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This Month in Astronomical History
Drawing by Jason E. Ybarra
Each month, as part of a series started in July 2016, the Historical Astronomy Division highlights a significant discovery, birth of a noted astronomer, memorable astronomical event, or important research paper in the history of astronomy. These articles appear in the twice-monthly AAS News Digest, which is sent to the AAS membership, and are archived on the Historical Astronomy Division’s website, as listed below. A similar resouce for physics, This Month in Physics History, may be found on the website of the American Physical Society.
The Historical Astronomy Division is always looking for enthusiastic individuals who wish to contribute to the This Month in Astronomical History column. If you are interested, please review our author guidelines and e-mail your idea to us at historycol@aas.org.
The current Editor is Michael E. Marotta (AAS Amateur Affiliate).
We thank our previous editors: Teresa Wilson (who founded this feature in July 2016) and Jason E. Ybarra.
2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016
Click here to see these features arranged by month
You can download Andrew Fraknoi's Calendar of Astronomical Anniversaries
- April 2024: The Great Paris Exposition of 1900 (Part One: Le Grand Globe Celeste)
Written by Kenneth Rumstay - March 2024: Listening to the Universe at 21 Centimeters
Written by Michael Marotta - February 2024: Kuiper Discovers Miranda
Written by Michael Marotta - January 2024: White Dwarfs: Discovery and Challenge
Written by Michael Marotta
- December 2023: Comet Kohoutek, Skylab, and More
Written by Stephen Maran - November 2023: 50th Anniversary of Pioneer 10's Encounter with Jupiter
Written by Kristine Larsen - October 2023: Messier 51: From Solar System to Galaxy
Written by Michael Marotta - September 2023: Lost Comets Rediscovered: Dr. Elizabeth Roemer and The University of Arizona's Lunar Planetary Laboratory
Written by Stephen Hussman - August 2023: Mira Reveals Itself to David Fabricius
Written by Kristine Larsen - July 2023: Mars: From Imagination to Exploration
Written by Aneka Kazlyna - June 2023: All the Matter We Cannot See: The Invisible World of Vera Rubin
Written by Stephen Spears - May 2023: "The Best Place on the Face of the Earth:" Wadesboro and the 1900 Total Solar Eclipse
Written by Thomas English - April 2023: The Global Controversy Surrounding the Detection of Radio Variability in CTA-102
Written by Rebecca Charbonneau - March 2023: Voyager 1: The Jupiter Flyby
Written by Loretta Cannon - February 2023: Edward Emerson Barnard: Nontraditional Student and "First Gen" Role Model
Written by Kristine Larsen - January 2023: The Huygens Probe Lands on Titan
Written by Michael Marotta
- December 2022: Problems in Astrophysics (1903) by Agnes Mary Clerke
Written by Michael Marotta - November 2022: Lunokhod 1 - The First Extraterrestrial Rover
Written by Kenneth Rumstay - October 2022: The Discovery of Helium
Written by Alan Agrawal - September 2022: The Drapers' First Photograph of Messier 42
Written by Michael Marotta - August 2022: Caroline Herschel's August Historiography
Written by Michael E. Marotta - July 2022: Reading Isaac Newton's Rare Manuscripts: The Making of Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687)
Written by Aneka Kazlyna - June 2022: Scorpius X-1 and the Launch of X-Ray Astronomy
Written by Michael E. Marotta - May 2022: The First Telescope on the Moon
Written by Richard Tresch Fienberg - April 2022: The First Lady of Harvard's Observatory Hill: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Written by Stephen Spears - March 2022: Planets Have Rings
Written by Michael Marotta - February 2022: 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi
Written by Aneka Kazlyna - January 2022: Strange Comet: William Herschel, His Telescopes, and Uranus
Written by Amy Oliver
- December 2021: The Order and Harmony of Johannes Kepler's Work: Celebrating the 450th Anniversary of His Birth
Written by Dan Broadbent - November 2021: Stellar Parallax: A Critical Step in Mapping the Cosmos
Written by Michael Wang - October 2021: The Crucial Years of Otto Struve
Written by Kevin Krisciunas - September 2021: Biographical Sketches of Women Working at Yerkes Observatory and Harriet McWilliams Parsons
Written by Rowen Glusman, Audrey Scott, Michael Martinez, Alexis Chapman, Amanda Muratore, Jorge Sanchez, and William Cerny - August 2021: 1596: The Comet and the Red Star
- Written by Clifford J. Cunningham
- July 2021: The First American PhDs in Astronomy
