April 2009 Topic: Hermann Julius Oberth & Edwin Powell Hubble

Transylvanian-born physicist Hermann Julius Oberth (1894 – 1989) was one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics. Working for the German rocket team during WW II, he eventually ended up working for the United States Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama with one of his former students, Wernher Von Braun. Many of Oberth’s ideas were way ahead of his time, such as proposing space stations, space suits, and putting a telescope into space above the Earth’s atmosphere to gather data.

American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble (1889 –1953) proved the existence of other galaxies besides the Milky Way, and discovered that the degree of redshift observed in light coming from a galaxy increased in proportion to the distance of that galaxy from the Milky Way. Known as Hubble's Law, this would help to establish that the universe is expanding. The Hubble Space Telescope, the first telescope launched into space, and the Edwin P Hubble Planetarium at Edward R Murrow High School in Brooklyn, are named in his honor.

March 2009 Topic: William Henry Pickering & Percival Lawrence Lowell

American astronomer William Henry Pickering (1858 – 1938) discovered Saturn's ninth moon, Phoebe, in 1899 from plates taken in 1898. In 1919, he predicted the existence and position of a Planet X based on anomalies in the positions of Uranus and Neptune, but a search of Mount Wilson Observatory photographs failed to find the predicted planet. Pluto was later discovered at Flagstaff by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. Pickering constructed and established several observatories or astronomical observation stations, notably including Percival Lowell's Flagstaff Observatory.

Percival Lawrence Lowell (1855–1916) was a mathematician and astronomer. He fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death. The choice of the name Pluto and its symbol were partly influenced by his initials PL. Although Lowell's theories of the Martian canals are now discredited, his observatory and the discovery of Pluto remain part of his legacy. Craters on the Moon and on Mars have been named after him.

February 2009 Topic: Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei

Johannes Kepler (1571 -1630) was a German mathematician and astronomer. He is best known for his three laws of planetary motion, which mathematically proved that the Sun was in the center of the Solar System.
Galileo Galilei (1564 -1642) was a Tuscan physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His improvements to the telescope and observations of the phases of Venus proved Kepler's work that the Sun was in the Center of the Solar System.

January 2009 Topic: Carl Sagan & Gene Shoemaker

Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 - December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, author, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy. He is world-famous for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which has been seen by more than 600 million people in over 60 countries, making it the most widely watched PBS program in history.

Eugene Merle Shoemaker (or Gene Shoemaker) (April 28, 1928 - July 18, 1997) was one of the founders of the field of planetary science. He is best known for co-discovering the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter in 1994. He spent much of his later years searching for and finding several previously unnoticed or undiscovered meteor craters around the world. It was during one such expedition that Dr. Shoemaker died in a car accident. In 1999, his ashes were carried to the Moon by the Lunar Prospector space probe. To date, he is the only person to have been "buried" on the Moon.