Word: novae
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...machines can also be a little spooky, metaphysically spooky. There was a tale about the archipelago called Nova Zembla, which was discovered in the 16th century, high in the Arctic Circle. A ship's crew was stranded there, frozen in. The air was so cold, the story said, that when the sailors spoke, their words crystallized in mid-air and remained there. Presently a thaw arrived, and all the words, warmed up, came cascading down in a tremendous, unintelligible din. The owner of an answering machine knows that there may come a moment when the machine...
...Astromomical Telegrams, he runs a network that zips word of the latest astronomical discoveries over telegraph wires to stations around the world. The information-including the time of the citing and its specific celestial location-gets to astronomers within moments, in plenty of time for observers to catch a nova while it is still brightening or view a new found comet before it disappears...
...Bureau works is quite simple: when someone sights an unusual occurance-most commonly an asteriod, nova, supernova or comet-he contacts Marsden, who then performs some preliminary calculations to verify the accuracy of the report. He then sends out a telegram from the telex machine located in his office to the service's 800 subscribers...
...Marsden's busiest times, he recalls, was in 1975 during the nova in Cygnus, one of the brighest novas-star formations-of this century. Marsden received a report in his office on the Friday afternoon of the Labor Day weekend from an astronomer in Japan...
...about 6 p.m. that same day, additional reports of the nova began pouring in from Europe, and overnight over 30 telegrams arrived in his office. The barrage continued until Monday when Marsden decided to write a longer more comprehensive circular of the complete list of citings...