On 10th July 1962, NASA launched Telstar, the world’s first active communications satellite, into low-Earth orbit. The feat captured imaginations around the globe and sparked a new age of instant worldwide communications.

Communication hasn’t always been instantaneous, stated Mr Hine.

Model of a Telstar satellite, on display at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, France.

However, 63 years ago, a beach ball sized satellite sparked a new era of electronic communications. That satellite was Telstar 1. The mission was a cooperative effort between a private company, AT&T and the space agency to demonstrate, “the feasibility of transmitting information via satellite.” The mission was a brilliant success. It came to an end in November 1962. Although NASA documented that the satellite was “successfully reactivated,” still sending data until mid-February, when the transmitter finally failed.

“Telstar” is a 1962 instrumental by the English band the Tornados, written and produced by Joe Meek. It reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100 in December 1962 (the second British recording to reach number one on that chart in the year, after “Stranger on the Shore” in May). It was the second instrumental single to hit number one in 1962 on both the US and UK weekly charts.

Shortly after launch, Telstar 1 broadcast the world’s first transatlantic television signal. Originally, the plan was for transmissions to be kept between Washington D.C. and Andover, Maine. However, a French town, Pleumeur-Bodou, picked up the transmission too, witnessing a patriotic display of American imagery and music!

On 12th July (11th July in the U.S.), the station in Pleumeur-Bodou sent their own test, a recording of Yves Montand, a famous French singer, along with images of Paris. Britain then joined in on the fun as well, contributing a live broadcast with the engineers of Goonhilly in Cornwall. Mr Hine pointed out that the transmission from America was broadcast live on BBC TV and unfortunately the resulting picture was a mess, as the British engineers had not synchronised their equipment with that used by the Americans. However that was soon rectified and a second live broadcast 24 hours later was a great success. The transmissions only lasted several minutes.

Starting with an image of the Stars and Stripes flying at the American earth station at Andover, Maine, and followed by the sight of the Union Flag flying over Goonhilly Downs, this only lasted 20 minutes – but a second link-up involved 50 cameras in 9 European countries transmitting to North America. In her Christmas message of 1962, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II referred to Telstar as “the invisible focus of a million eyes”.

Telstar was the first commercial payload in space. The satellite, developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories for AT&T, was part of an effort by NASA to, “demonstrate the United States’ willingness to share its civilian space efforts with the public,” according to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Telstar is part of the National Air and Space Museum collection. Mr Hine stated, with Cold War tensions mounting, some hoped that improved communications would help ease the situation and prevent further escalation. The mission sought to promote peace, improve communications, and foster greater connectivity.

Throughout its operational life, Telstar 1, “facilitated over 400 telephone, telegraph, facsimile and television transmissions.” How could it not? It was a trailblazing mission that captivated the imaginations of people all over the globe. The launch inspired the one-hit-wonder “Telstar,” by the British band ‘The Tornadoes’. It even piqued the interest of Pope John XXIII! Telstar even provided television coverage of major events, like the death of Marilyn Monroe.

The U.S. postal service first day post cover of the Telstar satellite

Mr Hine had introduced this section of his presentation with an audio recording of the instrumental pop hit by the Tornadoes. Again there were a few members who remembered it being in the hit parade.

So here comes the ‘Luck break so to speak explained Mr Hine.

The Holmdel Horn Antenna used as part of the Telstar satellite programme was a large microwave horn antenna. In 1965, while using this antenna, to investigate the radio signals emanating from a Supernova remnant located in the constellation of Cassiopeia, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) that permeates the universe. This was one of the most important discoveries in physical cosmology since Edwin Hubble demonstrated in the 1920s that the universe was expanding.

It provided the evidence that confirmed George Gamow’s and Georges Lemaître’s “Big Bang” theory of the creation of the universe. This helped change the science of cosmology, the study of the universe’s history, from a field for unlimited theoretical speculation into a discipline of direct observation. In 1978 Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize for Physics for their discovery.

The Horn reflector antenna at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey was built in 1959 for pioneering work in communication satellites for the NASA

In 1964, on building their most sensitive antenna/receiver system, the pair encountered radio noise that they could not explain. It was far less energetic than the radiation given off by the Milky Way, and it was isotropic, so they assumed their instrument was subject to interference by terrestrial sources. They tried, and then rejected, the hypothesis that the radio noise emanated from New York City. An examination of the microwave horn antenna showed it was full of bat and pigeon droppings, which Penzias described as “white dielectric material”. After the pair removed the dung build up the noise remained.

