IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Reports from other countries

Finally, here is a summary of the last article from the first issue of the IGY Bulletin (along with some philatelic extras). I'm planning/hoping that in September I can catch up with the August and September 1957 issues. This is the first of occasional articles reporting on the IGY activities of other countries.

Australia

The article briefly describes various scientific activities planned for the Antarctic IGY stations at Macquarie Island, Mawson, and Davis. These stations are listed in the Wikipedia list of Antarctic stations I referred to before, including Davis and Mawson as Antarctic stations proper, and Macquarie Island as a sub-Antarctic station. The sub-Antarctic is a region located roughly at latitudes between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The sub-Antarctic region includes many islands in the southern parts of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans; Macquarie Island is shown in the map below. Davis and Dawson are both shown on the map of Antarctic stations we looked at before.

Map of Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic (antarctica.gov.au)

Mawson was named in honor of Australian geologist and polar explorer Douglas Mawson. Sir Douglas (not to be confused with the Sir Douglas Quintet) first opened the base at Macquarie Island in 1911. He was honored on a stamp in my collection for the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT - a part of East Antarctica claimed and administered by the Australian Antarctic Division) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition.

Scott #L7 (1961)

The L designation is not one of the standard Scott stamp classification categories. I don't know what it designates, but I'm guessing something referring to the fact that the AAT is just an Antarctic claim, not internationally recognized as Australian land (which is a story for another day). AAT stamps can be used in mainland Australia as well.

Have a look at the current web page for the Australian Antarctic Program.

Sweden

The Swedish ship Lommaren carried a neutron monitor as part of an effort to better locate the geomagnetic equator and the latitudinal dependence of cosmic rays. The geomagnetic pole and equator are tilted (to a first order) relative to geographic coordinates. This effort was complicated when a solar disturbance affected cosmic ray fluxes, since expansion of the heliomagnetic field causes a decrease in the cosmic ray flux at the Earth's surface. 

Sweden, by the way, did not issue an IGY stamp. Its stamps for 1957 and 1958 were not that interesting, unless you are a big fan of King Gustav VI Adolf.

United Kingdom

In preparation for IGY atmospheric measurements, British Skylark rockets were being fired at the Woomera Range in the outback of Australia. Woomera was originally established in response to the U2 missile program of Nazi Germany. England was too densely populated to locate such a range. Woomera, the largest land-based test range in the Western world, is about the same size as all of England.

As this article from the The Postal Museum of Britain explains, the UK did not issue an IGY stamps. The idea was considered, designs were submitted, but it was decided that too many stamps were already on the docket.

Design proposed for a UK IGY stamp, the Queen looking on as always

IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Status report: seismology, gravity and longitude & latitude

This was the first of three articles in the IGY Bulletins that will present the status of activity in each IGY area. Recall that from my post of Nov. 21, 2020, these areas are:

1. World Days and communications
2. meteorology
3. geomagnetism
4. aurora and airglow
5. ionosphere
6. solar activity
7. cosmic rays
8. longitudes and latitudes
9. glaciology
10. oceanography
11. rockets and satellites
12. seismology
13. gravity
14. nuclear radiation

For the three areas covered in this IGY Bulletin article, what were some of the IGY goals? I'll number these areas according to the list above.

8. Longitudes and latitudes objectives included:

• precise determination of latitudes and longitudes, to within a few feet
• determination of the shape (figure) of the Earth
• measurement of irregularities in Earth's rotation 

12. Seismology objectives included determination of:

• Antarctic crustal structure
• Antarctic ice thickness
• layers and their thicknesses in the ocean crust

13. Gravity objectives included:

• augmenting the global network of gravity measurements, especially in the Southern Hemisphere and polar regions
• better determination of the solid Earth's response to the tides
• enhanced measurement of gravity at sea

I assume we will see results of these pursuits in future issues of the IGY Bulletin, to be summarized here in future posts.

In my geophysics courses at Franklin & Marshall College, I taught all three of the topics that are the subject of this Bulletin article. Geophysicists often distinguishes between "pure" and "applied" geophysics. Pure geophysics (aka physics of the Earth, or solid Earth geophysics) is more or less the physics of the Earth in its natural state, including earthquake seismology, geomagnetism, and the gravity field of the Earth. Applied geophysics involves surveys (e.g., seismic, gravity, magnetic, electrical), using natural or artificial energy sources, to locate things in the Earth's subsurface of economic or cultural interest such as hydrocarbons, ores, and archaeological structures. 

