Gjøa

Gjøa was the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. With a crew of six, Roald Amundsen traversed the passage in a three-year journey, finishing in 1906.

History

Construction

The 70 by 20 ft (21.3 by 6.1 m) square-sterned sloop of 45 net register tonnage (4,500 cu ft or 130 m³) was built by Knut Johannesson Skaale in Rosendal, Norway in 1872, the same year Amundsen was born. She was named Gjøa after her then owner's wife. (Gjøa is a modern form of the Norse name Gyða - this again is a compressed form of Guðfríðr, a compound of guð 'god' and fríðr 'beautiful'.) For the next 28 years the vessel served as a herring fishing boat.

Purchase by Amundsen

On March 28, 1901, Amundsen bought her from Asbjørn Sexe of Ullensvang, Norway, for his forthcoming expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Gjøa was much smaller than vessels used by other Arctic expeditions, but Amundsen intended to live off the limited resources of the land and sea through which he was to travel, and reasoned that the land could sustain only a tiny crew (this had been the cause of the catastrophic failure of John Franklin's expedition fifty years previously). Her shallow draught would help her traverse the shoals of the Arctic straits. Perhaps most importantly, the aging ship was all that Amundsen (who was financing his expedition largely by spending his inheritance) could afford.

Alpha Caeli

Alpha Caeli (α Cae, α Caeli) is a double star system in the constellation Caelum.

Alpha Caeli A is an F-type main sequence star with a stellar classification of F2V and an apparent magnitude of +4.44. It has 1.48 times the mass of the Sun and 1.3 times the solar radius. The projected rotational velocity at the stellar equator is 47.8 km/s. It is suspected of being a Delta Scuti variable star.

The companion is a spectral class M0.5V red dwarf star with absolute magnitude 9.80. It is a UV Ceti variable star that undergoes random increases in luminosity. This star is currently separated from the primary by an angle of 6.6 arcseconds, which indicates an orbit with a semimajor axis whose expected value is 206 AU.

Alpha Caeli is approximately 65.7 light years from Earth and is an estimated 900 million years old. The space velocity components of this system are U = 10, V = 6 and W = -10 km/s. It is orbiting the Milky Way galaxy at an average distance of 8.006 kpc from the core and with an orbital eccentricity of 0.07. This orbit lies close to the galactic plane, and the system travels no more than 0.05 kpc above or below this plane. Alpha Caeli is probably a member of the Ursa Major moving group of stars that have similar kinematic properties and probably originated from the same star cluster.

Groombridge 34

Groombridge 34 is a binary star system in the northern constellation of Andromeda. It was listed as entry number 34 in A Catalogue of Circumpolar Stars, published posthumously in 1838 by British astronomer Stephen Groombridge. Based upon parallax measurements taken by the Hipparcos spacecraft, the system is located about 11.7 light-years from the Sun. This positions the pair among the nearest stars to the Solar System.

Both components are small, dim red dwarf stars that are too faint to be seen with the naked eye. They orbit around their common barycenter in a nearly circular orbit with a separation of about 147 AU and a period of around 2,600 years. Both stars exhibit random variation in luminosity due to flares and they have been given variable star designations: the brighter member Groombridge 34 A is designated GX And, while the smaller component is designated GQ And.

The star system has a relatively high proper motion of 2.9 arc seconds per year, and is moving away from the Solar System at a velocity of 11.6 km/s. It achieved perihelion some 15,000 years ago when it came within 11 ly (3.5 pc) of the Sun.