February 8


8 February 1828


Jules Verne. Photography by Étienne Carjat, published in 1884. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Jules Verne, French playwright and novelist, was born in Nantes on February 8, 1828. Together with Mary Shelley (1797–1851) and Herbert G. Wells (1866–1946), he is generally considered to be one of the precursors of modern science fiction. His major work is the Extraordinary Journeys, a series of more than sixty adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1869–70), Around the World in 80 Days (1873) and The Mysterious Island (1874). His novels From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel Around the Moon (1870) featured a gigantic cannon in Florida that fired a projectile with three people around the Moon. Verne died in Amiens on March 24, 1905.

"Anything you can imagine you can make real."

— Jules Verne

Jules Verne in 1892. Credit: Wikimedia Commons; retouched by Andrzej Mirecki

From the Earth to the Moon engraving from the 1872 illustrated edition. Illustration by Henri de Montaut.


Illustration from Around the Moon drawn by Émile-Antoine Bayard


See also: Herbert George Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov


© 2026, Andrew Mirecki



8 February 1969


Fragment the Allende meteorite. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/H. Raab

On February 8, 1969, the Allende meteorite, the largest known carbonaceous chondrite (group CV3), exploded and disintegrated over the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Fragments with a total mass of over 2 tons of meteorite were recovered, the largest of which is 110 kg.

   The original stone is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile traveling towards the Earth at more than 16 km/s. The fall occurred in the early morning hours of February 8, 1969. At 01:05 local time a huge, brilliant fireball approached from the southwest and lit the sky and ground for hundreds of miles. It exploded and broke up to produce thousands of fusion crusted pieces. This is typical of falls of large stones through the atmosphere and is due to the sudden braking effect of air resistance. The fall took place in northern Mexico, near the village of Pueblito de Allende in the state of Chihuahua. Stones were scattered over a huge area – this strewnfield measures approximately 50 by 8 kilometres. Hundreds of meteorite fragments were collected shortly after the fall. 

The Allende meteorite fell just months before the first rock samples from the Moon were brought to Earth by Apollo astronauts, and its pieces were analyzed by many scientists in preparation for handling lunar rocks. As a result, the Allende meteorite has become one of the most studied meteorites in history.

The Allende meteorite has abundant, large calcium–aluminium-rich inclusions (CAI), that are estimated to be 4.567 billion years old and are among the oldest objects formed in the Solar System – 30 million years older than the Earth. Carbonaceous chondrites, including Allende, are the most primitive meteorites, and contain the most primitive known matter. They have undergone the least mixing and remelting since the early stages of Solar System formation. Because of this, their age is frequently taken as the age of the Solar System.

Large slice (549 grams) of the Allende Meteorite. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/James St. John

See also:




© 2026, Andrew Mirecki




8 February 1992


Artist’s impression of the Ulysses spacecraft at Jupiter encounter. Credit: ESA/Dave Hardy

Ulysses spacecraft passed within about 378,400 kilometers of Jupiter at 12:02 UT on February 8, 1992, for the gravity-assist manoeuvre that increased its inclination to the ecliptic by approximately 80°. The giant planet's gravity bent the spacecraft's flight path southward and away from the ecliptic plane. This put the probe into its final orbit around the Sun, that took it past the Sun's south and north poles.

   Ulysses was only the fifth spacecraft to encounter Jupiter. Thirteen years had elapsed since the last spacecraft passed through its complex and dynamic magnetosphere. The first four encounters, by Pioneer 10 in 1973, Pioneer 11 in 1974 and Voyagers 1 and 2 in 1979, were designed specifically to study Jupiter and left an impressive legacy of scientific information regarding Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetosphere.

   If the encounter is defined as the interval between the first inbound bow shock crossing to the last outbound crossing, it lasted 13.6 days. The spacecraft was continuously inside the magnetosphere for 7.4 days. Following closest approach, Ulysses traversed the Io Plasma Torus in basically a north-south direction. Although Ulysses was a heliospheric mission, the experiments were well suited to an investigation of Jupiter’s magnetosphere and have returned much new and useful information. In particular, while outbound from Jupiter, Ulysses passed through a previously unexplored sector of the magnetosphere near a local time of 18 hours (dusk).

   Ulysses left Jupiter traveling southward in an elliptical orbit inclined 80.2° to the solar equator, with an aphelion of 5.4 au and a perihelion of 1.34 au.

Another artist's depiction of the Ulysses spacecraft at Jupiter encounter. Credit: ESA/Dave Hardy


© 2026, Andrew Mirecki
INDEX PAGE
CALENDAR PAGE

Komentarze

Prześlij komentarz

Popularne posty z tego bloga

Obraz
January 1    1 January 1801 A painting of Giuseppe Piazzi pointing to Ceres, his discovery in the sky. In the collection of Palermo Astronomical Observatory. On January 1, 1801, Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (1746–1826)  from the observatory in Palermo, Sicily, discovered the first known asteroid, a dwarf planet (1) Ceres. Originally considered a planet, it was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s after the discovery of dozens of other objects in similar orbits. In 2006, it was reclassified again as a dwarf planet.    Piazzi spotted the object while conducting observations for his star catalogue. A few months later he wrote:    "...on the evening of the 1st of January of the current year, together with several other stars, I sought for the 87th of the Catalogue of the Zodiacal stars of Mr la ...
Czytaj więcej
Obraz
  January 2    2 January 1920   Isaac Asimo v Prolific science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. He celebrated his birthday on January 2. Asimov was brought to the United States with his family in 1923, and became a US citizen in 1928. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1939, and took a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemistry in 1948. In 1949 he joined the Boston University School of Medicine, where he became associate professor of biochemistry. He left the position in 1958 and became a full-time writer.    Asimov was central to science fiction’s Golden Age. Across a prolific career spanning five decades, he produced nearly 500 books, but it is his science fiction — particularly the "Foundation" series and his robot stories — that secured his place in literary history.     Asimov's robot stori...
Czytaj więcej
Obraz
  January 19  19 January 2006 Artist's concept of New Horizons. Credit: JHUAPL/SwRI New Horizons, the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet Pluto, was launched from Cape Canaveral at 19:00 UT on January 19, 2006, on an Atlas V 551 booster with a Star 48B third stage directly into an interplanetary trajectory. New Horizons flew by Jupiter in February 2007, Pluto on July 14, 2015, and the Kuiper belt object (486958) Arrokoth on January 1, 2019. It is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.     The primary objectives of the mission are to characterize the global geology and morphology and map the surface composition of Pluto and Charon and characterize the neutral atmosphere of Pluto and its escape rate. Other objectives include studying the time variability of Pluto's surface and atmosphere, imaging Pluto and Charon in stereo, mapping the terminators and composition...
Czytaj więcej