As our geosciences curriculum at F&M changed over the years, I taught separate courses on solid Earth geophysics and applied geophysics, and courses that somewhat combined these topics, I can count 9 or 10 textbooks on my bookshelf that I used for these courses. I probably changed them more than was necessary, but I was constantly trying to find that "better" (also in print, up to date, and not too expensive) guide for undergraduates who typically had more interest in geology than geophysics, and often came in with only modest quantitative skills. 

Below are the covers of my favorite three of the textbooks. A common thread is that they are all explicitly written for geologists, without too much calculus, and more compatible with the students I taught.

It IS rocket science

After the last post on rockets and space, I thought I would trot out a couple of my memorabilia items. First is a book that came out during the IGY to tout the U.S. IGY satellite program. It was written by the prolific polymath and popular science writer Willie Ley, published in 1957 by General Mills. I wonder if this had anything to do with GM's biological warfare programs? Holy (holey) Cheerios! The 44-page book discusses plans to launch at least six Vanguard three-stage rockets during the IGY, carrying satellites as payloads. Unlike other noted rocket scientists, Ley was appalled by the rise of the Nazis and left Germany in 1935.

Ley had become interested in spaceflight after reading German rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth's book about spaceflight. Oberth was one of three early 20th century rocket flight visionaries, along with American Robert Goddard and Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

I have two commemorative postcards that with cachets by the Hermann Oberth Society. That Society has since merged with others to become part of the German Society for Air and Space Travel. The stamp on each card is the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) 1961 15-pfennig stamp portraying Martin Luther, Scott catalog Germany #828. Both cancellations are dated June 26, 1964, from Darmstadt, for the 13th Rocket and Space Travel Days. The top cachet depicts NASA's Project Gemini (1962-66), and the other honors Project Apollo (1961-72). 

I've previously showed you a 1964 first day cover with the Robert Goddard stamp that I collected in my youth. I also have two Soviet stamps of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. The first is the 40-kopeck Scott catalog #1991 (Russia, 40), issued on Oct. 7, 1957, just three days after the launch of Sputnik 1. I assume this stamp was waiting in the wings pending the Soviets' first satellite launch, since it does not commemorate an anniversary date of Tsiolkovsky's birth or death. 

With a little more prep time, the USSR issued a stamp on Nov. 28 1957 (Scott #2021), with the same design, and an overprint which translates as "Oct 4, 1957 - First artificial satellite in the world." The bragging rights were duly earned.

If you want to see even an older space movie than First Man Into Space (last post) about extraterrestrial travel, how about Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon, 1929)? Directed by Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M), it was an early sci-fi silent epic, just as the movies were adding sound. Parts are impressive, parts are silly by today's (or my) standards. Shaving an hour off the 2:50 run time would have made this story a bit tighter. Yet there was some decent rocketry stuff in the film, due to credited assistance from Hermann Oberth, and (according to Wikipedia) an even more substantial but uncredited input from Willy Ley.

I used to launch Estes model rockets with my sons, which became the basis for a couple of science fair projects. I also used rockets for some enrichment activities on the laws of motion with high school student gifted programs. Hmm, maybe I should do another countdown?

Son Max on the launch pad with his 6th grade science fair project, 1995

Blastoff!

IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - The Earth satellite program

The opening paragraph of this Bulletin article reads: 

"The USNS-IGY [U.S. National Committee] earth satellite program is designed to provide an observatory on the upper atmosphere over a wide range of latitudes and for an extended period of time. Besides functioning as an observatory by virtue of its instrumentation, the satellite itself may be observed from the ground for several additional scientific purposed."

The U.S. and the Soviet Union both planned to launch satellites during the IGY. I won't go into many details of this article (you can download it as mentioned two and three posts ago and read for yourself) because the U.S. program did not go quite as envisioned when this article was written. More later.

In any case, the IGY satellite programs, along with the exploration of Antarctica, were probably the most visible and exciting portions of the IGY for the general public.

What does it mean to get to "outer space," anyway? According to NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), a common definition of where outer space begins is above the Kármán Line, an imaginary boundary 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level. Once this threshold is crossed, the atmosphere becomes too thin to provide enough lift for conventional aircraft to maintain flight.

The U.S. military and NASA define space differently, as starting 12 miles below the Kármán Line, at 50 miles above Earth's surface. Pilots, mission specialists and billionaires in space who cross this boundary are officially deemed astronauts.

The different layers of the atmosphere are illustrated below.

from NOAA

According to the Bulletin article, the U.S. satellite was planned to reach an altitude at apogee between 800-1500 miles. The orbit was to be determined using photographic and radio observations.

