TYB
>>20576033 LB
Dayton Ohio History and Seal
Dayton, city, seat (1803) of Montgomery county, southwestern Ohio, U.S., located 54 miles (87 km) northeast of Cincinnati, on a low floodplain of the Great Miami River, at the confluence of the Stillwater and Mad rivers and Wolf Creek. It is the heart of a metropolitan area that includes the cities of Kettering, Miamisburg, Xenia, Fairborn, Oakwood, Centerville, Beavercreek, and Vandalia.
Following the peace treaty with the Shawnee Indians, signed at Greenville (1795), the area was opened to white settlement. The town was laid out by a group of Revolutionary War veterans, including Jonathan Dayton from New Jersey, for whom it was named. It developed as a river port for the shipment of agricultural produce, mainly to New Orleans. The opening of the Miami and Erie Canal, from Dayton to Cincinnati, in 1829, and the arrival in 1851 of a railroad to Springfield stimulated Dayton’s commercial and industrial growth. The town became the home of the cash register after the mechanical money drawer was invented there in 1879 by James Ritty and perfected by John Henry Patterson in the 1880s. In addition, the automobile self-starter was developed there by Charles F. Kettering, who, along with Edward A. Deeds, also produced ignition systems and electric lighting equipment for farms. In 1892 Wilbur and Orville Wright opened their bicycle repair shop in Dayton, where they conducted experiments that led to the first sustained and controlled flight of a powered airplane, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903; a monolith has been erected in memory of the brothers, who are buried in the city’s Woodland Cemetery.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Dayton-Ohio
In 1913 the most disastrous of a series of floods occurred in the area. After this, the Miami Conservancy District, a comprehensive flood-control project, was created. Dayton experienced the suburbanization typical of many North American cities after World War II; the central city lost residents and businesses while the metropolitan area grew overall. By the 1990s, efforts to revitalize the city centre had succeeded in bringing new commercial and residential development to the city.
Dayton is now the heart of a large diversified urban complex and a market and distribution centre for a fertile agricultural region. It is also a national aviation centre, stemming from the establishment of experimental aviation laboratories during World Wars I and II and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (1946), with its modern aviation complex, Air Force Institute of Technology (1947), and museum (1935; moved to current site 1971). Manufactures include auto parts and equipment, steel and aluminum products, machine tools, refrigerators, air conditioners, computers, office equipment, printing presses, and plastics.
Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio.
Within the metropolitan area are the University of Dayton (Roman Catholic; 1850), Wright State University (1967), the United Theological Seminary (United Methodist; 1871), Sinclair Community College (1887), and Miami-Jacobs (junior) Career College (1860). Dayton has an art institute, a museum of natural history, and a symphony orchestra. The Dayton home of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) is preserved as a state memorial and museum; the city’s Greek Revival-style Old Courthouse (1850) now houses the Montgomery County Historical Society museum. Recreational facilities include Carillon Park, noted for concerts and historical exhibits (including a replica of the Wright Brothers bicycle shop). The Miamisburg Mound, one of the largest conical earthworks built by the prehistoric Adena culture (with a height of 65 feet [20 metres] and a circumference of 877 feet [267 metres]), is located just southwest of the city. Inc. town, 1805; city, 1841. Pop. (2010) 141,527; Dayton Metro Area, 841,502; (2020) 137,644; Dayton-Kettering Metro Area, 814,049.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Dayton-Ohio
https://www.daytonohio.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63/City-Seal-Description-PDF
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Mar 16, 2024
ELT and the Milky Way
The southern winter Milky Way sprawls across this night skyscape. Looking due south, the webcam view was recorded near local midnight on March 11 in dry, dark skies over the central Chilean Atacama desert. Seen below the graceful arc of diffuse starlight are satellite galaxies of the mighty Milky Way, also known as the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. In the foreground is the site of the European Southern Observatory's 40-metre-class Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). Under construction at the 3000 metre summit of Cerro Armazones, the ELT is on track to become planet Earth's biggest Eye on the Sky.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
NASA Volunteers Find Fifteen Rare “Active Asteroids”
MAR 15, 2024
Some extraordinary asteroids have “activity”—comet-like tails or envelopes of gas and dust. NASA’s Active Asteroids project announced the discovery of activity on fifteen asteroids, challenging conventional wisdom about the solar system.
To find these fifteen rare objects, more than 8000 volunteers combed through 430,000 images from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile. A paper about the results, now published in the Astronomical Journal, includes nine volunteers among the co-authors.
