Blogging

I started this blog 13 months ago, and with this being my 70th post I'm averaging over 5 a month. I have on the whole been sticking to my target of approximately weekly posts mentioned in my first entry for this blog. I am still finding the blog a good outlet for me to share my IGY collectibles, describe some of the science, and make other randomish observations and connections to my life.

A decade or so ago I was the main poster for two blogs related to professional groups. One was for the Society for Archaeological Sciences a group I have belonged to for about 40 years. I'm still on the executive board. Much of my academic research applied scientific methods to archaeological problems, so the SAS was a small society that complemented my membership in larger groups like the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, and the Society for American Archaeology. I was the main poster on the SAS blog from its start in Jan. 2009, til about Dec. 2010, with 134 posts, or about 5 a month. My postings tailed off after that, with some being made by other SAS officers. Now it has evolved into an online presentation of the SAS Bulletin Online, admirably edited by Carmen Ting. The SAS Bulletin had earlier had been a quarterly paper and later electronic newsletter.

For about 31 months during 2008-2011, I was the primary poster for the Shaking Earth blog. This was an effort on behalf of the Lamont-Doherty Cooperative Seismograph Network, a consortium of seismograph operators in the northeastern U.S.  For several years, there were regular meeting of station operators, and the blog was conceived of a way to publicize the work of the Consortium and seismological news of general interest. There were 266 posts, or almost 9 a month.

That was a busy time in my career, even without the blogs. I'm pretty amazed I did both of these blogs at the same time. They did create my own impression that a blog was appropriately timely and dynamic if the frequency of posts were on the order of weekly.

Recently I added a list of some other blog in in the sidebar. These are blogs that relate to this one or have influenced me, and that post on a fairly regular basis.

1. The IAGA blog (International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomny) blog, which I mentioned here. "This blog hopes to promote the work done by the IAGA community. It also aims to portray the life of its researchers. The IAGA Blogs are maintained by the Social Media (SM) Working Group, which is a part of the Interdivisional Commission on Education and Outreach (ICEO). The SM group aims to provide an easily accessible platform for news and information and create awareness within and outside the community. It acts as a bridge connecting the scientists and their research with the general public." Much of my own research in archaeomagnetism was in an area covered by IAGA, and I have been to a number of IAGA conferences. IAGA also covers a number of disciplines studied during the IGY.
    
2. The Plainspoken Scientist, hosted by the AGU (American Geophysical Union. "The Plainspoken Scientist is the science communication blog of AGU’s Sharing Science program. With this blog, we wish to encourage scientists to reach out to non-scientists and to do so with plainspoken discussion." That's an admirable goal, and one that I have in this blog, to share some aspects of the science during the IGY in what I hope is an understandable fashion.
   
   
3. The Bridge: Connecting Science and Policy, another AGU blog. "The Bridge is an AGU blog that connects science and policy. It provides a platform for scientists, policy makers, and experts to communicate ideas about the science policy interface." Much of the work done during the IGY was related to national and international science and geopolitical policy. The science of the IGY could never have been done without the support of a plethora of policy makers around the world.
   
   
4. Exploring Stamps (YouTube channel) is a video blog, or vlog. I find Graham Beck to be a knowledgeable and entertaining philatelist. His topics include nuts and bolts of stamp collecting, philatelic esoterica, and special stamp topics including space and Antarctic exploration. He says, "Stamp Collecting is still the most popular hobby in the world. Learn about the world through sorting postage stamps."
   
   
5. Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle. I've been doing the NY Times crossword daily for several years, currently on a streak of 621 consecutive completions (with some occasional help). The pseudonynmous "Rex Parker" gets up daily at 4:30, solves the puzzle and has a blog about it up by 6 am or so. He (or an occasional guest) has been doing this since 2006, for some 5500 posts. These are cleanly formatted, well written, funny, and heavily opinionated. Ok, sometimes opinionated to the point of being snarky, but it's his blog, he can cry or snark if he wants to. He has a loyal readership and gets dozens of comments a day, so I am guessing he has thousands of readers. He really likes today's puzzle, but don't let that fool you. He has his puzzling likes and dislikes, and he will let you know if the constructor and the NY Times puzzle editors have tickled his puzzle fancy or not, day in and day out. It's interesting to compare what Rex has to say with Deb Amlen's gentler Wordplay column in the NY Times itself.

Wikipedia has a nice overview of blogging.

