Astro Anniversaries

August

Day	Year	Event
1	1818	Maria Mitchell born. She became the first woman in the USA to work as a professional astronomer and astronomy professor.
3	1596	David Fabricius, working in what is now Germany, made the first recorded observation of a variable star – the star was Mira (α Ceti).
4	2007	The Phoenix Mars Lander was launched from Cape Canaveral, carrying science instruments to analyze soil samples of the Martian northern polar region.
6	2012	The Mars rover Curiosity landed on the Red Planet as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission.
8	1989	The European Space Agency (ESA) launched Hipparcos, the first space telescope devoted to the precise measurement of the positions of celestial objects.
9	1911	William Fowler born. A nuclear astrophysicist, Fowler led a team that, for the first time, showed the pathways by which stars build up the heavier elements in the universe. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983.
11	1877	American astronomer Asaph Hall discovers Deimos – the smaller of Mars’ two tiny moons – at the US Naval Observatory.
12	1919	Margaret Burbidge born. A British astronomer who contributed to the study of galaxies, quasars and the formation of the elements. Burbidge became the first woman to use the largest telescope in the world at that time – the 200″ Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar – for independent research.
14	1959	The US Explorer 6 satellite took the first (black & white) images of Earth from orbit.
17	1877	American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Phobos – the larger of Mars’ two tiny moons – at the US Naval Observatory.
17	2017	The LIGO/Virgo collaboration both observed gravity waves coming from the same object.
18	1868	During a total eclipse of the sun, several observers used a spectroscope to examine the spectrum of the sun and find a bright unknown line, which pointed to a new element which was later named Helium after the Greek ‘helios’ for ‘sun’.
19	1646	John Flamsteed born. Flamsteed became the first Astronomer Royal for England. He assembled important catalogues of brighter stars, predicted and observed eclipses, and became the first astronomer to observe Uranus, although he mistook it for a star.
20	1977	The Voyager 2 space probe was launched by NASA to study the outer planets and interstellar space beyond the Sun’s heliosphere.
21	2017	NASA conducted a live stream of the total solar eclipse with more than 50 million views of the broadcast, and almost 31 million unique views on Facebook before and after the eclipse.
22	1834	Samuel Langley born. Langley was an American astronomer and inventor. He fostered a way of marking standard time through astronomical observations, invented the bolometer, and made pioneering studies of the sun.
24	2006	The IAU (International Astronomical Union) voted to approve a new definition of the term ‘planet’ that excluded Pluto.
27	1962	Mariner 2 was launched on a journey to Venus. It was the first robotic space probe to conduct a successful planetary encounter.
28	1789	William Herschel discovered Saturn’s intriguing moon Enceladus.
28	1912	George Alcock born. He was a British amateur astronomer and one of the most successful visual observers of novae and comets.
30	1844	Francis Baily died. He was a British astronomer and most famous for his observations of “Baily’s beads” during a total eclipse of the Sun. Baily was also a major figure in the early history of the Royal Astronomical Society, as one of the founders and as the President four times.
31	August	Bernard Lovell born. A British physicist and radio astronomer. He was the first director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, from 1945 to 1980, and received a knighthood in 1961 for his contributions to the development of radio astronomy.

LAST UPDATED: 2025-07-28