IGY Bulletin, Number 4, October 1957 - Arctic Program

Happy Halloween! Official trick-or-treating in my municipality was Friday. It rained quite steadily. We only had 10-15 trick-or-treaters, and are left with about 370 pieces of candy.

The last article in the October, 1957, IGY Bulletin is on the Arctic Program. "The US-IGY Arctic Program includes projects in virtually all scientific disciplines to be studied during the IGY." The article has subsections discussing plans for study in the most of the 14 areas listed in an earlier post:

• meteorology (#2)
• geomagnetism (#3)
• aurora (#4)
• ionospheric physics (#5)
• solar activity (#6)
• cosmic rays (#7)
• glaciology (#9)
• oceanography (#10)
• seismology and gravity (#12,13)

About 50 U.S. fixed stations were set up in the Arctic for the IGY, to be complemented by measurements made from aircraft and rockets. Most studies were synoptic in nature, to be compared to other global measurements, especially from the antipodal Antarctic polar region.

An aside ... On a trip I made to Philadelphia earlier this week, I went to the Wagner Free Institute of Science, established in the mid-1800s (a century before the IGY era) for the education of the general public about natural history. It has an amazing display room still set up in the old-school style with thousands of specimens to illustrate the diversity of the natural world. (Hardly anyone in Philadelphia knows about this museum; it's free and worth a visit.) Some of the display cases were marked as synoptic. The idea was to give a synopsis of different classifications within the animal kingdom, just as synoptic measurements for the IGY were to give a synopsis/summary/ snapshot of a particular geophysical phenomenon at an "instant" of time.

Display cabinets at the Wagner Free Institute of Science, Philadelphia

A synoptic(al) collection of natural history specimens

A synoptic display case at the Wagner Free Institute of the phylum Coelenterata

Anyway, here are some highlights of what was planned for the IGY Arctic Program:

Aurora. The two principal objectives were to accurately delineate the northern aurora zones, and to study auroral physics. The most important instruments were twelve all-sky cameras at different stations to photograph aurorae, along with auroral radar stations.

Cosmic rays. The IGY program involved studying the variations in mass and energy of cosmic ray particles, and the intensity of them at Earth's surface and at different altitudes. Lower energy cosmic rays can reach the Earth's surface at the poles, because the geomagnetic flux lines are "open" at high latitudes, as you can see in the diagram in an earlier post. Comparison of cosmic ray fluxes from the two polar regions would shed light on the uniformity of the cosmic ray flux in space and its interaction with the geomagnetic field.

Ionospheric physics. Layers in the Arctic ionosphere are constantly disturbed by atmospheric turbulence, auroral currents, and ion fluxes, but these patterns were not well understood at the onset of the IGY. Ionospheric soundings were planned to compare conditions above the Arctic and the Antarctic and reveal details of the morphology of the magnetosphere.

Geomagnetism. As was posted before, the IGY geomagnetic studies focused on the external component of the Earth's magnetic field, much smaller than the internal component. The more rapid (on the order of seconds) changes in the geomagnetic field were due to this external component, on account of ionospheric electrical currents. 

Solar activity. Plans were made to establish a station at College, Alaska, to continuously monitor solar activity during the six-month long polar day.

Meteorology. The article states that "It has long been recognized that Arctic air masses are an important factor in Northern Hemisphere weather." Standard meteorological observations were to made at a number of high latitude stations, along with measurements from balloons and aircraft. In recent years, we have heard of cold weather pushed from the Arctic region into lower latitudes due to behavior of the polar vortex and jet stream, such as occurred in February of his year.

Oceanography. Standard measurements were planned at seven fixed stations and at the two drifting stations. aerial reconnaissance flights were to be used for examining Arctic sea-ice movement and seasonal changes in ice volume.

Glaciology. Morphology, history, and movement of Arctic mountain glaciers, ice sheets, and adrift ice were to be studied, and their connections with meteorology, climatology, and oceanography of the Northern Hemisphere. Climate change studies didn't quite have the urgency they do today, but an IGY goal was to gain a better understanding of past and future climatic shifts.

Aside ... with all the IGY Arctic stations in Alaska, it's easy to forget that Alaska was not even a state yet! The Alaska Statehood Act was signed by President Eisenhower on July 7, 1958 (during the IGY), and became the 49th state on January 3, 1959.

