Word: solarity
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After two months in orbit 300 miles above the earth, an automatic telescope designed and assembled at the Harvard College Observatory is working perfectly. The ultra-violet light experiment aboard Orbiting Solar Observatory VI (OSO-VI) "is meeting 100 per cent of our expectations," said William H. Parkinson, lecturer on Astronomy and co-director of the project. "We've got a winner...
...pound satellite was launched from Cape Kennedy on August 9. Besides the Harvard telescope, it contains 6 other experiments designed to measure solar emissions such as x-rays, ultraviolet light and neutrons that are ordinarily blocked from view by the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere. When ever the satellite emerges from the earth's shadow, two of these devices, including Harvard's telescope, constantly scan different portions of the sun's disc and record the intensity of the sun's radiation in varying sections of the spectrum...
Ultra-violet measurements, like these, are important because ultra-violet rays from the sun occasionally interfere with earth's radio communications, and the energy from these invisible light waves supplies much of the solar heat that determines the earth's weather. Astronomers use slight, variations in the sun's ultra-violet spectrum as clues to the chemical and physical reactions goingon at various depths in the sun. By comparing satellite measurements of invisible radiation with earth-bound records of the sun's visible light, scientists should be able to predict some of these reactions and their effects on earth...
...astronomers have aimed their telescope at several features on the sun, including "active regions"-the eruptions of hot material that appear against the "cooler" regions of the sun's surface. Active regions increase and decrease over an 11-year cycle. "This year is supposed to be a solar maximum-a period of maximum solar activity-but in spite of that, the sun has been notoriously quiet," Reeves said. "But this week the sun has perked up again...
...Gold hopes for more immediate confirmation of his theory. An opportunity may come during the Apollo 12 mission in November. If the astronauts discover glazing of the same age in a different area of the moon far from Tranquillity Base, Gold says, he will be satisfied that such a solar catastrophe actually occurred...