Word: venuses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...group of U.S. astronomers peered at the sky with astronomers' telescopes that can see planets and stars in bright daylight. Headed by Dr. Allen Hynek of the Smithsonian's Cambridge Astrophysical Observatory, the scientists were in Spain to take full advantage of a rare event. The planet Venus, 55 million miles from the earth in the solar system, was passing directly in front of the bright star Regulus in miniature eclipse, and though the two were 400 trillion miles apart (67 light-years), the star's light would enable them to poke deep into the atmosphere...
...hour of 2 p.m. universal time* approached, Venus looked like a yellow half-moon against the sky background, and Regulus, greenish in hue, was approaching the rim of its disk. The occultation was to start at 2:21. The minutes passed; the star edged closer to the invisible rim of the planet. "No change, no change," chanted Hynek into a tape recorder while an assistant read off the time. "Gosh, there-it seemed to go. It's definitely going, going. It's gone." Eleven minutes and 4.8 seconds later, Regulus reappeared from behind the bright edge of Venus...
First Magnitude. Those brief seconds of gradual fading and slow reappearance were the reason for all the excitement. When the earth's airless moon occults a star, the star winks out instantaneously. But Venus has an abundant atmosphere, and so a star that it covers fades slowly, its light changing and diminishing like the setting sun. Careful observation is sure to tell volumes about the Venusian atmosphere, its density at various heights, its temperature and chemical makeup...
...astronomical event never before viewed by man was recently observed by teams from the Harvard Observatory. Since observation of this event, the passing of the star Venus in front of the magnitude star Regulus, would have been handicapped in North America, the Observatory sent teams to the far corners of the earth to gather vital data on this phenomenon...
...guest in question was Polish-born George Adamski, 68, who until several years ago ran a humble hamburger stand at the foot of California's Palomar mountain. Then one day he happened to meet a courteous and high-domed gentleman, and the gentleman was from the planet Venus. One thing led to another, and some time later a man from Mars and another from Saturn asked him in a hotel lobby if he would like to take a spin in space. The trip aloft included refreshments ("a small glass of colorless liquid") with an "incredibly lovely" blonde named Kalna...