“For an amateur astronomer like me it's a dream come true.” said volunteer Virgilio Gonano from Udine, Italy. “Congratulations to all the staff and the friends that also check the images!”
Studying these rare active asteroids teaches scientists about the formation and evolution of the solar system, including the origins of water here on Earth. These objects may also aid future space exploration because the same ices that cause comet-like tails can power rockets or provide breathable air.
“I have been a member of the Active Asteroids team since its first batch of data,” said volunteer Tiffany Shaw-Diaz from Dayton, Ohio. “And to say that this project has become a significant part of my life is an understatement. I look forward to classifying subjects each day, as long as time or health permits, and I am beyond honored to work with such esteemed scientists on a regular basis.”
The Active Asteroids project was founded by Dr. Colin Orion Chandler, a LINCC Frameworks project scientist at the University of Washington and DiRAC Institute. To join the project and help discover the next active asteroid, visit https://www.activeasteroids.net.
https://science.nasa.gov/get-involved/citizen-science/nasa-volunteers-find-fifteen-rare-active-asteroids/
St. Patrick’s Aurora Illuminates the Night Sky
MAR 15, 2024
This majestic image of the dazzling green lights of the aurora borealis was captured on March 17, 2015, around 5:30 a.m. EDT in Donnelly Creek, Alaska.
The aurora borealis and aurora australis, often called the northern lights and southern lights, are common occurrences at high northern and southern latitudes, less frequent at mid-latitudes, and seldom seen near the equator.
These colorful ribbons of light are the visible manifestation of the solar wind – the flow of charged particles from the Sun – interacting with the Earth’s magnetosphere. Strong geomagnetic storms stimulate our atmosphere and light up the night sky, creating auroras.
See how you can help track auroras around the world with the Aurorasaurus project.
https://science.nasa.gov/citizen-science/aurorasaurus/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/st-patricks-aurora-illuminates-the-night-sky/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13197751/Nasa-nazis-huntsville-alabama-space-race-germans.html
How the 'NASA Nazis' helped transform sleepy Alabama farming town into America's 'Rocket City' and win the Space Race - but dark legacy of 'our Germans' led by former SS officer remains divisive
07:46 EDT, 16 March 2024
Huntsville, Alabama, is fiercely proud of its Rocket City nickname - earned for its crucial role in America's space race success.
The city, which transformed in the 1950s from a cotton market town to the world's foremost hub for space travel research, is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, which led development of the Saturn rockets that put the first man on the moon.
But there is a dark side to the story of these epic achievements: many of the men who led the groundbreaking work were Nazis - recruited through a top secret operation after the Second World War.
The fascinating, and troubling, reality is often omitted from lessons about America's victory in the space race against the Soviet Union. It is also something Huntsville continues to grapple with today.
There are those who say the 'greater good' outweighed the moral cost of recruiting members of an evil regime, allowing them to avoid justice in the process.
But others say bringing these men to the US was an inexcusable decision - compounded by the fact their Nazi backgrounds go largely unmentioned in lessons about America's space history.
The Nazi scientists who were key to America's space ambitions were recruited through a top secret program called Operation Paperclip.
Following the defeat of the Nazis and the conclusion of World War Two in 1945, the United States and its allies were aware that Germany was home to some of the greatest scientific minds, including pioneers in rocket engineering.
America set about recruiting these scientists to further its own military research. As tensions with the Soviet Union increased, which ultimately led to the Cold War, the scheme was also intended to prevent other hostile nations from recruiting the Germans.
Around 1,600 scientists were brought to the US through Operation Paperclip, which was approved by President Harry S. Truman and named after the paperclips attached to the personnel files of Germans eyed for recruitment.
Foremost among the scientists was Wernher von Braun, a Nazi and member of the SS, the notorious paramilitary wing of the party.
Von Braun was complicit in war crimes and played a leading role in the development of the V-2 rocket, which was built using slave labor and used by the Nazi regime to kill thousands of civilians. Despite his background, he would later become a hero in the US.
Von Braun and a team of his specialists were brought to the US in 1945 and initially based at Fort Bliss, Texas, where they worked on missile systems.
Historians have said about half of von Braun’s team of around 118 men were members of the Nazi party.
Five years later, he was transferred to Redstone Arsenal, an Army base near Huntsville, along with a team of other German engineers to develop the nation's first ballistic missiles.
It was this move which started this former cotton town on its journey to becoming the global epicenter of space rocket development.
Before 1950, Huntsville was a poor, segregated town with a population of about 16,000 people.
By 1960, the year that the Marshall Space Flight Center was established, the city was a hub of rocket research.
