Sun Poem by 7-Year-Old Amy Eddy Epitomized Skylab Solar Unknowns

Summary: The Sun poem by 7-year-old Amy Eddy epitomized Skylab solar unknowns of new answers for and questions about the sun’s “round & shiny happy face.”

The Sun, poem by Amy Eddy, at age 7; older daughter of solar astronomer John Allen "Jack" Eddy (March 25, 1931-June 10, 2009); J.A. Eddy, A New Sun: The Solar Results From Skylab (1979), page 181: Public Domain, via Internet Archive

The Sun poem by 7-year-old Amy Eddy epitomized Skylab solar unknowns, arising from the first United States space station’s immensity of new answers for and questions about the sun’s “round & shiny happy face.”

American solar astronomer John Allen “Jack” Eddy (March 25, 1931-June 10, 2009) ended his NASA-published book, A New Sun: The Solar Results From Skylab (1979), with a poem, The Sun, composed and illustrated by his older daughter, Amy (born 1960), when she was 7 years old. Amy’s poem addressed the most basic unknowns about Earth’s sun, described from a timeless perspective of wonder, and expressed human doubts in unpuzzling the solar mysteries.

The Sun
how did the sun
get in her place
with her round & shiny
happy face who cast
the shadows high &
low. I do not know, I do not know.

John Eddy preceded Amy’s poem with a concluding assessment of the immense solar data gathered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) three manned missions, conducted between May 1973 and February 1974, to the Skylab space station. After noting the revelations gleaned from Skylab’s sophisticated instruments, Eddy tackled some of the questions arising from Skylab’s data.

“We can be even more certain that all the questions are not yet answered, or even asked, nor all the surprises found. Skylab gave us a detailed look at the Sun during only one phase of its varied behavior, near the minimum of the 11-yr solar cycle,” Eddy observed. “What are the natures of coronal holes, coronal transients, and bright points when the Sun is at the maximum of its well-known activity cycle? What is the cause of the 11-yr cycle of sunspots and of more anomalous times when solar activity seems to disappear altogether from the Sun? How constant is the Sun? Solar variation clearly affects our upper atmosphere, producing the aurora borealis, distortions of our magnetic field, and changes in our ionosphere. Do these or other changes on the Sun affect short-term weather or long-term climate on Earth? And if so, which solar changes, and how? What powers the Sun? How long will that fuel source last, and how constantly will it burn? Are our theories of the solar interior (which no one has ever seen) correct, or, as so often is the case, only a present approximation in the winding path toward truth?” (page 180)

The Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM), primarily positioned atop the space station cluster’s Multiple Docking Adaptor (MDA), effected Skylab’s unprecedented forays into solar observation. The ATM’s cylindrical enclosure sheltered eight solar instruments from severe temperatures and residual contamination encountered during the space station’s daily 15.4 orbits, at a speed of 29,000 kilometers (18,019. 76 miles) per hour, 435 kilometers (270.29 miles) above Earth’s surface. One of the canister’s quadrants held a white light coronagraph and an x-ray telescope. An adjacent quadrant contained an ultraviolet spectroheliometer and hydrogen-alpha telescope number one (Hα no. 1). An extreme ultraviolet spectroheliograph and hydrogen-alpha telescope number two (Hα no. 2) were positioned in the next quadrant, whose neighboring quadrant housed an ultraviolet spectrograph and another x-ray telescope.

The nine astronauts who occupied Skylab space station over three manned missions (May 25 to June 22, 1973; July 28 to Sept. 25, 1973; Nov. 16, 1973, to Feb. 8, 1974) controlled the ATM telescopes via the station’s ATM console. The control console was located inside the Multiple Docking Adaptor, which connected each mission’s docked Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) with astronaut living quarters in the Orbital Workshop (OWS).

Eddy noted that Skylab’s powerful array achieved insights presenting the sun as more than “a simple sphere of fire.”  Ultraviolet and x-ray photographs penetrated previously hidden interrelationships of the solar atmosphere’s layers and revealed that “. . . the Sun’s appearance changes dramatically from layer to layer, as though it wore mask on mask on mask” (page 7).

