Alaskans' Astronomical Bragging Rights

March 10, 2008

Courtesy of  Far North Science
By Doug O'Harra

Crab Nebula
Courtesy of Neil Davis

We’ve also got more volcanoes, glaciers, swamps and even bigger mosquitoes than Texas, for whatever that’s worth.

However, when it comes to astronomical bragging, we don’t do so well. We do have the aurora, of course, but otherwise we are astronomically challenged on several counts.

For one thing, half the year we can’t even see the stars because of perpetual daylight. Then, for the other half of the year, it is no fun to stand out in the cold looking at them through a telescope all frosted up from the viewer’s breath.

Furthermore, stuck like we are up near the North Pole, we rotate around on the earth’s axis unable to see a great portion of the firmament, that grand spectacle containing all its galaxies filled with untold numbers of stars, planets, interstellar gases and who knows what else.

We did fringe on getting some astronomical fame 50 years ago when Sputnik 1 flew because Alaskans were the first in the Western Hemisphere to see it. Initially we thought that several members of the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute deserved the glory, then we found out that my neighbor William (Stege) Stegemeyer, sitting looking out at the western sky through the open door of his outhouse on a cold October morn, saw Sputnik some seconds earlier than the others and, on his own, realized it was a strange new thing.

Source: NASA

The memory of the incident is perpetuated by the plaque nailed to the outhouse proclaiming the structure to be “The Stegemeyer Memorial John.”

But for the past half-century, we have not had much to brag about in the astronomical arena, so we Alaskans have kept fairly silent. Nevertheless, modern advances in technology, especially in radio science, now give Alaskans new opportunity again to brag, astronomically speaking. Two recent revelations give us that right.

One is the fact that an Alaska scientific facility, the high-power HAARP transmitter near Gakona has just managed, in October 2007, to bounce its outgoing radio waves off the moon and have them received by another facility located in New Mexico. That might sound like no big deal because signals such as this have been bounced off the moon before, but never at such low radio frequencies.

The antenna array at HAARP outside Gakona
Source: HAARP

The significance is that the low frequency HAARP transmissions have the potential of providing new information on the structure of the earth’s ionosphere and also the moon’s upper layers because the waves do penetrate a ways into the moon before being reflected.

Even more exciting is a revelation that harks back to that happening taking place in the Stegemeyer Memorial John, the incident this time relating to the discovery of pulsars. Pulsars are among the most exotic objects in the universe, now known to be highly magnetized rotating neutron stars which emit detectable beams of electromagnetic radiation in the form of radio waves. The emission is in narrow beams that appear to blink on and off as the beams sweep across the earth at rates of a tiny fraction of a second up to 8.5 seconds.

The official discovery of pulsars was by Cambridge University astronomers Jocelyn and Antony Hewish in August 1967, and for the discovery Hewish was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1974. The prestigious journal Nature cites the finding as one of the most important astronomical discoveries of the twentieth century.

However we now know that the initial detection of pulsars probably actually took place a month or so earlier in, of all places, far-off Alaska. And it was not by an astronomer, either, but rather by a United States Air Force staff sergeant assigned to operate the Ballistic Early Warning Site (BMEWS) at Clear Air Force Base south of Nenana.

Newly assigned as one of the operators of the Clear radar in June 1967, Sergeant Charles Schisler noticed a curious blip occurring when the radar swept across a certain place in the sky. Since the blip did not move, it was of no consequence to the radar’s primary mission which was to detect moving objects that might represent missiles coming in over the pole from the Soviet Union.

But the blip really piqued Schisler’s interest when he saw it again at the same location in the sky a day later and again the next day, but each day it appeared four minutes earlier than the day before. Having some knowledge of celestial navigation as a result of earlier experience as a B-47 navigator/bombardier, Schisler knew exactly what that shift in timing meant: the object producing the blip was not of this earth; instead it was an astronomical object fixed in the sky like a star.

Sergeant Schisler reported his finding to his superior officer who was not at all interested in objects that didn’t move across the sky in his direction, but Schisler was not deterred. On a day off, he drove to Eielson AFB to examine navigation tables that would allow him to locate the blipping object in the sky.

With that information in hand he visited astronomer Dr. Kenelm Philip at the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute who was able to tell him that the blip was coming from one of the most spectacular objects in the sky, the Crab Nebula. Located some 6,300 light years away, the Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant resulting in the gigantic explosion of a star first seen by Chinese and Arab astronomers in 1054 AD, so bright they saw it in daylight. At its center is the object now known as the Crab Pulsar, the object that Sgt. Schisler had detected.

Charles Schisler found approximately ten other pulsars in the coming months but, because of the high level of secrecy surrounding the Clear Radar, he was never able to reveal his findings to the scientific world.

Finally on August 21, 2007, Schisler got his due at the closing ceremony of Forty Years of Pulsars, a celebration at McGill University held by international astronomers for the discovery of pulsars. Retired and now 81 years of age, Charles Schisler presented his results to the assembled crowd, and when he finished he received a well-deserved standing ovation.

So, thanks to thoughtful Charles Schisler, we can now we can brag about the important discovery of pulsars as another Alaska first.

References

• Schisler, Charles, The greatest surprise of my life, unpublished document, December 2007.
• Schisler, Charles, An independent discovery of astronomic pulsars, presented to 40 Years of Pulsars, a symposium at McGill university, Montreal, August 21,2007.
• Schisler, Charles, private communication to Kenelm Philip, December 22, 2007.
• Brumfiel, Geoff, Air force had early warning of pulsars, Nature, 448, 974-75, August 30, 2007.
• Rutledge, Bob, Charles Schisler, radio astronomer of 1967, and his Messier Objects type list, Montreal 2007: 40 Years of Pulsars
• Pulsars in Wikipedia
• Davis, Neil, The truth about Sputnik, in Alaska Science Nuggets, University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks, AK, page 31, 1984.