Seismology and gravity. My own geophysical interests and career had more to do with the solid Earth, including the topics of seismology, gravity, (internal) geomagnetism, and heat flow. The article states that "the US-IGY Arctic programs in seismology and gravity are part of the worldwide IGY effort to gather information on the precise shape, or figure, of the earth; on earth tides; on the structure and seismicity of both the crust and interior of the earth; and on related phenomena." Measurements in the polar regions in those disciplines had been sparse prior to the IGY. Seismology and gravity measurements would also be important in better understanding the geology of the Arctic Basin. High precision pendulums could be used for absolute measurements of the Earth's gravity. Seismic stations in Greenland and Alaska could also better detect regional earthquakes.

A final aside ... Did you hear that a large X1-class solar flare on Oct. 28 caused high geomagnetic activity and an unusually low-latitude and intense auroral display (video is from Lapland) yesterday?

On to the November, 1957, IGY Bulletin.

IGY Bulletin, Number 4, October 1957 - IGY Antarctic Weather Central

A major accomplishment of the IGY was the establishment of a network of weather stations in the Antarctic. These stations provided regular data that allowed the compilation of synoptic charts and the prediction of weather, as well as a better understanding of atmospheric circulation in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Let's start with a contemporary and local (for me) context. There is a National Weather Service Station here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania: KLNS. As I write, current conditions at the station include:

• general conditions - rain
• temperature - 53°F (12°C)
  
• humidity - 77%
  
• wind speed - NW 18 G 28 mph
  
• barometric pressure - 29.51 inches mercury (999.1 millibars)

These data can be summarized in a station plot. The results from

different stations can be used to compile a regional synoptic chart (i.e., a weather map derived from variables measured at the same time over a region - a snapshot of weather conditions). These charts show multiple weather features such as fronts and pressure systems on one map, with or without the station plot information. Then weather forecasts can be made for the region. And, of course, simpler maps can show single variables of interest, like temperatures. All of this depends on having a dense enough array of weather measurements in both time and space.

The Royal Meteorological Society provides a tutorial on weather maps.

The IGY focused specifically on synoptic data showing variability over space during a moment of time. Time series, which shows how variables change over time at one or more places, are also important in studying weather and climate patterns.

Anyway, before the IGY, none of this was possible for the continent of Antarctica. There just weren't (hardly) any measurements. You might think, who cares, no one lived there except penguins. But such weather information is also critical in understanding larger-scale atmospheric dynamics. Multiple stations are needed because the weather is highly variable across Antarctica,

depending on proximity to the moderating influence of the ocean, and on the elevation. Now there are enough Antarctic weather stations to generate weather maps for the coldest and driest continent.

Ok, on to some specifics of the Bulletin article. One important aspect of the IGY Antarctic weather program was establishing an Antarctic Weather Central to collect and disseminate Southern Hemisphere information, especially for the Antarctic. This was, of course, pre-internet, and pre- many other communications and data technologies we now take for granted.

The Weather Central was tasked with:

• receiving and recording weather data from many sources
• preparation and analysis of meteorological charts, maps, and graphs (mostly synoptic)
• broadcasting current weather information and forecasts.

At the time of the article, Weather Central at the Little America Station was staffed by four Americans and one person each from Australia and the USSR. Additional staff members were anticipated from Australia, France, Belgium, and South Africa.

The data sent to Weather Central derived from standard surface observations as well as upper atmosphere results which were collected by: 

• radiosondes (instrumented weather balloons that telemetered data from the atmosphere back to the ground)
• rawinsondes (radiosondes with positions tracked as they ascended, to yield wind speed and direction, i.e., a radar wind sonde)
• and pilot balloons (not with a pilot in it, but that is passively observed from the ground to determine cloud height as it fades from view into the clouds).

The United Nations issued two lovely stamps early in 1957 to honor the 10th anniversary of the founding of the World Meteorological Organization, depicting weather balloons. The scans below are of panes from my collection. The WMO and IGY had overlapping interests in meteorological data collection and dissemination. United Nations stamps are used on official mail of the UN, and can also be used on private correspondence sent through UN post offices.

