Sky Watching
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History July 21 - 27.
When we were in West Virginia last month, we were way up in the mountains, with a front-row seat to the night sky. I gotta admit though, it wasn’t the clearest view. Frankly, everything looked mashed together.
It was then that I learned of space garbage.
Space garbage is exactly what you think it is – trash made by humans still floating around in space with no useful purpose.
It’s more formally known as space debris, but whatever you call it, it’s mostly parts of satellites no longer in use or rocket stages that never disintegrated. We even left a glove behind, and it was years before it fell back to Earth.
While watching the West Virginia night sky, my brother-in-law and I saw what we thought was a shooting star. It was pretty cool. Anonymous jumped in and explained that it was probably space garbage. I think she used the term space junk. It sort of ruined the experience. Instead of a shared moment of awesomeness, we just watched a piece of junk finally disappear from space forever.
But sky watching wasn’t always like that.
Imagine back to 1995. You are a professional astronomer, having spent decades watching space for comets. This is well before it was flooded with space garbage. Before more countries and companies blasted stuff past the atmosphere. You just had a clear view of watching the stars, hoping to make history.
That’s what Alan Hale was doing on a summer day, while sitting in his driveway in New Mexico, when he observed what appeared to be a comet around a cluster of stars known as M70. He remembered seeing nothing a few nights earlier when he was doing the same thing, just sitting around looking up, so he checked his resources to see if any known objects were in this area. Seeing none, Hale quickly fired off an email to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT), which determines whether discoveries like Alan's are real.
At the same time, in Arizona, amateur astronomer Thomas Bopp was hanging out with his space buddies, looking up at the same sky. Bopp didn’t own a telescope, so he was sharing one when he, too, noticed the large moving comet-like object around M70. He also checked his space logs and noticed the same thing Alan in New Mexico noticed – no deep space object existed.
Bopp tried to use his cell phone (who are these guys in 1995 using emails and cell phones?) to tell the CBAT what he saw. The cell phone didn’t work because in 1995 we hadn’t launched enough satellites to help with service, so he went to a pay phone. Only Thomas didn’t remember the number, so he booked it home and made the historic call from his kitchen.
On July 23, 1995, the International Astronomical Union officially announced the discovery of the Hale-Bopp comet.
The Hale-Bopp comet passed Earth in 1997 and was tabbed the Great Comet of 1997. It was visible to the naked eye for 18 months. Its expected return will be in about 2,500 years—minus the 27 years or so.
Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here's what I got:
1. Confederate general Robert E. Lee had his US citizenship restored on July 22, 1975. Instead of hanging traitors for treason, we allowed former Confederates to swear an Amnesty Oath, which Lee did when he took the position as the president of Washington College in October 1865. The paperwork was lost and wasn’t found until 1970. Five years later, to “heal the country,” President Ford restored his citizenship. I’ll never understand what the point was of doing this.
2. President Ulysses S. Grant died on July 23, 1885. The former Civil War Commander defeated Lee and accepted his surrender, ending the conflict. After leaving the presidency, Grant and his wife went on a world tour. On this trip in 1878, he met with Pope Leo XIII. He made his last public appearance in 1884 and finished his memoir just five days before he died of throat cancer.
3. The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law on July 26, 1990. This civil rights law protects people with disabilities from discrimination and even requires companies and public access areas to accommodate disabled people and assist them in getting around. I will miss this when I’m in Europe later this week.
Here’s a fun anniversary we celebrate this week:
“What’s up, Doc?” – the catchphrase most people can immediately recognize. Bug Bunny was officially introduced to the world this week on July 27, 1940, in the animated short film A Wild Hare. Voiced by Mel Blanc (who also voiced Daffy Duck, not to be confused with Donald Duck), Bugs would become the wisecracking trickster of Looney Tunes. Bugs has appeared in over 160 movies, has his own Hollywood Star, and eats a carrot like a cigar.
Anonymous and I are leaving for London beginning on Wednesday. We plan on doing many touristy things, but mostly, we want to visit friends who live there and see this band called Oasis perform.
I have a few essays I’m working on, and despite the travel, I plan to meet the schedule of at least two a week. After two weeks of paywalled stuff, they will be available to everyone.
I appreciate your support of Okay History! I hope you have a great week!
Okay,
Chris
Space junk in our minds, shooting star in our hearts.
Grant was in financial arrears towards the end of his life (a brokerage in which he had unwisely invested went bust) and hoped that his memoirs would provide income for his family when he was gone. His friend Mark Twain published the memoirs through his publishing company and it became an almost immediate best seller.