AMATEURS WHO ARE INTERESTED in predicting the positions in orbit of the earth satellites that broadcast pictures of cloud cover can now make a device that will perform the calculations automatically. The device is designed for satellites in orbit within 2,000 miles of the earth, and a separate devic..
Every Sunday morning I enjoy a walk along a two-mile stretch of the world's most sensitive gravimeter. The sun's and moon's gravitational tugs on my body amount to only a few millionths of the earth's, and yet that tiny force acting over the Pacific Ocean regularly raises the sea level so high as to..
FROM TIME to time a planet, as it is observed from the earth, moves into alignment with the sun or with another planet. These alignments are termed conjunctions or oppositions, according to the relative positions of the earth and the sun. They can be predicted by a graphical technique that has been ..
ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES AND THEIR associated hardware have opened new horizons for the amateur scientist. Scores of amateurs are already participating in the Moonwatch and Moonbeam programs sponsored by the U. S. National Committee of the International Geophysical Year. These formal activities marshal..
THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT THE flight of an artificial satellite across the night sky that fires the imagination of even a casual observer. Some people who witness the spectacle for the first time come down with a psychological disease known as "space fever," and rush out to order a high-powered teles..
HENRY MARROWS, AN INSTRUMENT DESIGNER of New York City, quarrels with the cliche that the primary tools for scientific research ultimately boil down to just a pencil and a piece of paper. "A brain limited to this method of recording data," he writes, "would certainly arrive at a narrow concept of th..
EACH TIME A MANNED SATELLITE is sent aloft the world waits anxiously to learn if it has gone into orbit. News reports of the event sometimes include pictures of technicians feeding data into computers that forecast the characteristics of the orbit. This tends to create the impression that space navi..