Pic of the Day: First and Last Man on the Moon

Apollo11 NASA - Copy

Today we celebrate the first instance the humankind stepped on the Moon. I thought only fitted to remind you of the last human there, too. As a bitter-sweet reminder that NASA is not something where budgetary concerns should lie.

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NASA from Apollo11 to Mars 1 - Copy
In 1987, the Apollo 11 Crew left their signed patch for safekeeping at NASA until is presented to the first manned mission to Mars. Credit: NASA

Links: NASA Apollo 11 Mission | NASA Apollo 17 Mission | Apollo 11 Patch to Mars 1 | Buzz Aldrin punching a conspiracy theorist that doubted the moon landing

By Neuronicus, 20 July 2016

The Firsts: the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

 

Let’s wish Happy Birthday to Sir Donald Lynden-Bell, who turns today 81. In 1969 he published a paper where he proposed that massive black holes exist at the center of the galaxies. For this, he was rewarded the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics in 2008.

Before him, in 1951, Piddington & Minnet discovered a radio signal (at 1210 MHz) coming from the nucleus of Milky Way, named Sagittarius A.

Lynden-Bell was proven right in 1974 by astronomers Bruce Balick and Robert Brown who found evidence of Milky Way’s own supermassive black hole. Brown named it Sagittarius A* in 1982 (Sagittarius A* is part of Sagittarius A; and you thought biology nomenclature is confusing…).

Astrophysics terminology aside, happy birthday, Sir Donald!

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References:

 1. Lynden-Bell, D (16 Aug 1969). Galactic Nuclei as Collapsed Old Quasars. Nature, 223: 690-694. doi: 10.1038/223690a0. Article  | FULLTEXT PDF

2. Brown, RL (1 Nov 1982). Processing Jets in Sagittarius A: Gas Dynamics in the Central Parsec of the Galaxy. The Astrophysical Journal, 262: 110-119. doi: 10.1086/160401. FULL TEXT

 By Neuronicus, 5 April 2016