In 1892, George Ellery Hale, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Chicago, convinced the university president to acquire two 40-inch telescope lens blanks. With funding from Charles Yerkes, a Chicago mass-transit tycoon looking to refurbish his image, Hale spearheaded the creation of an observatory to house the Great Refractor made with these blanks.Continue reading "Oct. 21, 1897: Yerkes Observatory is dedicated"

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BepiColombo, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launched Oct. 20, 2018. The spacecraft is actually two satellites in one, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), commissioned with investigating one of the least-visited planets in our solar system. To reach its final position,Continue reading "Oct. 20, 2018: BepiColombo launches"

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