On July 11, 2021, Richard Branson traveled as a passenger onboard Virgin Galactic Unity 22 to a peak altitude of 53.5 miles (space for NASA, but not for NOAA). Nine days later, Jeff Bezos flew on his Blue Origin craft to a peak altitude of 66.5 miles (space for NOAA as well as NASA). Jeff Bezos said afterwards: "I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this," which is why I try not to shop Amazon!

Speaking of people in space, I think the first scary movie I saw in a theater was First Man Into Space (1959, just after the IGY, already in the satellite era but before Yuri Gagarin became the first real person in space), which I saw with my sister and friend Brough. Between the three of us, during the scary scenes we went to the bathroom, waited in the lobby, and hid behind the chairs. According to the story, ambitious test pilot Dan Prescott flew his rocket-powered craft as higher than 250 miles above the Earth's surface without authorization. The texture of the astronaut's skin after it was scarred by exposure to cosmic dust still creeps me out. You can watch the whole movie (in pretty crisp resolution) on YouTube:

Prescott's dying words: "I just had to be the first man into space." So whether you are Jezz Bezos flying into space or one of his lowly Amazon consumers, caveat emptor!

IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Arctic drift ice station program

We'll see if I can catch up with these article summaries from the IGY Bulletin, and get back on schedule. At this point, I'm still on the first issue from July 1957, with an article on the Arctic drift ice station program.

Although both regions surround geographic poles, there are significant differences between the Arctic and the Antarctic. Among other things, the continent of Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet glacier (as is Greenland in the northern hemisphere). There is no continent at the North Pole. However, the Arctic Ocean (as well as the Antarctic region) has abundant sea ice, frozen seawater that floats on the ocean surface (like ice cubes in your cocktail). Pack ice, mentioned in the last post, occurs when chunks of sea ice freeze together. Antarctic ice shelves form as floating ice where a glacier flows into the sea, still attached to the ice on land. An iceberg is a large mass of ice that floats in the sea that has broken off from an ice sheet or tidewater glacier.

Besides the Antarctic stations mentioned in the last post, two Arctic stations were set up in preparation for the IGY. The Arctic stations were on drifting ice. Station A was on a slab that was about 4 square miles in area, and 7' thick. Station B, officially known as Fletcher's Ice Island T-3, was on an iceberg as I mentioned in an earlier post (along with a related philatelic cover). It was 40 square miles, and about 150' thick, calved off a West Greenland tidal glacier.

The article goes on to summarize operational aspects and scientific objectives of these stations. It was a challenge to construct the 5000'-long runways needed to supply the stations on these two blocks of floating ice. The IGY Station Scientific Leader for Station A was Maurice Davidson, at that time with Lamont Geological Observatory of Columbia University. When I was in grad school, I worked one summer and then part-time for Newmont Mining Exploration Company outside Tucson, maintaining the geophysics group's database software. Maury was the head of geophysics for our small group. Darn, wish I knew then what I know now.

The stations were to be used for a variety of measurement types associated with the IGY subdisciplines. Among them was the determination of ice budgets and their changes over time due to accumulation and ablation by using stakes, gravity measurements, and vertical cores.

Most IGY philatelic covers about polar regions focus on Antarctica. The one below depicts a polar bear, so that puts us in the Arctic. (If it were the Antarctic, we'd be seeing penguins.)

My cover US085, House of Farnham cachet, Mellone catalog 9 

All the ice stuff in this post made me think of, what else, a song:

Say what you want about this song, about cultural appropriation or otherwise, but it was the first hip hop single to top the Billboard Hot 100, and has almost 400 million views on YouTube.

I shall end as the song does: "Let's get out of here! Word to your mother!"

IGY Bulletin, Number 1, July 1957 - Antarctic Program

The second article in the IGY Bulletin issue #1, July 1957 was on the Antarctic Program. Although there was so much significant science started during the IGY, the exploration of Antarctica and of the near space environment (including the launching of the first artificial satellites) were perhaps the two most significant milestones of the IGY. 

Since my last post, I have found one place where the IGY Bulletin can be found online. Issues were originally included in the publication Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, these days called EOS. 

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a professional society that supports over 100,000 worldwide enthusiasts in the Earth and space sciences. It was established in 1919 by the National Research Council and operated as an unincorporated affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences for more than 50 years, including the time frame of the IGY. It became independently incorporated in 1972. I have been an AGU member for about 45 years, and have attended many of its conferences. 

