The Space Age
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Looking through the telescope
I've been an amateur astronomer 60 years, including a lot of Mac connections. In high school, I belonged to the St. Paul Telescope Club which met at the Mac science hall. One crisp fall eve, a member invited the club for stargazing on the bluffs of south Bloomington and it was so clear we could even pick Orion out of the firmament. As a Mac student, I met my future wife Marlene in astronomy class in that same science classroom. Since the department chair, Dr. Glock, was a member of the Telescope club, several of us in the class were able to ask him to recalibrate our lecturer -- a scientist from the U. of Minnesota. I liked to take time-exposure pictures at night from the north edge of the football field, featuring star trails and Mac buildings including the little observatory at the opposite end of Shaw Field. I also photographed a partial solar eclipse from there. Now, that camera site is occupied by Mac's new science hall, capped by a large high-tech observatory. These days along Bloomington's bluffs, city lights blot out all but the brightest stars of Orion. A few years ago in New Zealand I saw Orion in February without freezing (it's their summer) but it was upside down. Grinned a Kiwi amateur who gave us time with his telescope: "Looks all ryte to us, myte!" Traveling below the equator is where to see the Southern Cross, where the sun and moon arc from right to left, where familiar constellations are inverted, and where you can meet upright new friends in the best Macalester tradition.
Larry Teien
Our carpool was a-buzz with sputnik
On the morning of October 4, 1957, four young practice teachers piled into my car on the street outside of Wallace Hall to make our way to Roseville schools. The car was "a-buzz" with the morning headline: "Soviet Union launches first satellite into orbit in outer space." It was called Sputnik!
Louise A. Palmgren Brandt
Seeing Sputnik from Kirk's parking lot
On October 4, 1957, in the fall of our last year at Macalester, the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to be placed into orbit. It was a stunning moment for all of us, though more so for the powers in Washington who now had to deal with being wrong-footed into a space race with the Soviets. For us on the ground, however, such as standing in the parking lot next to Kirk Hall, this marvelous scientific achievement consisted of the simple streak in the sky that grew in intensity and then faded as it tumbled in the sky, reflecting the sun.
Thomas E. Johnson
Trying hard to understand Nils Bohr
One of the worst convocations we had was when world-famous Danish atomic physicist Nils Bohr came to speak (hear archived audio). We all assembled in the Fieldhouse and lavish praise was heaped upon this brilliant man whose theoretical work had helped to crack the atom and produce the bomb. Then he spoke. He might as well have delivered his lecture in Danish because it was completely unintelligible to us. I imagine we all gave him a generous round of applause at the end, maybe even standing up in tribute, but it was a demonstration of the need to conduct due diligence before committing to a speaker’s fee no matter how famous the individual.
Thomas E. Johnson
That distant blinking light
A farmer I was interviewing for Journalism pointed out the distant blinking light of Sputnik.
Karen Helberg Dahood
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