Word: skies
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...coal-black night in March, the kind astronomers like best. At Arizona's Kitt Peak National Observatory, Princeton Astrophysicist Edwin Turner pointed the 158-in. reflecting telescope first at one distant pinpoint of light in the sky, then at a neighboring one. A few hours later, studying the results of his night's labors, Turner could hardly believe his eyes. "It was a big surprise," he says. "But a big surprise is always a clue you might be on the track of something...
...massive object. That prediction was confirmed by British Astronomer Arthur Eddington in 1919, when he traveled to an island off West Africa to observe a total solar eclipse. From there he was able to measure precisely the location of a star that became visible in the suddenly darkened sky near the edge of the sun. Because light from the star was bent by solar gravity as it passed the sun, the apparent position of the star in the sky was slightly displaced from its known position by the amount that Einstein had predicted...
Fears that available programming will soon disappear have sent the home satellite business into a nose dive. Sales of dishes, tooling along at about 70,000 a month last autumn, fell to fewer than 15,000 in January. Bert LeCroy, owner of Sky Search Video in the Atlanta suburbs, estimates that ten dish dealers in the area have closed their doors in just the past two weeks. Many consumers are upset that the costly dishes they bought in pursuit of video independence may turn out to be duds. Says Vincent Morgan, 41, who has a dish in the backyard...
...sleek three-stage Delta roared off its pad at 6:18 p.m. Saturday after a trouble-free countdown. Its main liquid-fuel engine and solid-fuel boosters all fired as planned. Delta soared into the clear Florida sky. Then, 71 seconds into its flight, monitoring technicians experienced a chilling case of deja vu. Their instruments showed that the main engine had shut down before it was programmed to do so, causing Delta to lose its flight stability. Veering out of control, the rocket began to break up. At 91 seconds, range safety officials destroyed it by remote control...
Muffled lives explode in such understatements. Jhabvala adopts the identities of characters from an alien culture without romanticizing or condescending. Her spare prose leaves little room for metaphor; her India emerges out of small specifics, accretions that summon up heat, hope, squalor and a vast expanse of sky. These stories do not demystify India; they pay the place tributes of empathy and grace...