United Nations 3¢ and 8¢ stamps (Scott catalog #s UN 49, 50) 

Most data arriving at Weather Central were received using CW radio communication by Morse code at Williams Air Operations Facility, McMurdo Sound, and then transmitted 400 miles to Little America by radioteletype. In return, Weather Central provided "outlooks" that were used by meteorologists at the various Antarctic stations for forecasting.

All Weather Central scientific data and records were microfilmed to make for a compact and permanent archive. 

Data storage, oh my! In my teaching, I used to have my geophysics students analyze data from earthquakes. In the 1980s I was still using a set of microfiche  seismograms from the 1964 Alaskan earthquake, and also had the students look up newspaper reports on microfiche in the main library. In the 1990s and early 2000s, I used seismograms compiled on CD-roms by the National Earthquake Information Center. And then, seismograms became widely available over the internet through various agencies and universities. Oh yeah, we also used books, printed documents, and ink-on-paper (and later digital) seismograms from our own seismographs.

IGY Bulletin, Number 4, October 1957 - The IGY Research Rocket Program

This article is an expansion of the entry in the September 1957 IGY Bulletin which briefly described the Rocket Program in support of the various parts of the IGY's Upper Atmosphere Program. There is a little repetition, but much that is new.

The article starts with a shoutout to Robert Goddard, the American rocket pioneer who was one of the trio of early rocket visionaries, along with Hermann Oberth of Germany and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky of Russia.

In a previous post I showed a Goddard cover from my childhood collection. I recently acquired the one below, a first day cover issued for the same stamp, Scott #C69 (airmail), in 1964. This cover is pretty spaced out! It also includes the following astrophilatelic stamps:

• Fort Bliss rocket range, Scott #976, 1948
• International Geophysical Year, Scott #1107, 1958
• Echo 1 communications satellite, Scott #1173, 1960
• Project Mercury, Scott #1193, 1962

The Fort Bliss stamp was the first U.S. stamp to portray a space vehicle. Fort Bliss, originally built in 1848 because of the Mexican-American War, was where German rocket scientists, including Wernher von Braun, were stationed after they surrendered to (were recruited by?) the U.S. after WWII.

FDC for the Robert Goddard airmail stamp, US 223 in my collection

The article mentions without fanfare that "the International Geophysical Year has seen the first earth satellite, set on orbit by a rocket." That, of course was the Soviet Union's Sputnik, launched the same month as this Bulletin issue, which will be discussed further in an article from the November issue of the Bulletin.

The USNC-IGY rocket program anticipated 194 flights, using five rockets, often with multiple experiments per flight:

• Aerobee - liquid fuel, payload 150 lbs., altitude 60 miles (Karman line)
• Aerobee-Hi - liquid fuel, payload 150 lbs., altitude 150 miles, 42 total Aerobee flights
• Nike-Cajun - two-stage, solid fuel, payload 40 lbs., altitude 100 miles, 53 flights
• Nike-Deacon - two-stage, solid fuel, payload 40 lbs., altitude 75 miles, 14 flights
• Rockoon (portmanteau of rocket and balloon) - Deacon rocket carried to 15 miles by a Skyhook balloon before rocket is fired, payload 40 pounds, altitude 60 miles, 85 flights. Skyhook balloons were developed by General Mills, lord knows for what nefarious purposes.

The Wikipedia articles linked here are hard to resist citing since they seem to be the best references by far.

Here's a contemporary video on how rockoons work. By the way, it seems that sometimes the embedded YouTube videos don't show up well in some platforms for looking at this blog, but the hot links usually do.

Table 1 in the article lists IGY research rocket firings by five different agencies. Launch sites for the US-IGY rocket program were:

• Fort Churchill, Canada
• Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico
• White Sands, New Mexico
• Pt. Mugu, California
• Guam
• from onboard ships

The article summarizes rocket experiments planned in the fields of meteorology, solar activity, airglow, aurora, ionospheric physics, geomagnetism, and cosmic rays, covering seven out of the fourteen IGY areas of study.

I think the Beatles had a song about rockoons:

IGY Bulletin, Number 4, October 1957 - Current Sunspot Numbers

We move on to the October 1957 issue of the IGY Bulletin. I have already posted this Bulletin along with that of September 1957 in a pdf downloaded from the AGU archive of the Transactions, American Geophysical Union, vol. 38, #5, October, 1957.