Having rejected all sources of interference, Penzias contacted Robert H. Dicke, who suggested it might be the background radiation predicted by some cosmological theories. The pair agreed with Dicke to publish side-by-side letters in the Astrophysical Journal, with Penzias and Wilson describing their observations and Dicke suggesting the interpretation as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the radio remnant of the Big Bang. This proved to be landmark evidence for the Big Bang and provided substantial confirmation for predictions made by Ralph Asher Alpher, Robert Herman and George Gamow in the 1940s and 1950s.

Timeline of the Big Bang and the expansion of the Universe. (Credit: NASA). The cosmic background radiation was the surviving echo of this event

The Second lucky break – The discovery of Pulsars (or Little Green Men and Jocelyn Bell Burnell)

After attending University of Glasgow, Bell Burnell went to Cambridge University (one of the top universities in the world) where she had to prove that she belonged.
Her first project, working with her thesis supervisor Anthony Hewish, was picking out compact objects called quasars; a hot topic in the news at the time. The first job for that was to build the radio telescope that would use radio wavelengths to pick out distant objects. There were 6 of them who built the telescope, and it took 2 years.
Hewish said that the array rotated with the Earth, scanning continuously, night and day in the sky; and it was to be operated full time by one person, a girl, a graduate student who helped to build it. Jocelyn Bell.

It was unusual to have a female student on this project. Bell Burnell herself has said that the only other females present were secretaries. At this stage the only people on the project were just Anthony Hewish and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. It was Bell Burnell’s PhD, and it was she who ran the telescope and analysed the data.

This Woman’s Stellar Discovery Changed Our Understanding of Space
Jocelyn Bell Burnell first noticed the existence of pulsars in 1967.

One day, checking on the data, Bell Burnell saw a signal that she couldn’t explain. It wasn’t a quasar, and it didn’t look like any other interference either. To understand what it was she ended up bringing this question to Hewish, who said it was interference. He thought that Bell Burnell had wired up the radio telescope wrongly and that is why the new signal had appeared.

She needed an enlargement to see the signal, so she went out to the observatory and turned the chart on to high speed, and at the appropriate time switched on the high-speed recording, which resulted in a pulsing frequency.

Surprised, she tried to reach Hewish. Once he saw the pulses with his own eyes, he knew it wasn’t interference, and a new research project began. But, with just one pulse it was hard to have a convincing discovery. A couple of days later, Bell Burnell was in her study, and she saw something similar to the first pulse, and thus 2 pulsars were discovered.

Bell and Hewish had no idea what the signals were that they detected, so they were dubbed little green men (LGM) as a reference to extraterrestrial life. Soon after, Thomas Gold showed that a spinning neutron star could make the pulses they observed.

Despite her discovery, Anthony was the one giving talks about this new radio source in the Cambridge University. Bell Burnell looks back and says that she could have been cited more, but she didn’t because she was ‘Miss Bell, the student’. It was Anthony Hewish who got asked questions about the scientific finding that was pulsars, whereas Miss Bell was mainly asked personal questions.
Mr Hine went on the explain what are Pulsars.

Pulsar is an abbreviation of ‘pulsating radio star.’ Pulsars are compact objects that are about the size of a large city but contain more mass than the sun.

We could say that looking from Earth, pulsars often look like flickering stars. But the light from pulsar does not actually flicker or pulse, and these objects are not actually stars!

Different Neutron/Pulsar star types

In 1974, Bell Burnell, now married and no longer in Cambridge University, heard the news that Prof. Anthony Hewish had won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of pulsars. The prize was given jointly to Martin Ryle, who was the head of Cambridge Radio Astronomy Group.

Sir Fred Hoyle furiously opposed Bell Burnell’s exclusion from the Nobel recognition, explained Mr Hine. In a later interview Hewish himself said that ‘the question was who inspired and conceived it and decided what to do’.

Bell Burnell, however, has publicly stated, in a 1977 interview, that she felt her exclusion was the right decision, based on her student status at the time of the discovery:

The Crab Pulsar (PSR B0531+21 or Baade’s Star) is a relatively young neutron star. The star is the central star in the Crab Nebula, a remnant of the supernova SN 1054, which was widely observed on Earth in the year 1054. Discovered in 1968, the pulsar was the first to be connected with a supernova remnant

She said “First, demarcation disputes between supervisor and student are always difficult, probably impossible to resolve. Secondly, it is the supervisor who has the final responsibility for the success or failure of the project. We hear of cases where a supervisor blames his student for a failure, but we know that it is largely the fault of the supervisor. It seems only fair to me that he should benefit from the successes, too. Thirdly, I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them. Finally, I am not myself upset about it – after all, I am in good company, am I not!”