Von Braun was appointed the first head of the center, which opened at the Redstone Arsenal two years after NASA was formed in 1958.
He was already one of the most famous scientists in America for his rocket breakthroughs and lofty ambitions for space exploration. But the publicity which surrounded him rarely included mention of his Nazi past.
In Huntsville, there were many people initially uneasy with their new neighbors
1/2
Sherman Mullin, who worked in the town in the late 1950s before joining aerospace manufacturer Lockheed, told the LA Times: 'There were basically four groups in Huntsville — the local whites, the blacks, the Germans, and everybody from out of town, who were considered Yankees.
'None of the groups mingled. A Yankee couldn't get a date with a young lady in that town.'
The arrival of the Nazis was also difficult for their Jewish colleagues at NASA. Another central figure to NASA's early achievements was Kurt Heinrich Debus, another former SS member who was recruited through Operation Paperclip.
In Nazi Germany, Debus also played a central role in the development of the V missiles. He went on to become the first director of NASA's Launch Operations Center, which would later become the Kennedy Space Center.
Von Braun worked closely with Abraham Silverstein, a Jewish American engineer who grew up in Indiana and was a crucial figure at NASA. Silverstein coined the name for the Apollo missions and pioneered the use of liquid hydrogen fuel in rocket engines.
His son, David Silverstein, told the LA Times he believed his father was 'not totally fond of the situation'. Silverstein's daughter, Judy Cook, shared a similar view.
But ultimately, Silverstein was one of many NASA colleagues who were motivated to make progress through cooperation. He would say that there was 'never' animosity with von Braun and that the Nazi recruits 'were an important cog in the business and to have left them out would have been silly'.
Former Huntsville Mayor Loretta Spencer told the New York Times in 2007: ‘People said, ‘If you had just been at war with these people, how can you be so accepting of them?’”
‘But I think we were just in awe.’
The Germans knew they would face animosity from locals. But many accounts explain how they made efforts to be accepted, including Von Braun’s insistence that his team never speak German when Americans were in earshot.
The result was that in Huntsville, they were able to integrate in spite of their background, referred to by some as 'our Germans'. Von Braun forged personal links with several notable figures in Alabama as he rose to national prominence.
Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon on July 21, 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission.
Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and their crew mate Michael Collins were carried into space by a Saturn V missile built using the expertise of von Braun, Debus and many more other scientists recruited from Nazi Germany.
To this day, this epic feat of humanity is still regarded as a truly American achievement.
NASA's biographies of von Braun and Debus today make references to their Nazi backgrounds. Von Braun was 'was well aware of the terrible conditions' at the Nazi's V-2 missile plant and was 'involved in decision-making about the use of slave labor'.
Debus's biography notes that during his time as a scientist in Germany, he once reported a colleague, Richard Crämer, 'for criticizing Hitler and the Nazi Party, resulting in the Crämer’s conviction under the Treachery Law'.
In Huntsville, where there is still a strong German presence, the city is careful to consider its achievements in the context of the controversial backstory.
As Mayor Tommy Battle noted during a 50th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 mission in 2019: 'For the first time in history it made Huntsville a place that had done something nobody else had done.'
2/2
Mercury slammed by gargantuan eruption from the sun's hidden far side, possibly triggering 'X-ray auroras'
Mar 16, 2024
A gigantic, fiery eruption around 40 times wider than Earth recently exploded from the sun's hidden far side. The eruption hurled a massive cloud of plasma into space that later smashed into Mercury, scouring the planet's rocky surface and potentially triggering "X-ray auroras" on the unprotected world.
The eruption was likely triggered by a powerful solar flare, which occurred around 7 p.m. ET on March 9, Spaceweather.com reported. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spotted a large, partially obscured plasma filament exploding outward from behind the sun's northeast limb. Based on the amount of visible plasma, the eruption likely spanned around 310,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) across.
SDO data showed that the explosion, which likely left behind a massive "canyon of fire" on the sun's surface, also released a large coronal mass ejection (CME) — a fast-moving cloud of magnetized plasma and radiation — that collided with Mercury on March 10.
Mercury is often blasted with CMEs due to its proximity to our home star. The small planet has no atmosphere left as a result of this bombardment and is fully exposed to the full force of these solar storms.
When electrons from CMEs hit Mercury's unprotected surface, they rapidly slow down. This deceleration causes the particles to release energy in the form of X-rays, which scientists can detect from Earth. The result is an aurora-like phenomenon that is visible in X-rays rather than visible light.
