Cathy's Turning Leaves

JoAnn Hardin Morgan was born in 1940, during a time when women were expected to stay home, keep house and raise kids, while the husband was out in the world making a living. JoAnn loved math and science, and entered high school during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union were trying to outdo each other in rocket technology. JoAnn watched rocket launches from near her home in Florida. But it was when Explorer 1, the first United States satellite, was launched into space on January 31, 1958 that she became determined to be a part of the space program. It’s not the kind of career…

The year was 1859. Several astronomers around the world who had been studying the sun reported a massive, almost blinding burst of light ejecting from the sun’s surface, lasting for several long minutes before it subsided. The next day, the Carrington Event occurred, in which the sky in much of the world lit up like a gaudy Christmas lights display. It was bright enough at night to read a newspaper without an additional light source. Although several astronomers hypothesized a connection between the sun burst and the aurora, it was Richard Christopher Carrington who got his name attached to that incident. Science In 1619, Galileo Galilei coined the term “aurora…