Richard Edwin Hills FRS FRAS is emeritus professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Cambridge.

Born on 30 September 1945 and educated at Bedford School, Hill studied the Natural Science Tripos at Queens’ College, Cambridge and then went to the University of California, Berkeley to complete his Doctor of Philosophy degree.

Hills was a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Bonn between 1972 and 1974, before he returned to the University of Cambridge and became involved in the development of telescopes and instrumentation for astronomy at wavelengths of around one millimetre—the spectral region that lies between radio waves and infrared—which is relatively unexplored.

Hills worked as a scientist at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, where he observed distant, redshifted quasars and studied processes associated with star formation. In December 2007 he was appointed as project scientist for the ALMA telescope, a sub-millimeter interferometer in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile.

Hills is a Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge and was Director of Studies for Natural Sciences at St Edmund’s between 1990 and 2007. He was Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Cambridge between 1990 and 2007, Deputy Head of the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge between 1999 and 2003, and has been emeritus professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Cambridge since 2012.

Hills was the awarded the Royal Astronomical Society‘s Jackson-Gwilt Medal in 1989, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014. – Wikipedia

Full Moon. Rises at sunset, high in the sky around midnight. Visible all night.

Moon overview on solarsystem.nasa.gov

A portrait of Saint Francis by Philip Fruytiers

Francis of Assisi (born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone; Italian: Francesco d’Assisi; Latin: Franciscus Assisiensis; 1181 or 1182 – 3 October 1226), venerated as Saint Francis of Assisi, also known in his ministry as Francesco, was an Italian Catholic friar, deacon, philosopher, mystic, and preacher. He founded the men’s Order of Friars Minor, the women’s Order of Saint Clare, the Third Order of Saint Francis and the Custody of the Holy Land. Francis is one of the most venerated religious figures in Christianity.

Pope Gregory IX canonized Francis on 16 July 1228. Along with Saint Catherine of Siena, he was designated patron saint of Italy. He later became associated with patronage of animals and the natural environment, and it became customary for churches to hold ceremonies blessing animals on or near his feast day of 4 October. In 1219, he went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the Sultan to put an end to the conflict of the Crusades. By this point, the Franciscan Order had grown to such an extent that its primitive organizational structure was no longer sufficient. He returned to Italy to organize the Order.

Once his community was authorized by the Pope, he withdrew increasingly from external affairs. Francis is also known for his love of the Eucharist. In 1223, Francis arranged for the first Christmas live nativity scene. According to Christian tradition, in 1224 he received the stigmata during the apparition of Seraphic angels in a religious ecstasy, which would make him the second person in Christian tradition after St. Paul (Galatians 6:17) to bear the wounds of Christ’s Passion. He died during the evening hours of 3 October 1226, while listening to a reading he had requested of Psalm 142 (141). – Wikipedia

World Space Week is the largest space event on Earth. More than 8,000 events in 96 countries celebrated “The Moon: Gateway to the Stars” last year. This year the theme is “Satellites Improve Life.” In 2021, World Space Week celebrates “Women in Space.”

“The General Assembly declares 4 to 10 October World Space Week to celebrate each year at the international level the contributions of space science and technology to the betterment of the human condition”

UN General Assembly resolution, 6 December 1999