The gigantic eruption is the latest sign that the explosive peak of the sun's roughly 11-year solar cycle, known as solar maximum, may have already begun — much earlier than originally forecast.
During solar maximum, solar flares and other types of solar storms erupt more frequently and more powerfully as the sun's magnetic field weakens and eventually flips over. Scientists are already seeing signs of this happening.
In the last month, researchers have seen some of the biggest solar storms of the current cycle, including a monster X-class flare — the most powerful for more than six years — and a plume of plasma 15 times taller than Earth, which erupted from the sun's south pole.
One of the biggest concerns during solar maximum is that researchers can't properly monitor the far side of the sun, which can harbor giant sunspots that unleash surprise solar storms, like the one that just hit Mercury. It's possible that these sunspots could swing round to face Earth as the sun rotates, exposing our planet to flares and CMEs. For example, in January 2023, a hidden sunspot spat out an X-class flare without warning that narrowly avoided Earth.
One secret weapon NASA has up its sleeve to prevent being caught out by these unseen dark patches is the Perseverance rover, which can sometimes spy on the sun's far side from its home on Mars. But this only works when Earth and Mars are located on opposite sides of the sun.
https://www.space.com/mercury-slammed-by-gargantuan-eruption-from-the-suns-hidden-far-side-possibly-triggering-x-ray-auroras
SpaceX launches 6,000th Starlink satellite on Friday night flight
Mar 15, 2024
SpaceX tied its rocket-reuse record on Friday (March 15), while placing its 6,000th Starlink internet satellite into Earth orbit.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 more of the company's Starlink satellites launched at 8:21 p.m. EDT (0021 GMT March 16) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It was the 19th liftoff for this Falcon 9's first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description. That tied a mark set this past December and matched for the first time last month.
To plan, the Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing on the droneship "A Shortfall of Gravitas," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Falcon 9's upper stage continued hauling the 23 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, where they were to be released about 65.5 minutes after liftoff.
Extensive rocket reuse is a key priority for SpaceX and its founder and CEO, Elon Musk. Indeed, the company's next-generation vehicle, called Starship, is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, a breakthrough that Musk thinks will make Mars settlement economically feasible.
The launch on Friday follows SpaceX's mostly-successful third test flight of Starship, which lifted off from the company's Starbase site in South Texas. That mission launched on Thursday morning.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-launch-group-6-44
FAA to oversee investigation of SpaceX Starship's 3rd test flight
Mar 15, 2024
For the third time in 11 months, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating a flight of SpaceX's Starship megarocket.
Starship launched for the third time ever on Thursday (March 14), roaring into the skies from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. The company aimed to bring both of Starship's elements — its first-stage Super Heavy booster and its Starship upper stage — down to Earth for ocean landings, but both vehicles ended up breaking apart in the atmosphere.
The test flight therefore qualifies as a mishap, and the FAA wants to know what happened. The agency announced this morning (March 15) that it will oversee a SpaceX-led investigation into Thursday's events.
The 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship, which SpaceX is developing to carry people and cargo to the moon and Mars, flew for the first time in April 2023, on a test flight that lasted just four minutes.
It took to the skies again in November, notching several important milestones, including a successful stage separation. But that second trial mission ended after just eight minutes.
The FAA oversaw SpaceX investigations into both of those flights. The first probe identified 63 corrective actions that the company needed to take before launching again, and the second found 17 required fixes.
The number will likely be lower still for flight number three, given how much progress Starship made. For example, Super Heavy aced its "boostback" burn after separating from the upper stage, though the giant booster failed to execute its landing burn properly and broke apart about 1,515 feet (462 meters) above the Gulf of Mexico.
The Starship upper stage reached orbital velocity and hit its proper "coast" trajectory, on its way to a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The vehicle was rolling a bit as it reentered Earth's atmosphere, however, and broke apart about 50 minutes after launch.
It's unclear when the fourth Starship test flight will take place; the FAA will not consider granting a launch license until the current mishap investigation is over and SpaceX has implemented the required corrective actions, whatever those end up being. But it's safe to assume that SpaceX will be ready to fly when it gets the green light.
"Today, we do have four ships and four Super Heavy boosters built, with more coming off the production line as our star factory continues to grow," Siva Bharadvaj, a space operations engineer at SpaceX, said during a webcast of Thursday's launch.
"These vehicles are slated for future flight tests just like today's," he added. "In fact, just this week, we static-fired our next ship that's planning to fly and expect to test the booster as soon as the launch mount is free from today's flight test."
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-third-test-flight-faa-investigation