Keep reading, and maybe writing, those blogs! Feel free to enter a comment listing your favorite blogs, and why you like them.

IGY Bulletin, Number 5, November 1957 - South pole winter weather review

Two nights ago I had a couple of peeks at the lunar eclipse. For once my insomnia had a benefit. The eclipse was notable for its reddish color and duration, the longest eclipse in over 1,000 years. If you didn't see it, this compilation of astro photos (with musical accompaniment, unfortunately) spanning the entire duration might satisfy you:

I was thinking that the mathematically beautiful predictability of such events is awesome, especially in these times that are uncertain in so many other ways.

Another characteristic of the Earth's orbit about the sun is how it generates seasons. Northern hemisphere winter actually occurs when the Earth is closest to the sun, so distance from the sun cannot be the cause of seasons. (My editor was surprised that orbits -- whether planetary or of satellites -- are elliptical, with a circular orbit being only a special case. This video explains with a modicum of qualitative physics why orbits are elliptical.) Furthermore, seasons are reversed in the northern and southern hemispheres. These facts can be explained by the fact that seasons are due to the tilt of the Earth's orbit. 

Reasons for the seasons (NASA)

So while we are getting lovely fall colors as shown in these recent neighborhood photos, it's now Spring in the southern hemisphere.

All this is a lead-in to the IGY Bulletin article on the South Pole winter weather review, from about June 20 - September 20, 1957. Most of this was within the official beginning portion of the IGY, which started on July 1, 1957. The article states that

A new [global] record low temperature of -102.1°F was measured at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on September 17, 1957. This eclipses [no pun intended] the previous low of -100.4°F, which occurred on May 11 of this year.

The article continues that the previous record cold temperature of -90°F was set in Siberia in 1933. It also points out that the North pole is unlikely to see temperatures below -50°F because the Artic is an ocean covered with ice, as opposed to continental Antarctica. Water has a higher specific heat (i.e., temperatures respond to heat changes more sluggishly) than land, so temperature extremes on coasts and over an ocean are mitigated. In fact, the lowest temperature recorded in the northern hemisphere was not at the North Pole (in the midst of the Arctic Ocean) but over the landmass of Greenland, -93.3°F (-69.6 °C), on Dec. 22, 1991.

The lowest temperature since recorded at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was -117.0°F (−82.8°C) on June 23, 1982.

The Bulletin article predicted that lower temperatures would likely be found further in the interior of Antarctica, nearer the Pole of Inaccessibility, which is further from the surrounding oceans than is the South Pole (see map in this previous post). The Soviet Union established a now-abandoned research station there later in the IGY. Wikipedia's page of weather records lists the now lowest recorded temperature of -128.6°F (-89.2°C) at another Russian Antarctic station, Vostok Station, on July 21, 1983. An even colder temperature of -136°F (-93.2°C) was inferred from remotely sensed measurements by satellites over the East Antarctic Plateau on Aug. 10, 2010.

The average winter temperature in 2021 at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was -78°F (-61°C),  the coldest on record (even though there was not a new record for the single coldest day). Note that the graph below from an article in the Washington Post shows that the oldest data in this series dates to the IGY in 1957.

Average winter temperature at the South Pole since 1957 in °C (Richard Cullather/British Antarctic Survey)

Darn, all this is making me think of the approaching winter. Brrr.

IGY Bulletin, Number 5, November 1957 - Airglow measurements during the IGY

The second article in this issue of the IGY Bulletin returns to the topic of airglow.  As I read the article and looked a some more recent web pages and videos on airglow, I had to remind myself that the whole reason for the IGY was to add to our scientific knowledge about many geophysical phenomena. So whatever you might read or view about airglow (or pretty much anything else!) today may be somewhat different than what the IGY Bulletin said almost 65 years ago because, well, scientific knowledge is cumulative and is always subject to revision and improvement. Of course that is also true in any other area, such as understanding viruses and climate change. Duh. 

This article's topic (as will many others) involves the electromagnetic spectrum, so let's start with a little pictorial refresher of that. The diagram below shows the electromagnetic spectrum with commonly named types of radiation, and the corresponding wavelengths in nanometers (nm, one billionth of a meter) and frequencies in hertz (Hz, cycles per second). The visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is the narrow region with wavelengths between about 400 and 700 nm. Wavelength and frequency are related by the equation c = λ x f, where c is the speed of light (3 x 10⁸ meters per second).

