A24: Story Musgrave.

A23: Once again I've found contradiction.
My book says Amy, Sally and Moe(October 13, 1960 aboard an Atklas rocket for 20 minutes of zero-g)
40 mice DID go up with Belka and Strelka in August 19, 1960.
and I found in NASA archives:
[url=http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/books/mercury/ch02.htm]see:Pre-Sputnik Cooperative Experiment<a>
According to this a mouse was sent up oct 1949 or 1950 and photographed in weightlessness although was not recovered alive.

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> Q25:Who were the 1st mice to encounter weightlessness?

40 mice flew together with 2 dogs (Belka and Strelka) at 19. August 1960 with the 'Sputnik 5' up there.
They came back alive, not as Laika, who died in space.

edit:
> Q24: Who was the only astronaut who made space flights on all five of the space shuttles?

Story Musgrave was twice on board Atlantis and once on board of the 4 other.
/edit

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Gruesse vom Saenger

For questions about Boinc look in the BOINC-Wiki

Q24: Who was the only astronaut who made space flights on all five of the space shuttles?

Q25:Who were the 1st mice to encounter weightlessness?

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> A23: your right I was looking for the name. James van Allen is the man
> credited with the discovery useing the data from Exploror I in 1958. Hence why
> they are called the van Allen belts.

I knew that name, so I just had to look for that in a lexicon (and the Wikipedia).

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Gruesse vom Saenger

For questions about Boinc look in the BOINC-Wiki

> Q22: What was the 1st liveing creature to orbit the Earth in a man-made
> spacecraft? What was her name?

Nov. 1957 a dog named Laika was on board Sputnik 2

> Q23:Who Discovered Earth's radiation belts?

It was discovered by Explorer1 & 3, and named after mission leader James van Allen, so I presume you're looking for his name.

Right on both counts Sanger. too easy huh? you answered in 27min and 55 sec that may be a 1st here in the thread.
A22: Liaka was the dog aboard Sputnik 2 on Nov 3, 1957 and was the 1st creature in space.
sidenote:Laika is Russian for "Barker" or "Husky" and it is also the name of a breed of smaller dogs. Her name had been Kudryavka (Little Curly) until just before flight. It has never been clear why here name was changed. When Russians were to slow to release the name of the dog( Laika) the media gave her the temporary name,Mutnik.

A23: your right I was looking for the name. James van Allen is the man credited with the discovery useing the data from Exploror I in 1958. Hence why they are called the van Allen belts.

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> Q17 is still open:
> List the nationalities of all space-venturers who escaped gravity on American
> vehicles.
> A17: I'm going out on a limb here and say that all where Americans.

Its a long list (out of an ordinary Lexicon):
dd.mm.yy Spacecraft(Flight#) Name (Country):
28.11.83 Columbia (STS-9) U. Merbold (Germany)
05.10.84 Challenger (STS-41G) M. Garneau (Canada)
17.06.85 Discovery (STS-51G) P. Baudry (France) Sultan S.A. AlSaul (Saudi Arabia)
30.10.85 Challenger (STS-61A) R. Furrer, E. Messerschmid (Germany) W.Ockels (Netherlands)
26.11.85 Atlantis (STS-61B) R.N. Vela (Mexico)

As the Lexicon is from 1987, it ends here;-)

Just the ones from Columbia, who didn't came back:
Kalpana Chawla (India) and Ilan Ramon (Israel)

edit:
A list of all Astro-/Cosmonauts is here., but its too long for me now to extract the relevant content ;-)
/edit

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Gruesse vom Saenger

For questions about Boinc look in the BOINC-Wiki

Q17 is still open:
List the nationalities of all space-venturers who escaped gravity on American vehicles.

A17: I'm going out on a limb here and say that all where Americans. My thinking is that all of the people onboard A US spacecraft would have to be naturalized.

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> Q22: What was the 1st liveing creature to orbit the Earth in a man-made
> spacecraft? What was her name?

Nov. 1957 a dog named Laika was on board Sputnik 2

> Q23:Who Discovered Earth's radiation belts?

It was discovered by Explorer1 & 3, and named after mission leader James van Allen, so I presume you're looking for his name.
look in Wikipedia;-)

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Gruesse vom Saenger

For questions about Boinc look in the BOINC-Wiki

Q22: What was the 1st liveing creature to orbit the Earth in a man-made spacecraft? What was her name?

Q23:Who Discovered Earth's radiation belts?

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Uranus rotates on it's side, so it "rolls" along it's orbital path. Thought to be the result of a collision early in its history.

yes your right cochise. Uranus. (According to no less than 3 books that I have)
Since I have now started a crusade on the validity of data presented in books/ebooks/webbooks/ and tv i thought I would also point out that " An instant Guide to Stars & Planets" by Pamela Foray and Cecilia Fitzsimons states on page 114 and I quote:
"It lies on it's side with it's south pole faceing the Sun." and nothing more about this. After containing my laughter I realized that others may intepret this as it's south pole is always toward the sun. That is not true all the time. only half the time. Uranus has an orbital period of 84.013 earth years. When on one side of the sun It's north pole is oriented toward the sun and when on the other side of the sun it's south pole is oriented toward the sun.
Imagine that you where on the southern hemosphere of Uranus( nothing dirty intended) back in 1986 when Voyager2 flew past and it's southern pole was toward the sun and you could see though all the gasses on the planet. You would see the Sun circleing near the planet's celestial pole. about a quarter of the way around it's orbit the sun would be above the equator and you would see the sun rise and set with the rotation of the planet. then the sun would approach the planets north pole. The south pole would then experience 21 earth years of lightless winter.

