from the state of Arizona to this group. Known as the Arizona Wildcats, the teams are members of the Pac-12 Conference of the NCAA. UA athletes have won titles in several sports, most notably mens basketball, baseball. The official colors of the university and its teams are UA Red. After the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, the push for a university in Arizona grew, the University of Arizona was approved by the Arizona Territorys Thieving Thirteenth Legislature in 1885, which also selected the city of Tucson to receive the appropriation to build the university. Tucson had hoped to receive the appropriation for the mental hospital. Tucson was largely disappointed with receiving what was viewed as an inferior prize. Construction of Old Main, the first building on campus, began on October 27,1887, and classes met for the first time in 1891 with 32 students in Old Main, which is still in use today. Because there were no schools in Arizona Territory, the university maintained separate preparatory classes for the first 23 years of operation. The University of Arizona offers 334 fields of study leading to bachelors, masters, doctoral, academic departments and programs are organized into colleges and schools. Currently, grades are given on a strict 4-point scale with A worth 4, B worth 3, C worth 2, D worth 1 and E worth zero points. In 2004, there were discussions with students and faculty that may lead the UA towards eventual usage of the grading system in future years. As of December 2015, the university uses the 4-points scale. The Center for World University Rankings in 2015 ranked Arizona 68th in the world, the 2015–16 Times Higher Education World University Rankings rated University of Arizona 163rd in the world and the 2016/17 QS World University Rankings ranked it 233rd
40.
Kitt Peak National Observatory
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With 24 optical and two radio telescopes, it is the largest, most diverse gathering of astronomical instruments in the world. The observatory is administered by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Kitt Peak was selected by its first director, Aden B. Meinel, in 1958 as the site for an observatory under contract with the National Science Foundation and was administered by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. The land was leased from the Tohono Oodham under a perpetual agreement, the second director was Nicholas U. The observatory sites are under lease from the Tohono Oodham Nation at the amount of a dollar per acre yearly. The principal instruments at KPNO are the Mayall 4 metre telescope, the WIYN3.5 metre telescope, and further 2.1 m,1.3 m,0.9 m, and 0.4 m reflecting telescopes. The McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope on the facilities is the largest solar telescope in the world, the ARO 12m Radio Telescope is also in the location. Kitt Peak is famous for hosting the first telescope used to search for near-Earth asteroids, additionally, there is the Advanced Observing Program for advanced amateur astronomers. This program allows for a one-on-one, full-night tour using any of the visitors center’s telescopes, guests may choose to do DSLR imaging, CCD imaging, or simply take in the sights with their eye to the telescope. Kitt Peaks Southeastern Association for Research and Astronomy Telescope was featured in the WIPB-PBS documentary, the project followed SARA astronomers from Ball State University to the observatory and featured time-lapse images from various points around Kitt Peak. Due to its elevation, the observatory experiences a much cooler and wetter climate throughout the year than most of the Sonoran desert
41.
Nobel Prize
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The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural, or scientific advances. The will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895, the prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901. Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold, between 1901 and 2016, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 579 times to 911 people and organisations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 23 organisations, the prize ceremonies take place annually in Stockholm, Sweden. Each recipient, or laureate, receives a medal, a diploma. The Nobel Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in the fields of literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics. The prize is not awarded posthumously, however, if a person is awarded a prize and dies before receiving it, though the average number of laureates per prize increased substantially during the 20th century, a prize may not be shared among more than three people. Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden and he was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill and this invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite, Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous. In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, as it was Alfreds brother Ludvig who had died, the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered and this inspired him to change his will. On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. He composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million SEK, to establish the five Nobel Prizes. Because of skepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that it was approved by the Storting in Norway. The executors of Nobels will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobels fortune, Nobels instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organisations were designated or established and these were Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for how the prizes should be awarded, and, in 1900, in 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved
42.