The electromagnetic spectrum (Chemistry Library)

The Bulletin article starts off with a description of airglow:

A faint, usually invisible glow -- the night airglow -- occurs in the earth's atmosphere and is a subject of considerable scientific interest and study during the IGY. Although not generally identifiable by the naked eye, airglow supplies much of the light of the night sky. One investigator has roughly estimated its contribution to the visible light -- in the absence of moonlight and aurora -- at 40%, which is somewhat greater than that contributed by starlight.

This video gives a contemporary summary of airglow:

Prominent colors found in airglow include green from an atomic oxygen transition; yellow from sodium; red from oxygen; infrared from hydoxyl (OH). I asked myself, sodium in the atmosphere? Turns out there is a sodium layer in the atmosphere which originates from the ablation of meteorites.

Airglow is due to emission from excited states of atoms and molecules formed by processes resulting (directly or indirectly) from solar radiation. Airglow is an example of luminescence, the spontaneous emission of light by a substance (not resulting from heat, which would be incandescence). It includes chemiluminescence (the emission of light as a result of a chemical reactions) and fluorescence (emission of photons/light after the excitation of atoms and molecules to higher but unstable energy states).

Airglow originates in the mesosphere part of the atmosphere, at altitudes of about 80-100 km, as shown in an earlier post.

The article states that nine countries were to participate in IGY airglow studies. For the USNC-IGY program, photometers (instruments that measures the strength of electromagnetic radiation) were to periodically scan the skies to measure airglow. Pen-and-ink records  would be transferred to punch cards which were fed into computers. Various corrections would then be made to compute the absolute intensity of the airglow in different areas of the sky.

The heights of the airglow were to be determined using rocket soundings, triangulation from different ground stations, and analyzing the increase of intensity towards the horizon.

Airglow has dynamic characteristics in space and time that were also to be studied during the IGY.

One of the books I have in my IGY library -- Geophysics and the IGY: Proceedings of the Symposium at the Opening of the International Geophysical Year -- does have an article on airglow, which bears similarity to this one in the IGY Bulletin. Perhaps the author is the same, although Bulletin articles are not attributed. The title page and table of contents for the book are shown below. One article on The Night Airglow, the scan of which is here, is by Franklin E. Roach. Darn, this book is another one of those good IGY resources I own that I haven't really much looked at.

IGY Bulletin, Number 5, November 1957 - Preliminary summary of USSR satellite reports

We move on to issue #5 of the IGY Bulletin, from November, 1957. A pdf of this issue, downloaded from the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, can be found here. This 16-page issue consists of the following articles:

1. Preliminary summary of USSR satellite reports
2. Airglow measurements during the IGY
3. South Pole winter weather review
4. Preliminary report on rockoon firings in the Arctic
5. The special World Day Program for the IGY
6. CSAGI rocket and satellite conference

In this post, I will review #1. There is some overlap with my previous post about the anniversary of the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. It was successfully placed into orbit by the Soviet Union on Oct. 4, 1957, so that was reported in the IGY Bulletin published in the succeeding month. 

Launch

Radio Moscow made the official announcement of the launch, which took place from a point north of the Caspian Sea. The three-stage rocket used reached a maximum velocity of 18,000 mph. 

Here is a Russian video clip of the launch:

Satellite characteristics

Sputnik 1 was a polished solid sphere weighing 180 pounds, almost two feet in diameter. The four antenna, 8-10 feet long, were folded back upon launch and sprang into position upon ejection from the third stage of the rocket.

Instrumentation

There were two transmitters on the satellite operating at different frequencies that could be received by shortwave radios, so amateur radio buffs around the world tuned in to listen as the satellite passed. The pulse of each signal was 0.3 seconds long, followed by a pause of similar length during which the other transmitter sounded. The power of the transmissions were one watt. AM radio stations in the U.S. today are authorized to operate up to 50,000 watts. WITF, my local NPR station, operates at 5,900 watts. The Sputnik signal died after three weeks in orbit.

Observations

The first U.S. reception of Sputnik's satellite was reported by RCA Communications. (I got stock in RCA for my bar mitzvah in 1963, and held onto it until RCA was acquired by General Electric in 1985.) It was picked up by the Naval Research Laboratory shortly afterwards. By Oct. 6, six out of the NRL's ten Minitrack stations were tuned to Sputnik's transmission frequencies to facilitate radio tracking of the satellite.

Visual observations were also made of the satellite and its co-orbiting rocket.

