On This Day in Space! Nov. 27, 1885: Astronomer Captures 1st Known Photo of a Meteor

[Judi Lynn]

By Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer | November 27, 2018 03:00pm ET

On Nov. 27, 1885, an astronomer made the first known photograph of a meteor.

The picture was taken by Austro-Hungarian astronomer Ladislaus Weinek. He captured the trail of the meteor on a photographic plate in the Czech Republic.

The meteor he captured was part of the Andromedid meteor shower. The Andromedids were associated with Biela's Comet, which broke apart in the 1850s.

When Weinek observed the meteor shower in 1885, it was in the middle of a meteor storm. This means that there were way more meteors than usual. Skywatchers could see thousands of meteors per hour.

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On This Day in Space! Nov. 28, 1967: Astronomers Discover the 1st Pulsar
By Hanneke Weitering, Space.com Staff Writer | November 28, 2018 03:00pm ET

Welcome to "On This Day ... in Space!" where we peer back in our archives to find historic moments in spaceflight and astronomy. So enjoy a blast from the past with Space.com's Hanneke Weitering to look back at what happened on this day in space!
On November 28, 1967, astronomers found the first pulsar.

A pulsar is a super-dense star that rotates super fast. As the pulsar spins, it emits two beams of light in opposite directions. When astronomers look at a pulsar, it looks like a star that's flickering on and off at a steady, constant pace.

The first pulsar was observed by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish. They were looking at the constellation Vulpecula when they saw a star flickering with regular pulses separated by 1.33 seconds. At first they had no idea what it was, so they jokingly nicknamed the signal Little Green Men 1. After more pulsars were discovered, they were able to rule out aliens. Pulsars are naturally occurring phenomena, and they can be handy tools for astronomers. For example, some pulsars are extremely accurate clocks.