American Humanist Association
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In 1927 an organization called the Humanist Fellowship began at a gathering in Chicago. In 1928 the Fellowship started publishing the New Humanist magazine, H. G. Creel was the first editor. The New Humanist was published from 1928 to 1936, by 1935 the Humanist Fellowship had become the Humanist Press Association, the first national association of humanism in the United States. The first Humanist Manifesto was issued by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933, signatories included the philosopher John Dewey, but the majority were ministers and theologians. They identified humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, upon ordination these ministers were then accorded the same rights and privileges granted by law to priests, ministers, and rabbis of traditional theistic religions. Curtis Reese was a leader in the 1941 reorganization and incorporation of the Humanist Press Association as the American Humanist Association, along with its reorganization, the AHA began printing The Humanist magazine. The AHA was originally headquartered in Yellow Springs, Ohio, then San Francisco, California, subsequently, the AHA moved to Washington, D. C. In 1952 the AHA became a member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union in Amsterdam. As an international coalition of Humanist organizations, the IHEU stands today as the international umbrella group for Humanism. The AHA was the first national organization to support abortion rights. Around the same time, the AHA joined hands with the American Ethical Union to help establish the rights of conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War. This time also saw Humanists involved in the creation of the first nationwide memorial societies, in 1991 the AHA took control of the Humanist Society, a religious Humanist organization that now runs the celebrant program. Since 1991 the organization has worked as an adjunct to the American Humanist Association to certify qualified members to serve in this capacity as ministers. The Humanist Societys ministry prepares Humanist Celebrants to lead ceremonial observances across the nation, Celebrants provide millions of Americans an alternative to traditional religious weddings, memorial services, and other life cycle events. After this transfer, the AHA commenced the process of jettisoning its religious tax exemption, today the AHA is recognized by the U. S. Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit, tax exempt,501, membership numbers are disputed, but Djupe and Olson place it under 50,000. The AHA has over 575,000 followers on Facebook and over 42,000 followers on Twitter, the AHA is also the supervising organization for various Humanist affiliates and adjunct organizations. The Black Humanist Alliance of the American Humanist Association was founded in 2016 as a pillar of its new Initiatives for Social Justice, like the Feminist Humanist Alliance and the LGBT Humanist Alliance, the Black Humanist Alliance uses an intersectional approach to addressing issues facing the Black community
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Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
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Its philosophical position is one of scientific skepticism. CSIs fellows have included notable scientists, Nobel laureates, philosophers, psychologists and it is headquartered in Amherst, New York. In the early 1970s, there was an upsurge of interest in the paranormal in the United States and this generated concern in some quarters, where it was seen as part of a growing tide of irrationalism. According to Kurtz, the statement was sent to every newspaper in the United States, Kurtz, Randi, Gardner and Hyman took seats on the executive board. CSICOP was officially launched at a specially convened conference of the AHA on April 30, CSICOP would be funded with donations and sales of their magazine, Skeptical Inquirer. The formal mission statement, approved in 2006 and still current, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry promotes science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, and the use of reason in examining important issues. A shorter version of the statement appears in every issue. Promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial, a history of the first two decades is available in The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal published in 1998 by S. I. editor Kendrick Frazier. Paul Kurtz was inspired by the 1949 Belgian organization Comité Para, the initial acronym, CSICP was difficult to pronounce and so was changed to CSICOP. According to James Alcock, it was never intended to be Psi Cop, in November 2006, CSICOP further shortened its name to Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, pronounced C-S-I. An axiom often repeated among CSI members is the quote from Carl Sagan. Based on a quote by Marcello Truzzi An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof. Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope calls Skeptical Inquirer one of the nations leading antifruitcake journals, in addition, it publishes Skeptical Briefs, a quarterly newsletter published for associate members. CSI conducts and publishes investigations into Bigfoot and UFO sightings, psychics, astrologers, alternative medicine, religious cults, CSICOP has held dozens of conferences between 1983 and 2005, two of them in Europe, and all six World Skeptics Congresses so far were sponsored by it. Since 2011, the conference is known as CSICon, two conventions have been held in conjunction with its sister and parent organizations, CSH and CFI, in 2013 and 2015. CSI has also supported local efforts, such as SkeptiCamp community-organized conferences. Many CSI activities are oriented towards the media, the strategy was twofold, First, to strengthen the hand of skeptics in the media by providing information that debunked paranormal wonders. Second, to serve as a group which would direct public
. PMID 16588185.