1999 – Astronomers George H. Jacoby and Taft E. Armandroff of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories and James E. Davies of The Johns Hopkins University announced their discovery of a new galaxy, Andromeda VI in The Local Group. The census of the Local Group is now as high as 43 galaxies.

1999Yale Astronomers Study Superflares on Stars Just Like Our Sun.

Lunar Prospector

1998 – Launch of NASA’s Lunar Prospector spacecraft, designed and built at Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space in Sunnyvale, CA. This low-cost orbiting mission was the first of NASA’s  Discovery class of “faster, better, cheaper” space exploration missions. The $63 million mission, managed by NASA Ames Research Center, returned important science data  answering long-standing questions about the Moon. Its primary mission lasted one year. The final task will be to impact a crater rim on July 31, 1999 in order that large telescopes can collect images that may prove water does exist at the lunar poles.

Birthdays

1933Oleg Grigoryevich Makarov, Russian astronaut (d. 2003)

1948Guy Gardner, American colonel and astronaut

1957Michael Foale, English-American astrophysicist and astronaut

she1915Liisi Oterma, a Finnish astronomer, the first woman to get a Ph.D. degree in astronomy in Finland who discovered or co-discovered periodic comets 38P/Stephan-Oterma and 39P/Oterma, and quite a number of asteroids. The asteroid 1529 Oterma was named in her honour. (d. 2001)