Jan 15 1980
From The Space Library
NASA reported that X-ray data from HEAO 1, a high-energy astronomy observatory launched in August 1977 and terminated in 1979, had revealed a superhot superbubble of gas-a gigantic shell about 6,000 light years away from Earth and 1,200 light-years in diameter-in the constellation Cygnus, the Northern Cross. Dr. Webster Cash, of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at Boulder, and coinvestigator, Dr. Philip Charles of the University of California at Berkeley, had analyzed the information from a cosmic X-ray instrument on the observatory that had been devised by Dr. Elihu Boldt of GSFC and Dr. Gordon Garmire of CalTech.
In a speech for delivery to a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Francisco January 16, Cash explained that parts of the bubble had been seen before in brief X-ray glimpses, but no one realized what was being observed: one part was thought to be a supernova remnant, another part to be hot gas escaping from a galaxy. Because of its size, the bubble was not visible in its entirety until HEAO 1 picked it up in an X-ray sweep.
Cash said the huge halo was never spotted before because "it flows so energetically that it cools through emission of x-rays" instead of more normal emissions visible in the optical or infrared regions of the spectrum. A cool gas cloud known as the Great Rift of Cygnus, measuring 800 to 1,300 light years, could be seen obscuring the Milky Way in Cygnus on a dark night; this cloud, containing "enough material to make 5 million stars," lay beside the bubble and served to hide its central area from Earth view. Supernova explosions impacting this cloud over millions of years could compress and heat its interior, forming a shell of superheated hydrogen materials that became the superheated bubble visible in X-ray data today. Cash said that these explosions were a major mechanism for making new stars: Earth's Sun might have formed at the edge of a similar bubble, he said. (NASA Release 80-3)
The New York Times reported that Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins would resign effective January 28 as undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institute, an office held since 1976, to become vice president for field operations of Vought, Inc., in Washington, D.C. Collins had joined the Smithsonian in 1971 as director of the National Air and Space Museum. (NY Times, Jan 15/80, C-16)
Communications Satellite Corporation (ComSatCorp) announced that it had filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a 5 % reduction of its basic charges to U.S. common carriers for international communications satellite services. It claimed frequent price cuts, most recently by 15 % in May 1979, since it began commercial service with Early Bird in 1965. (ComSatCorp Release 80-3)
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