This issue is 16 pages, comprising four articles. The articles in this issue are listed below. The numbers in parentheses refer to the IGY sub-disciplines covered in the article, using numbers from a previous post.

1. Current Sunspot Numbers (#6)

2. The IGY Research Rocket Program (#11)

3. IGY Antarctic Weather Central (#2)

4. Arctic Program (#2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13)

I'll cover Current Sunspot Numbers in this post.

The Bulletin article points out that the IGY "year" from July 1957 to December 1958  was partly chosen to include the anticipated solar/sunspot maximum. The sunspot number had already reached a record high level in early 1957, as shown in the figure below, taken from the article.

Sunspot numbers from 1755 to the beginning of the IGY (from the Bulletin article)

Indeed, an update to the present day of the sunspot numbers shows that the maximum during the IGY remains the highest yet observed. That was a stroke of good luck!

World Data Center, Sunspot Index Long-term Solar Observations 

New programs for observing sunspots during the IGY were not particularly needed, since spots were already being systematically observed by solar astronomers. But related heliophysical phenomena were to be studied.

The Bulletin article is largely a review of the knowledge of sunspots at the time of the beginning of the IGY. Some of the major points are as follows:

• Galileo used his new telescope in 1612 to make the first detailed observations, concluding sunspots were on the sun's surface rather than shadows of other bodies.
• Sunspots have been observed regularly since 1749.
• In 1834, Swiss astronomer R. Wolf devised an equation to standardize the daily sunspot number, Rn = k(10g +s), where g is the number of sunspot groups, s is the number of individual spots, and k is a constant to normalize for the conditions of each observing station.
• Daily sunspot numbers fluctuate, so running averages are used to smooth the series.
• Sunspot cycles are about 11 years.
• The cycle maxima vary by about a factor of three.
• Sunspot sizes vary from 500-50,000 miles in diameter (the circumference of the Earth is about 24,000 miles).
• Sunspots concentrate at lower solar latitudes.
• Magnetic fields associated with sunspots are as high as 4,000 gauss (the Earth's magnetic field strength is about 0.5 gauss).
• Sunspots often occur in pairs of opposite magnetic polarity.
• Many other solar phenomena are associated with sunspots.

Today -- Oct. 18, 2021 -- the sunspot number is a big fat zero! There are no sunspot regions on the half of solar disc facing Earth.

Real time data from SpaceWeatherLive.com

IGY Bulletin, Number 3, September 1957 - Aurora and Airglow Program; Rocket Program

Ok, I'm finally at the last two articles from the September IGY Bulletin, then I can move on to October and be in the right month again.

Aurora and Airglow Program

The altitudes of these two atmospheric phenomena are about 150 km for the aurorae and 100 km for the diurnal airglow, respectively, shown in a graphic from an earlier post, corresponding to the middle atmosphere and the lower ionosphere. (Recall that 1 mile = 1.6 km, or 1 km = 0.6 miles.) 

The airglow is a faint optical emission due to interactions of sunlight with atmospheric chemistry. On the other hand, aurora emissions are driven by atmospheric reactions with energetic electrons in the magnetosphere that originated in the solar wind. I've only seen one aurora -- in 1994 I think, keying that to a family trip where we had seen a Toronto Blue Jays (younger son Sam's favorite team at the time) game right before the end of the strike-shortened baseball season -- when we were camping outside Ithaca, NY. My older son Max remarked on some lights in the sky, which I attributed at first to some spotlight, but was eventually convinced otherwise. Ha ha, that reminds me that Max also noticed a total lunar eclipse that I was unaware was going to happen when we lived in Germany during my first sabbatical in 1989-90; that must have been on Feb. 9, 1990. Ok, now that I am on eclipses, two years from today there will be an annular eclipse of the sun in the southwestern Southwestern U.S., and in 2.5 years a total eclipse of the sun visible in the northwestern part of my state of Pennsylvania. Start planning.

Anyway, the Bulletin article discusses plans to observe aurora during the IGY by photographing the whole sky with 29 cameras deployed in high northern and southern latitudes. With film(!), if you young folks know what that is. And here is a cool word from the article: ascaugraph - an instrument for the semi-automatic reduction of all-sky camera films, constructed for the IGY. I can't even find that word by googling.