Written by Joseph S. Tenn - June 2021: The 1761 Venus Transit from Wales
Written by Martin Griffiths - May 2021: The Oldest Known Mechanical Calculator for Astronomy
Written by Kurt Baty - April 2021: Observations of Supernova 1006
Written by Alan Agrawal, MD - March 2021: Probing the Limits of the Earth's Magnetic Field
Written by Michael Marotta - February 2021: Founding of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Written by Linda Shore - January 2021: Galileo, Hubble, and the Arrangement of the Cosmos
Written by Michael Marotta
- December 2020: 1200 Years of Algebra
Written by Dareen Awwad and Jason E. Ybarra - November 2020: Sedna: In the Depths of the Solar System
Written by Emily McMahon - October 2020: The First Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
Written by Michael E. Marotta - September 2020: Bayer's Uranometria
Written by Jason E. Ybarra - August 2020: America's First Woman Astronomer: Maria Mitchell (1818-1889)
Written by Jascin N. Leonardo Finger - June 2020: James Christy Discovers Charon
Written by Michael Marotta - May 2020: First Recorded Perihelion Of Halley's Comet
Written by Jason E. Ybarra - April 2020: The "Remarkable" Eclipse of 1894
Written by Thomas Hockey - March 2020: The First Recorded Scientist
Written by Sethanne Howard - January 2020: The Birth of Stellafane
Written by Kristine Larsen
- December 2019: John Michell and His Dark Star
Written by Jason Ybarra - November 2019: The Greek Drama of 6 November 1919: In Defense of Arthur Stanley Eddington
Written by Daniel Kennefick - October 2019: 50 Years of Charge-Coupled Devices
Written by Sara Turriziani - August 2019: Reflections on 100 Years of the International Astronomical Union
Written by Virginia Trimble - July 2019: Northern Arizona's Role in the Apollo Moon Missions
Written by Kevin Schindler - June 2019: Eratosthenes and the Circumference of the Earth
Written by Jason E. Ybarra - May 2019: The 1919 Solar Eclipse from the Standpoint of Astronomy
Written by Daniel Kennefick - April 2019: BeppoSAX and Gamma Ray Bursts
Written by Virara Turriziani - March 2019: Astronomy Meets the Periodic Table
Written by Virginia L. Trimble - February 2019: 400 Years of Kepler's Third Law
Written by Jason E. Ybarra - January 2019: Galileo's Discovery of the Moons of Jupiter
Written by Philip D. Nicholson
- December 2018: The First Cepheid Variable Discovered Was, Of Course...Eta Aquilae?
Written by Linda M. French - November 2018: Cosmic Fireworks
Written by Pedro Raposo - October 2018: Karl Jansky and the Discovery of Cosmic Radio Waves
Written by Alan W. Hirshfeld - September 2018: Algol: the Star of Frequent Changes
Written by Jason E. Ybarra - August 2018: The Mysterious Wow! Signal
Written by Rebecca Anne Charbonneau - July 2018: Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Written by Teresa Wilson - June 2018: The Bicentenary of the Birth of Angelo Secchi, SJ
Written by Christopher J. Corbally - May 2018: L'Aigle Meteorite Fall of 1803
Written by Jason E. Ybarra - April 2018: Leonardo Da Vinci and Earthshine
Written by Kevin Schindler - March 2018: How Shall We Remember Caroline Herschel?
Written by Rebecca Anne Charbonneau - February 2018: One of America's Early African American Astronomers
Written by Sethanne Howard - January 2018: The Discovery of Ceres
Written by Teresa Wilson
- December 2017: Remembering John Bahcall
Written by Teresa Wilson - November 2017: 100 Years for the Hooker Telescope
Written by Teresa Wilson - October 2017: The Invention of the Telescope
Written by Teresa Wilson - September 2017: The Discovery of Neptune
Written by Teresa Wilson - August 2017: Relativity and Vulcan's Vanishing Act
Written by Teresa Wilson - July 2017: Solar Eclipse of 1878
Written by Teresa Wilson - June 2017: 2004 Venus Transit
Written by Teresa Wilson - May 2017: Women Computers at Dudley Observatory
Written by Teresa Wilson - April 2017: Great Debate on the Nature of the Universe
Written by Teresa Wilson - March 2017: Calendar Reform
Written by Teresa Wilson - February 2017: The Discovery of Pluto
Written by Teresa Wilson - January 2017: Remembering Bengt Stromgren
Written by Teresa Wilson
- December 2016: Winter Solstice & Archaeoastronomy
Written by Teresa Wilson - November 2016: Launch of Sputnik 2
Written by Teresa Wilson - October 2016: Miss Mitchell's Comet
Written by Teresa Wilson - September 2016: Remembering Edwin Hubble
Written by Teresa Wilson - August 2016: The Moons of Mars
Written by Teresa Wilson - July 2016: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
Written by Teresa Wilson