April 1, 2005 – NASA publishes Hubble image of Pillars of Creation

Hubble telescope captures image of the Pillars of Creation, April 1, 2005.

Text and image credit: NASA

Gas Pillars in the Eagle Nebula (M16): Pillars of Creation in a Star-Forming Region

Undersea corral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are actually columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that are also incubators for new stars. The pillars protrude from the interior wall of a dark molecular cloud like stalagmites from the floor of a cavern. They are part of the “Eagle Nebula” (also called M16 — the 16th object in Charles Messier’s 18th century catalog of “fuzzy” objects that aren’t comets), a nearby star-forming region 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.

The pillars are in some ways akin to buttes in the desert, where basalt and other dense rock have protected a region from erosion, while the surrounding landscape has been worn away over millennia. In this celestial case, it is especially dense clouds of molecular hydrogen gas (two atoms of hydrogen in each molecule) and dust that have survived longer than their surroundings in the face of a flood of ultraviolet light from hot, massive newborn stars (off the top edge of the picture). This process is called “photoevaporation. “This ultraviolet light is also responsible for illuminating the convoluted surfaces of the columns and the ghostly streamers of gas boiling away from their surfaces, producing the dramatic visual effects that highlight the three-dimensional nature of the clouds. The tallest pillar (left) is about about 4 light-years long from base to tip.

As the pillars themselves are slowly eroded away by the ultraviolet light, small globules of even denser gas buried within the pillars are uncovered. These globules have been dubbed “EGGs.” EGGs is an acronym for “Evaporating Gaseous Globules,” but it is also a word that describes what these objects are. Forming inside at least some of the EGGs are embryonic stars — stars that abruptly stop growing when the EGGs are uncovered and they are separated from the larger reservoir of gas from which they were drawing mass. Eventually, the stars themselves emerge from the EGGs as the EGGs themselves succumb to photoevaporation.

The picture was taken on April 1, 1995 with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The color image is constructed from three separate images taken in the light of emission from different types of atoms. Red shows emission from singly-ionized sulfur atoms. Green shows emission from hydrogen. Blue shows light emitted by doubly- ionized oxygen atoms.

Object Names: M16, Eagle Nebula, NGC 6611

April 24, 1970 – China launches its first satellite

China entered into the space exploration field when it launched its first satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, on April 24th, 1970. China thus became the fifth spacefaring nation.

According to Wikipedia:

Dōng Fāng Hóng I (東方紅一號), also known as China 1, was the People’s Republic of China’s first successful space satellite, launched on April 24, 1970 as part of the PRC’s Dong Fang Hong space satellite program. At 173kg, it was heavier than the first satellites of other countries. The satellite carried a radio transmitter. It broadcast the song of the same name, The East Is Red.

“Dong Fang Hong I” (Red East 1) is China’s first man-made satellite. It was developed under the direction of Qian Xuesen (Tsien Hsue-shen), dean at the Chinese Academy of Space Technology. At the time, a total of five identical satellites were created. The first satellite launched successfully. The academy formulated a “Three Satellite Plan” consisting of “Dong Fang Hong I”, re-entry satellites, and geosynchronous orbit communications satellites. Sun Jia-Dong was responsible for the “Dong Fang Hong I” technology. In 1967 Dang Hongxin chose a copper antenna membrane that resolved the difficulties of broadcasting on a ultra-short wave antenna between 100ºC and -100ºC. Engineers installed a music player playing The East is Red on the satellite.

April 24, 1967 – first man in space dies, a cosmonaut named Komarov

Russian cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was born March 16, 1927. He was the first man to die in a manned space mission (Soyuz 1) on April 24, 1967. He was also the first cosmonaut to travel in space more than once.

Wikipedia says:

“He was selected to become a cosmonaut in 1960 with the first cosmonaut group. After being the backup for Pavel Popovich on Vostok 4, his first spaceflight was with the Voskhod 1 mission. On his second flight, Soyuz 1, he was killed during a return, when the spacecraft crashed owing to failure of the parachute.”

April 20, 1965 – LOOK Magazine publishes Rockwell astronaut painting

The following oil painting by artist Norman Rockwell appeared in the April 20, 1965 edition of LOOK Magazine.

Norman Rockwell, Astronauts Grissom
and Young Suiting Up, 1965, oil on
canvas, 33 x 52

April 16, 1972 – launch of Apollo 16

Apollo 16 was the tenth manned mission in the Apollo program and the fifth lunar landing mission, launching on April 16, 1972. She was commanded by John Young, the Command Module Pilot was Ken Mattingly, and the Lunar Module Pilot was Charlie Duke.

Wikipedia says:

“Young and Duke spent three days exploring the Descartes highland region, while Mattingly circled overhead in Casper. This was the only one of the six Apollo landings to target the lunar highlands. The astronauts discovered that what was thought to have been a region of volcanism was actually a region full of impact-formed rocks (breccias). Their collection of returned specimens included an 25 pound (11.7 kg) chunk that was the largest single rock returned by Apollo astronauts.”

April 12th, 1961 – first person reaches orbit, Russian, Vostok 1

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit in space on April 12, 1961. Gargarin was just 27 years old. He was born March 9th, 1934 in the village of Klushino, Russia. Gagarin died in a jet-plane accident March 27, 1968.

Wikipedia says:

“On 12 April 1961, Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1). His call sign in this flight was Kedr (Cedar) (Russian: Кедр). During his flight, Gagarin famously whistled the tune “The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows” (Russian: “Родина слышит, Родина знает”). The first two lines of the song are: “The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows/Where her son flies in the sky.“

From L/R: Korolev, Gagrin, Titov and Popvich.
Image credit: eBay auction item

Quotes by Yuri Gagarin:

“The whole of my life seems to be condensed into this one wonderful moment. Everything that I have been, everything that I have done, was for this. Could anyone dream of more?”
- Spoken just before he entered the spacecraft before his proto-orbital launch. Quoted in Barbree (p. 48).

“Spaceflights cannot be stopped. This is not the work of any one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development (1967).”
- Quoted in Into that Silent Sea (p. 35).

Quote by U.S. astronaut John Glenn, on Russia’s accomplishment of sending Gagarin to space:

“They just beat the pants off us, that’s all. There’s no use kidding ourselves about that. But now that the space age has begun, there’s going to be plenty of work for everybody.”
- Quoted in Barbree p. 53.

Quote by President Lyndon B. Johnson

“Yuri Gagarin’s courageous and pioneering flight into space opened new horizons and set a brilliant example for the spacemen of the two countries [United States and Russia].”
- Source: Into That Silent Sea, p.1

Recommended Reading:

• Road to the Stars, Yuri Gagarin.
• Roads to Space: an oral History of the Soviet Space Program, 1995.

Image credit: Space.com