Despite missing out on the Nobel Prize, Bell Burnell has been highly recognized in many other ways. Since 2007, she has been a Dame (DBE, Dame Commander of the British Empire), was voted one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the UK in 2013 on Radio 4, and in 2014, was elected as the first woman President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

A photograph of the chart Showing the first radio signal that identified the existence of Pulsars

In 2018 she won a Breakthrough Prize, known as “Oscars of Science,” for the discovery of pulsars. After her own experiences as a female, she phoned up the Institute of Physics and asked if they could use the $3 million USD award to provide research studentships for “women, under-represented ethnic minority groups and refugee students to become physics researchers”, and there was no hesitation.

In 2021, she was awarded the Copley Medal; the most prestigious scientific award in the UK, given annually by the Royal Society of London, and is only the second woman ever to receive it. She believes in being a good role model, especially for young women, and is currently a Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford.

The Third lucky break – The discovery of the Planet Neptune

Voyager 2 image of Neptune. At the top is the Great Dark Spot, accompanied by bright, white clouds that undergo rapid changes in appearance. To the south of the Great Dark Spot is the bright feature that Voyager scientists nicknamed “Scooter”. Still farther south is the feature called Dark Spot 2, which has a bright core. Image via NASA/ JPL.

Astronomers found the outermost major planet in our solar system ‘Neptune’ on 23rd September 1846 Mr Hine said it was the first planet to be discovered using mathematics. Johann Gottfried Galle, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, and John Couch Adams all worked independently to help find this distant world, which isn’t visible to the eye. Their separate endeavours led to an international dispute as to who should get the credit for Neptune’s discovery.

A telescope is necessary to see Neptune. However, Its discovery didn’t come solely through the use of a telescope. It came from astronomers’ analysis of data related to the orbit of Uranus. Astronomers noticed discrepancies in Uranus’ observed position in contrast to its predicted position. So, the mathematically predicted location of the planet Uranus did not match its actual location.
Deviations in the orbit of Uranus led to discovering Neptune

Many popular notions of the time attempted to explain Uranus’ deviation from its predicted orbit. One thought was that perhaps Newton’s law of universal gravitation ceased to work or worked differently at such great distances from our sun. But assuming that gravity works the same throughout space, what could be causing the discrepancies in Uranus’ orbit? By the way, today gravity is considered constant and one of our universe’s four fundamental forces.

On September 23, 1846, Le Verrier informed Galle of his findings, and the same night Galle and his assistant Heinrich Louis d’Arrest identified Neptune at their observatory in Berlin. Noting its movement relative to background stars over 24 hours confirmed that it was a planet.

The problem with the orbit of Uranus caused astronomers to begin speaking of another possible planet beyond it. The French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier began using mathematics to try to locate the mystery planet’s position in June 1845. The British astronomer John Couch Adams was also working on this problem. Neither was aware of the other’s calculations.

On 23rd September 1846, Galle used Le Verrier’s calculations to find Neptune only 1° off Le Verrier’s predicted position. The planet was then located 12° off Adams’ prediction.

The 1829 9″/24cm refractor telescope of New Berlin Observatory that discovered Neptune in 1846, by calculation of Uranus orbit irregularities [now at deutsches-museum.de]

Who really discovered Neptune? Was the question posed by Mr Hine?

After Neptune’s discovery, an international dispute arose concerning who was the ‘real’ discoverer of the new planet, Le Verrier or Adams. The existing political tensions between France and Great Britain amplified this conflict. Today, both of them and Galle, who was the first to knowingly see the new planet through a telescope share the credit for discovery.

Ironically, as it turns out, both Le Verrier and Adams had been very lucky Mr Hine pointed out. Their predictions indicated Neptune’s distance correctly around 1840-1850. If they had made their calculations for another time, both predicted positions would have been off. Their calculations would have predicted the planet’s position only 165 years later or earlier, since Neptune takes 165 years to orbit once around the sun.

Excerpt from the Hora XXI sky chart of the Berlin Science Academy completed by Carl Bremiker. The predicted location (square) and the observed location (circle) were noted in pencil, allegedly by Galle, but at some time after the discovery

Galileo recorded Neptune as a faint star said Mr Hine showing that it was possible to discover Neptune simply by using a telescope. Like all planets in our solar system; because it’s closer to us than the stars, it can be seen from Earth to move relative to the starry background. For example, the great astronomer Galileo, using one of the first telescopes, apparently recorded Neptune as a faint star in 1612. If he had watched it over several weeks, as he was recording the movements of the four major Moons around the planet Jupiter. Galileo had noticed its unusual motion.