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<p>In RE 15: My book ("365 Starry Nights", ISBN 0-13-920512-8) states that &alpha;, not Proxima, is closest. (Misnomer?) But because the difference between the two is negligible compared to their distance from to Sol, everyone is right (to within 3&sigma;, of course).</p><p align="center">Q17 is still open:
List the nationalities of all space-venturers who escaped gravity on American vehicles.</p>.o0(Anyone got ideas for Q22?)

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n RE 21: I was going to say "Andromeda", but your hint makes me wonder it Halley had a galaxy named after him...

A21: Andromeda is right. I cross checked it with 2 other books and this site:
[url=http://www.solstation.com/x-objects/andromeda.htm]Andromeda Galaxy<a>

as well as many others.
It is also bigger than our own MilkyWay and the largest galaxy of our local group. In researching more on Andromeda I found some stating that it is also on a collision course with our galaxy in a time far, far, away. I'm still looking into that one.
as for the supernova:So far, only one supernova has been recorded in the Andromeda Galaxy, but it was the first to be detected outside the Milky Way. Known as Supernova 1885 for the year of its appearance, it has also been designated as S Andromedae. Ernst Albrecht Hartwig (1851-1923) observed it on August 20, 1885 at Dorpat Observatory in Estonia. While found independently by several other observers, only Hartwig realized its significance. The supernova reached a magnitude of six between August 17th and 20th but then faded to magnitude 16 by February 1890.

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A15: I thought it was Proxima Centauri these days (and for the next few hundred years) then it will go back to a or b as they get to different parts of their orbits. I may be confused and it is only a binary system and proxima is just the tag given to the one currently closest. 4.3 light years is a bit closer estimate of the distance.

JKeck,
Ive been waiting on someone to point that out. I 1st came up with the question when reading "Night Sky" by the Discovery Channel. In the back on P. 177 is has a listing of Nearest Stars. Proxima Centauri at 4.2 Ly was at the top of the list. I thought it was Alpha Century so I started researching since I knew I had to have read it somewhere.
The 1st book I looked in was "Foundations of Astronomy" by Michael A. Seeds(Professor of Astronomy at Franklin and Marshell College). On page 174 in a chapter on Measureing Distance to Stars, sub title:The Astronomer's Method it talks about measureing parallax to calculate the distance to stars, it states this:
" Measureing the small angle p(parallax) is very dificult. The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, has a parallax of only 0.76 second of arc, and more distant stars have even smaller parallaxes."
at this point I felt that the question should be posted but to be fair I should accept both as right. I chose to post it for 2 reasons:
1)Something that we could debate. as there are a lot of sources of astronomy data out there that don't agree. Seti@Home users seem to like debate:-)

2)I may encourage others to look into it and we all learn from it.

I started my own research that I'll continue tonite after I get this new box hooked up and crunchin for SETI. It is only a 500MHz but it was free.
I will post more on what I find tonite or tomorrow. I hope to find an online catalog of stars from the European Space Agency's satelite Hipparcos and any other latter published databases of stars and compare them to ground based measurements and see if the descripency in data may have resulted from the inaccuracies of ground based measurement and the more accurate measurements of satellites.

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In RE 21: I was going to say "Andromeda", but your hint makes me wonder it Halley had a galaxy named after him...

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Uranus rotates on it's side, so it "rolls" along it's orbital path. Thought to be the result of a collision early in its history.

Q20: Earth rotates approximately upright in it's orbit. That is, it's axis of rotation is inclined at only 23.5 degrees from the perpendicular to it's orbit. What planet rotates on an axis that is 97.9 degrees? It rotates on it's side.

Q21:In what galaxy outside of our own was the 1st supernova detected in?
Hint: it was in August of 1885.

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A15: I thought it was Proxima Centauri these days (and for the next few hundred years) then it will go back to a or b as they get to different parts of their orbits. I may be confused and it is only a binary system and proxima is just the tag given to the one currently closest. 4.3 light years is a bit closer estimate of the distance.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8

you both right.
Q20:What is the brightest star and it magnitude?
A20:the Sun called Sol by the Romans and Helios by the greeks is by far the brightest star at -26.8 Apparent Visual Magnitude(mv).( according to my Fundamentals of Astronomy book by Michael A. Seeds)
as a side note:
Sirius A is the brightest distant star(not in our solar system) in aparent Visual Magnitude at -1.4mv.
Neither of these are actually the brightest stars in the universe. They ony appear so to us because of their proximity to us.

Q19: what is the hottest planet?
A19: Venus. Even though Mercury is closer(.387AU) to the sun and its days are so long( 58.646 earth days) it lacks sufficient enough atmosphere to hold in most of the heat that contacts it.
Venus on the other hand has a very thick atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide which holds in a lot of heat to make the surface temperature an average 745K(471 C, or 882 F). In comparison Mercury's suface temp hovers around 500k for the daytime high but can reach 600K.
(also according to my Fundamentals of Astronomy book by Michael A. Seeds)

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Q20: What is the brightest star and it magnitude?
A20: Sol, &asymp;-26

For comparison: Luna, -14; Venus, -3; Jupiter, -2; Sirius, -1; Vega, 0; Polaris, 2...

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Hi,

A19: Mercury
A20: The Sun, magnitude 27 (not sure)

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Arnaud