Orbit

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory announced a precise determination of Sputnik's orbit on Oct. 11. The apogee and perigee were 583 and 143 miles above the Earth's surface, respectively. The period of the orbit was about 96 minutes, and it precessed in a retrograde direction (moving westwards in successive orbits) at about 3° per day, as shown in the figure below.

U.S. Naval Research Lab prediction of Sputnik orbit, times for 40°N (from IGY Bulletin article)

Here is a nice web site that presents several historic articles on Sputnik 1 that appeared in the New York Times in early October, 1957.

When I bought the Sputnik book by Paul Dickson, it was really just a bonus for buying Dickson's collection of space pins, some from the U.S. but most from the Soviet Union. Below are the pins showing Sputnik 1 with its fins that are dated as 1957 (rather than to anniversaries), with two showing the launch date of Oct. 4.

Sputnik 1 pins from my collection. Each is about 1/2" across.

IGY and philatelic musings during a visit to Philadelphia

Now that I am vaccinated and have also had my booster, I am getting out there a bit more. A week ago I did an overnight trip to Philadelphia. The afternoon I arrived, I went to the Wagner Free Institute of Science as I mentioned in my last post, and noted the synoptic collections there.

The impetus for my visit was to attend a concert by Steely Dan. I am a modest Steely Dan fan, but most of all I wanted to see Donald Fagen, one of the co-founders of the band along with Walter Becker (deceased). It looks like Fagen is the only remaining original member, but I guess he owns the name. These legacy bands sometimes make me wince, but at least it's not The Beach Boys without Brian Wilson. 

Steely Dan members timeline (Wikipedia)

As a solo artist, Fagen wrote the song I.G.Y., which I consider the musical anthem of the International Geophysical Year. I had a blog post about him and the song back in January. Fagen didn't sing I.G.Y. in this show. The band performed the entire Steely Dan album Aja, and a number of their other hits. Maybe my favorite was Deacon Blues, in this video played by an ensemble similar to the one I saw:

The concert was Steely Dannish smooth, albeit a bit loud. I felt distracted by the light show and the whirling dervish guy dancing nonstop like a madman a few seats away. I was chastised for the one photo I took, even though I would guess nothing was said to the 2/3 of 

the crowd who remained unmasked, counter to stated protocols (although vaccination proof was checked upon entry). And why couldn't people just sit and listen, rather than the constant flow of people to the bar and popcorn stand.

The day after the concert I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I toured the much-hyped Jasper Johns exhibit. Johns was "discovered" by noted gallery owner Leo Castelli in 1958, during the IGY. 

Jasper Johns and Leo Castelli, 1958 (FORMIDABLE MAG)

I did not take a photo of one of Johns' iconic flag pictures, with the 48 stars to indicate it represented a time before the statehood of Alaska, which I mentioned in the last post. But I did snap this one painting

Jasper Johns' Target (1958)

from the show dating to the IGY period, Target. Appropriate, since to me it was reminiscent of a cross-section of the Earth's interior, showing our planet's major divisions.

Schematic cross-section of the Earth (BBC)

The second exhibit I looked at was on the photography and printing of Richard Benson. The subtitle for the last few panels of the exhibit was "Looking Beyond Prints." The explanatory text explained that "Benson collected antique postage stamps and currency ... viewing them as finely made prints produced in extraordinarily large editions. He turned to the stamps for some of his last photographs, using a scanner in place of the camera... he believed this new stage of digital technology would enable us to hold onto everything old, as in the case of these stamps, which he was delighted to see reproduced in fine detail at an unprecedented scale."

Fancy Cancels (2013), pigment inkjet print. Aprroximately 2' x 3'.

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Black Jack Stamp with Fancy Cancel (2013), pigment inkjet print. Appoximately 1' x 1.5'.

"Benson eagerly collected examples of the 2-cent Andrew Jackson stamp [Scott #73], known as the Black Jack, printer between 1863 and 1869. He especially loved the 'fancy cancels' found on many examples. These are designs used by postal clerks to mark used stamps in that era. Often carved on cork and paired with a chosen ink color, they are highly individual. Of course, the cancel marks are prints themselves, deigned to obliterate or deface the image below. Here again, as in so much of Benson's work, we encounter anonymous individuals creatively marking their work and time in the world" (Philadelphia Art Museum).

For better or worse, this blog is affecting the way I look at or for things in the world.