AGU members have access to the complete archives of EOS, which includes the IGY Bulletins. The first and second Bulletins, from July and August of 1957, were both in Transactions of the AGU, vol. 38, no. 4, August, 1957, pp. 611-626, and pp. 627-631, respectively. For some reason, the pdf of issue #2 in the EOS archive is missing the last 10 pages of the printed Bulletin.

If you have access to an academic library, you may be able to access EOS archives there. Anyone can subscribe to EOS Buzz or access back issues between 1997-2014.

Anyhoo, the second article in the first IGY Bulletin was on the Antarctic Program. This one and Bulletin articles to come were not attributed to particular authors.

The Wikipedia article on Research Stations in Antarctica gives a sortable list of all such stations.  The U.S. has been involved in 16 stations, out of a total of 167 in the Wikipedia list. The oldest U.S. Station was Little America I, established in 1929, followed by East Base in 1941. During the run up to the IGY, McMurdo and Hallet were established in 1956, with Amundsen Scott-South Pole, Byrd, Site 2, Ellsworth, Little America V, Wilkes (not found in the Wikipedia table), and Little Rockford all coming online during the IGY years 1957-58. More can be read about any of the Antarctic stations mentioned in this post via the hotlinks in the Wikipedia article. I copied and reformatted the Wikipedia table into a spreadsheet, which you can find here.

A total of 28 Antarctic stations were established from 1956-58, by 10 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States. I found a clear IGY station map online (although I did not find the original source). Besides the countries above, a Chilean station is also included on the map, but it was established before the IGY.

Note that the top of the figure is west; north is to the right.

An excellent map showing these and non-U.S. stations, geographic features, and cool (pun intended) information is the 1963 National Geographic map of Antarctica, I own a copy, but the image below was downloaded.

Antarctic map (1963), National Geographic

The IGY Bulletin article describes preparation for and construction of U.S. IGY stations. Operation Deep Freeze I began in 1956, and Naval Task Force 43 went to work. Little America Station V was established and 70 personnel wintered over. Preparations were made for the over-ice journey to establish Byrd Station (see a related cachet). Reconnaissance flights towards the South Pole and icebreaker cruises along the Antarctic coast acquired valuable survey and logistic information. Initial scientific measurements in several of the IGY subdisciplines were made. McMurdo Station was set up to later supply the South Pole Station via airlifts.

On Halloween, 1956, the first ski-equipped airplane landed at the South Pole; 65 missions and over 700 tons of cargo later, with temperatures as low as -100° F, the South Pole station was ready, occupied by 18 scientific and support personnel. Watch a short video contextualizing this milestone.

Byrd Station was established after a reconnaissance party, starting from Little America, got around "almost impassable crevasses," and after five weeks and 650 miles reached the station site. A seismic profile en route suggested that the station, 5000' above sea level, rested on top of 10,000' of ice. Remind me to explain the geophysical concept of isostasy some time, which explains how ice sheets can depress the Earth's crust to below sea level.

The cover below that I recently acquired was sent during the IGY, from the South Pole Station. The stamp is the definitive Statue of Liberty, Scott #1035. It includes a motto, "U.S. Operation Deep Freeeze," as part of the cancellation, a cachet noting Task Force 43, and another cachet of Admiral Byrd. I don't know what the dates of 1933-35 below his photo refer to; his Wikipedia bio doesn't suggest anything distinctive about this time period. The cover was posted and addressed to Byrd himself at his longtime home (mentioned in Wikipedia) in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. Unfortunately, he had died over a year earlier in March of 1957 (three months before the start of the IGY), so he never actually touched the cover. I guess news traveled slowly those days to the South Pole.

IGY cover US #214 in my collection

IGY Little America Station was where the IGY Weather Central  was established to collate meteorological data collected across the continent. This initiated an era where the first time Antarctic weather maps could be correctly inferred from more than a few isolated weather measurements. A location for Ellsworth Station was found, despite problems with heavy pack (floating) ice in the Weddell Sea.

Wilkes Station was set up on Clark Island via an amphibious operation. The site had a good viewshed for auroral observations, and its location on bedrock was favorable for the seismic program. Finally, the article refers to setup of the Adare Station at Cape Hallett, which otherwise is referred to as Hallett Station. It was a joint venture with New Zealand.

Site 2 and Little Rockford stations are mot mentioned in the article, it seems because they were field camps and instrument stations, but without permanent staff.  S2 camp site was established as a glaciological research site to measure the movement of ice below the surface. Little Rockford was a station providing weather support for airplanes flying cargo drops, only open during the summer months.

I just learned of a Canadian band, Weather Station, which plays my kind of folk-rock music. Maybe I'll go see them in January in Philadelphia, if Delta behaves.