The takeaways for The Sun poem by 7-year-old Amy Eddy are that the words by solar astronomer John Eddy’s older daughter expressed basic, yet complex, questions about Earth’s sun and that Skylab’s data, collected between May 1973 and February 1974, revealed a changing array of knowns and unknowns about the sun’s roiling yet “round & shiny happy face.”

A solar prominence (upper left limb), described by solar astronomer John Eddy as “one of the largest seen in a decade” (1979: 162), spans more than 588,000 kilometers (365,000 miles) across the solar surface; Wednesday, Dec. 19, 1973, at 04:43 UTC (11:43 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Dec. 18); ATM (Apollo Telescope Mount) extreme ultraviolet spectroheliograph’s ionized helium-light photograph; Skylab 4 mission; NASA ID S74-23458: Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Video Library

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

The Sun, poem by Amy Eddy, at age 7; older daughter of solar astronomer John Allen "Jack" Eddy (March 25, 1931-June 10, 2009); J.A. Eddy, A New Sun: The Solar Results From Skylab (1979), page 181: Public Domain, via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19790014820/page/n203/mode/1up; Public Domain, via NASA History @ https://history.nasa.gov/SP-402/ch8.htm

A solar prominence (upper left limb), described by solar astronomer John Eddy as “one of the largest seen in a decade” (1979: 162), spans more than 588,000 kilometers (365,000 miles) across the solar surface; Wednesday, Dec. 19, 1973, at 04:43 UTC (11:43 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Dec. 18); ATM (Apollo Telescope Mount) extreme ultraviolet spectroheliograph’s ionized helium-light photograph; Skylab 4 mission; NASA ID S74-23458: Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Video Library @ https://images.nasa.gov/details-S74-23458.html; Generally not subject to copyright in the United States; may use this material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages; general permission extends to personal Web pages, via NASA Image and Video Library @ https://images.nasa.gov/details-7461902; John Uri, "The Real Story of the Skylab 4 'Strike' in Space," via NASA History Nov. 16, 2020, @ https://www.nasa.gov/history/the-real-story-of-the-skylab-4-strike-in-space/; NASA Johnson, CC BY NC 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/

For further information:

Eddy, John A. A New Sun: The Solar Results From Skylab. Edited by Rein Ise. Prepared by George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA SP-402. Washington DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1979.
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19790014820/
Available via NASA History @ https://history.nasa.gov/SP-402/contents.htm

Hitt, David; Owen Garriott; and Joe Kerwin. Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story. Featuring the In-Flight Diary of Alan Bean. Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
Available via Google Books @ https://books.google.com/books/about/Homesteading_Space.html?id=sR5Cm_zeIekC

Marriner, Derdriu. “Arabella and Anita Spun First Space Webs in August 1973 at Skylab.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, July 31, 2013.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/07/arabella-and-anita-spun-first-space.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Edward Gibson Sketched Comet Kohoutek’s Changes During Close Approach.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/01/edward-gibson-sketched-comet-kohouteks.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Gerald Carr and Edward Gibson Did Last Skylab EVA Sunday, Feb. 3, 1974.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/01/gerald-carr-and-edward-gibson-did-last.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Skylab 4 Observed Comet Kohoutek November 1973 to February 1974.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/01/skylab-4-observed-comet-kohoutek.html

Munro, R. (Richard) H.; and D. (David) G. Sime. “White-Light Coronal Transients Observed From Skylab May 1973 to February 1974: A Classification by Apparent Morphology.” Solar Physics, vol. 97 (May 1985): 191-201.
Available via Harvard ADSABS (NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstracts) @ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1985SoPh...97..191M

Schmahl, E. (Edward J.); and E. (Ernest) Hildner. “Coronal Mass-Ejections-Kinematics of the 19 December 1973 Event.” Solar Physics, vol. 55 (December 1977): 473-490.
Available via Harvard ADSABS (NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstracts) @ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1977SoPh...55..473S

Shayler, David J.; and Colin Burgess. NASA’s Scientist-Astronauts. Springer-Praxis Books in Space Exploration. Chichester UK: Praxis Publishing Limited, 2007.