The aurora were also to be observed visually at 120 U.S. Weather Bureau (employer for my second summer job, I'll save that for another time), and 56 volunteer stations. Yay for citizen science. Spectrographs (to look at emission colors, or spectra) and other instruments were also to be used.

Here is a more recent (Feb. 18-19, 2014) spectacular video display of the Northern Lights in Alaska (you can turn the music down):

Rocket Program

Experiments discussed in other articles in this issue of the Bulletin for studying solar activity, ionospheric physics, geomagnetism, aurora and airglow were ground-based or made low in the atmosphere. Rockets as a research tool would also allow observations to be made from higher altitudes, without the hindrance of atmospheric screening. Sounding rockets (exploring vertical stratification) were to be used during the IGY to make observations of the atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere at different latitudes, but especially from the newly established complex at Ft. Churchill, Canada, located in the middle of the auroral oval zone where the aurora are most prominent. The U.S. Department of Defense and the Canadian government cooperated in establishing the launching complex and associated instrumentation at Ft, Churchill. Pre-IGY tests were make with 19 small rocket flights and 5 Aerobee rocket flights.

Many Aerobees were launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Check out the history of the Aerobee rocket in this video from the New Mexico Museum of Space History:

I don't have anything to say about William Shatner's rocket trip into space. I guess I'm just not interested. But I find another Rocket Man's journey, which I just watched for the first time, quite beautiful and compelling. Iranian filmmaker and refugee Majid Adin's  reimagination of the Elton John song tells a story of adventure, loneliness, and hope:

The anniversary of the launching of Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite

I was away for 10 days on my longest trip in the covid era. I spent a couple of days in Acadia National Park (Maine), ate a whole lobster (not sure f I ever did that before), toured the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College and the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut (and ate non-Mystic Pizza pizza while watching the movie Mystic Pizza), visited with three former students, heard my son give a lecture at Susquehanna University, and explored the ups and downs of public transportation (including a delayed Amtrak train due to an accident on the tracks, causing me to take my longest Uber ride ever to get into New York on time). 

I'll get back on track on reporting articles from the IGY Bulletins of 1957 with the next post.

But today I want to honor the launching of Earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, on October 4, 1957. NASA's web page on Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age states, "History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race."

Below is a newsreel from back in the day, with its very retro style. (For some reason Fox News is spinning over the video, even though that purported purveyor of news did not yet exist.)

The Story of the Sputnik Moment by David Hoffman is a longer exploration of the American perspective and cultural context of the launching of Sputnik.

The film was based on Paul Dickson’s book Sputnik: the Shock of the Century (2001).

Another documentary is from the PBS Nova Series, Sputnik Declassified. It posits that President Eisenhower had other plans for the use of space. See that one here. The IGY is highlighted at 26 minutes into the video.

In my opinion, these documentaries are a little naive in terms of the disbelief of Americans who could not conceive that the Soviets could ever beat America with such a technological accomplishment. 

As the Pravda announcement of the launch states, the Soviets had planned to launch satellites during the IGY, as had the U.S. Both were successful, but the Soviets were first. Pravda added, "The successful launching of the first man-made earth satellite makes a most important contribution to the treasure-house of world science and culture. The scientific experiment accomplished at such a great height is of tremendous importance for learning the properties of cosmic space and for studying the earth as a planet of our solar system."

My Sputnik memorabilia items include:

• a signed copy of Dickson's book on Sputnik.

• statuettes my parents brought me after they visited the Soviet Union and my Dad's childhood home in 1964

Each about 2" across. The one on the left, with a little repair clay on it), says 4-X-1957 [date of launch] CCCP [Russian for USSR] on the base. The one on the right has CCCP on the globe, and some text on the base which is difficult to read; I'm not really sure if this one is Sputnik 1 or another satellite/rocket.

• a number of postage stamps, such as Russia (Soviet Union) Scott catalog #1992, with the launch date text "4 October 1957" and "first in the world, Soviet artificial earth satellite," 40 kopeck, issued 5 Nov. 1957, just a month after the actual launch of Sputnik.

I'll return in future posts to Sputnik 2 (launched 3 Nov. 1957) and  Sputnik 3 (15 May 1958), both launched during the IGY, the only other satellites designated by the Soviets as Sputniks. The Russian covid drug is named Sputnik V. Obviously, the name is still used to convey prowess and success.