Andrew Fraknoi, the Executive Director of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, accepts the Society’s banner, which flew in space aboard the Space Shuttle, from astronaut and astronomer Karl Henize in 1986.
Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side.