1970

1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (dominical letter D) of the Gregorian calendar, the 1970th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 970th year of the 2nd millennium, the 70th year of the 20th century, and the 1st year of the 1970s decade.

Events

January

Star

A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, and the brightest stars gained proper names. Extensive catalogues of stars have been assembled by astronomers, which provide standardized star designations.

For at least a portion of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its core, releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Once the hydrogen in the core of a star is nearly exhausted, almost all naturally occurring elements heavier than helium are created by stellar nucleosynthesis during the star's lifetime and, for some stars, by supernova nucleosynthesis when it explodes. Near the end of its life, a star can also contain degenerate matter. Astronomers can determine the mass, age, metallicity (chemical composition), and many other properties of a star by observing its motion through space, luminosity, and spectrum respectively. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant of its evolution and eventual fate. Other characteristics of a star, including diameter and temperature, change over its life, while the star's environment affects its rotation and movement. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (H–R diagram), allows the age and evolutionary state of a star to be determined.

A Beard of Stars

A Beard of Stars is the fourth studio album by English psychedelic folk band Tyrannosaurus Rex, and their last before changing their name to T. Rex. It was released on 13 March 1970 by record label Regal Zonophone.

Music

A Beard of Stars was the act's first album with Marc Bolan's new musical partner Mickey Finn and featured Bolan on vocals, guitar, organ and bass and Finn on percussion. It was notable for being the first album on which Bolan used electric guitar, although that instrument had first appeared on the band's 1969 single "King of the Rumbling Spires"/"Do You Remember". According to Mark Deming of AllMusic, A Beard of Stars "was the turning point where Marc Bolan began evolving from an unrepentant hippie into the full-on swaggering rock star he would be within a couple of years, though for those not familiar with his previous work, it still sounds like the work of a man with his mind plugged into the age of lysergic enchantment."

Four tracks from this album, including "Great Horse", were salvaged from spring 1969 sessions for a fourth album with original percussionist Steve Peregrin Took in the wake of "King of the Rumbling Spires". These four tracks were overdubbed for release by Finn, Bolan and Visconti. A further four tracks from the Took sessions – rejected for the final album – subsequently surfaced on various compilations, three ("Once Upon the Seas of Abyssinia", "Blessed Wild Apple Girl", "Demon Queen") in Bolan's lifetime, the fourth ("Ill Starred Man") posthumously.