Galileo observed the planet Neptune in 1612. It appears in his notebooks as one of many unremarkable dim stars. He did not realise that it was a planet, but he did note its motion relative to the stars before losing track of it

‘Bottom line’ said Mr Hine was that the fascinating story of the discovery of Neptune. The outermost major planet in our solar system. Was the first planet to be discovered not solely by looking in the sky, but by using mathematics.

The Forth lucky break – The lucky escape of astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard

Edward Emerson Barnard (December 16, 1857 – February 6, 1923) was commonly known as E. E. Barnard, and was recognised as a gifted observational astronomer. He is best known for his discovery of the high proper motion of Barnard’s Star in 1916, which is named in his honour.

Barnard was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 16th 1857, to Reuben Barnard and Elizabeth Jane Barnard (née Haywood), and had one brother. His father died three months before his birth, so he grew up in an impoverished family and did not receive much in the way of formal education. His first interest was in the field of photography, and he became a photographer’s assistant at the age of nine.

Edward Emerson Barnard (16th December 1857 to 6th February 1923)

He later developed an interest in astronomy. In 1876 he purchased a 5-inch (130-millimeter) refractor telescope, and in 1881 he discovered his first comet, but failed to announce his discovery. He found his second comet later the same year and a third in 1882.

While he was still working at a photography studio he was married to the British-born Rhoda Calvert in 1881. In the 1880s, Hulbert Harrington Warner offered $200 (equivalent to $5,000 in 2023) per discovery of a new comet. Barnard discovered a total of five, and used the money to build a house for himself and his wife.

With his name being brought to the attention of amateur astronomers in Nashville, they collectively raised enough money to give Barnard a fellowship to Vanderbilt University. He never graduated from the school, but did receive the only honorary degree Vanderbilt has ever awarded. He joined the staff of the Lick Observatory in California in 1887, though he later clashed with the director, Edward S. Holden, over access to observing time on the larger instruments and other issues of research and management.

Lick Observatory is the world’s first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory. The observatory, in a Classical Revival style structure, was constructed between 1876 and 1887, from a bequest from James Lick of $700,000, equivalent to $24,497,407 in 2024

In 1889, he observed the moon Iapetus pass behind Saturn’s rings. As he watched Iapetus pass through the space between Saturn’s innermost rings and the planet itself, he saw a shadow pass over the moon. Although he did not realize it at the time, he had discovered proof of the “spokes” of Saturn, dark shadows running perpendicular to the circular paths of the rings. These spokes were doubted at first, but confirmed by the spacecraft Voyager 1.

In 1892, he made observations of a nova and was the first to notice the gaseous emissions, thus correctly deducing that it was a stellar explosion. The same year he also discovered Amalthea, the fifth moon of Jupiter. He was the first to discover a new moon of Jupiter since Galileo Galilei in 1609. This was the last satellite discovered by direct visual observation (rather than by examining photographic plates or other recorded images).

In 1895, he joined the University of Chicago as professor of astronomy. There he was able to use the 40-inch (1-meter) telescope at Yerkes Observatory. Much of his work during this period was taking photographs of the Milky Way. Together with Max Wolf, he discovered that certain dark regions of the galaxy were actually clouds of gas and dust that obscured the more distant stars in the background. From 1905, his niece Mary R. Calvert worked as his assistant and computer.

The faint Barnard’s Star is named for Edward Barnard after he discovered in 1916 that it had a large proper motion relative to other stars. This is the second nearest star system to the Sun, second only to the Alpha Centauri system.

He was also a pioneering astrophotographer. His Barnard Catalogue lists a series of dark nebulae, known as Barnard objects, giving them numerical designations akin to the Messier catalogue. They begin with Barnard 1 and end with Barnard 370. He published his initial list in a 1919 paper published in the ‘Astrophysical Journal’, titled “On the Dark Markings of the Sky with a Catalogue of 182 such Objects”.

1897 photo of the 40 in (100 cm) refractor at the Yerkes Observatory.

After the repairs were completed, Barnard resumed observation using the 40inch telescope but could not establish a clear image of anything he was looking at. It was feared that it had been damaged during the accident. However on closer inspection it was discovered that a spider had spent the period of inactivity to weave a web across the main observation lens of the telescope.

The rest is history as Barnard continued to make many discoveries for the rest of his life and it would have been a terrible loss to the advancement of astronomy and science if he had been lost in that accident.

He died on 6th February 1923, in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and was buried in Nashville. After his death, many examples from his exceptional collection of astronomical photographs were published in 1927 as A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way, this work having been finished by Mary R. Calvert and Edwin B. Frost, then director of Yerkes Observatory.

At that point Mr Hine concluded his presentation to loud applause. Mr Hine remained on his feet for another twenty minutes answering questions put to him by those members present in the room.