Space

Greetings family and friends!  Today's Ralph Family Photo Album chapter is about my lifelong interest in "space" and growing up in the early days of our country's space program. The attached photo files include a close-up of Halley's Comet, Disneyland's "Moonliner" and the front page of a 1962 newspaper. Hopefully this mayl bring back some of your memories as well......Bill

Samuel, Edmond, Bill and the Comet

“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming in again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: Now here are two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together”  Mark Twain -1909

Halley’s Comet passes near Earth every 76 years in a huge looping orbit through our Solar System. It’s really a remarkable coincidence that Halley arrived the year of Samuel Clemen’s birth and that his death occurred, as he predicted, during the comets return visit 76 years later.

Growing up in the 1940’s and 50’s my bedroom had space ship wallpaper and glitter on the ceiling and I closely followed the achievements of our country’s space program and I saved newspapers of significant events. I always looked forward to visits to The California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park and to enjoying the planetarium show. The simulated Trip to the Moon aboard the Moonliner was my favorite ride at Disneyland. In high school I had the opportunity to observe Saturn’s rings and distant galaxies through Lick Observatories 120” telescope and four of Jupiter’s moons were visible with my 30 power telescope. I watched in awe as Sputnik passed overhead and I stared at the moon in the night sky while Neil Armstrong was walking on it’s dusty surface. We marveled at the Perseids spectacular meteor shower one summer night while driving across the Nevada desert. It’s not difficult to pick out Mars in the night sky on it’s close passes, and one evening I witnessed a comet and lunar eclipse in the same night sky. The Milky Way was breathtaking in the summer sky above Yosemite’s Tuolumne Meadows, and with skill’s retained from Boy Scouts, I’m still able to locate Polaris, the North Star, by using the Big Dipper constellation as a guide. I’ve used a pierced piece of cardboard to view sun spots and visited Arizona’s Lowell Observatory where Pluto was first sighted. Just this past week an unmanned rover landed on the surface of Mars and began a several year assignment to explore for signs of ancient life on the red planet. 

For years I anticipated seeing Halley’s Comet during it’s next  scheduled pass, and on the prescribed night in 1986 with binoculars in hand I climbed up on the roof and carefully scanned the sky. Unhappily on this trip through the galaxy Halley’s nearest approach was 39 million miles away and passing on the far side of the sun, invisible in Fremont’s light polluted sky. Like Mark Twain, and English astronomer Edmond Halley who “discovered” the comet through calculations and historic reports but passed away 16 years before it’s arrival. I also missed out on the seeing the elusive heavenly wanderer. and although I was disappointed, I think that Samuel and Edmond would be amazed that for the first time in millennium we had the capability to send probes into space for close-up views of Halley’s icy core and million mile long tail. Be certain to mark 2061 on your calendars! 

Bill (2/20/21)