Podcasts about Geminids

Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly voted to reduce powers for Democrats who won key races in the Tar Heel state this November. WRAL-TV's Laura Leslie explains what this vote means. Then, this weekend the Geminids meteor shower will be visible, but could be harder to see because of what's known as the Cold Moon, the last full moon of the year. Sky and Telescope's Kelly Beatty joins us. And, we hear recommendations for gifts to spend your hard-earned money on this year from The Cut's Bianca Nieves.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

GB2RS News Sunday the 15th of December The news headlines: The RSGB 2025 election nominations process is open The Society is advertising for a new Convention Chair YOTA Month is busy this week with more callsign hosts to listen out for The RSGB 2025 elections process has begun, and nominations are open for a range of volunteer roles. The RSGB's President John McCullagh, GI4BWM will reach the end of his second year as President at the AGM and so will stand down. There are also two Elected Board Director vacancies. The Board is looking for people with specific skills to fill these roles. The current President is one of the few at the Board level with extensive experience in spectrum matters and negotiating with the authorities, so that skills gap needs to be filled. Outreach has been an important focus over the last year for the Society, and it would like to support the current activities and expand on them. These developments will include encouraging practical skills amongst the amateur radio community and building links with other organisations. Building those relationships will require someone with drive and determination but also tact and diplomacy. There are eight posts available for RSGB Regional Representatives, ranging from Region 1 in Scotland to Region 11 in the southwest. For more details about the roles as well as application forms and candidate packs, go to the RSGB website at rsgb.org/election The RSGB has been developing its Convention over recent years to suit the changing needs of the amateur radio community. From a face-to-face meeting, it evolved into an online event when we weren't allowed to meet, then changed again into a hybrid event, bringing together the best of both for people in this country and across the world. The Society has also been developing the programme to include practical workshops and forums to support radio amateurs who would like a safe and accessible environment in which to try to develop their practical skills. The RSGB General Manager has been doing the role of Convention Chair for the last three years but has now stepped back from that additional voluntary role, so the RSGB is looking for a new Convention Chair. This role needs someone who understands the advantages of both online and in-person events and who can contribute to shaping the RSGB Conventions of the future to suit the changing amateur radio audience. The RSGB is looking for someone enthusiastic, proactive, collaborative and good at working with others in a strong team. They will also need an awareness of all aspects of amateur radio, including the latest developments and what might be on the horizon. As part of the wider Convention team, they will need to suggest ideas for speakers and practical activities that will attract a range of radio amateurs. If you believe you could contribute to the development of this prestigious annual event, the RSGB would like to hear from you. Please contact the RSGB General Manager Steve Thomas, M1ACB via gm.dept@rsgb.org.uk Youngsters on the Air Month is now halfway through, with plenty more operators booked to host GB24YOTA. There is still time to work the RSGB National Radio Centre's GB3RS station which is hosting the callsign for the duration of today, Sunday the 15th of December. On Wednesday, the 18th of December, the Simon Langton Boys School in Canterbury will be operating between 12 pm and 6 pm. On Thursday, the 19th of December, between 12 pm and 6 pm the Cambridge University Wireless Society will once again be hosting GB24YOTA. To finish up this week, Tommy, M7OMY will be operating on the 20th and 21st of December under the supervision of Las, M0BOY. Tommy is a young radio amateur and has been taking part in YOTA Month for a few years, so be sure to listen out and make a QSO with him. Search GB24YOTA on QRZ.com  to view the full operating schedule. The RSGB's headquarters will close for the Christmas and New Year period from 2pm on Tuesday the 24th of December 2024. It will open again at 8.30am on Thursday the 2nd of January 2025. During that time, if you need information about amateur radio, exams or RadCom, you'll find lots of information on the website via rsgb.org  If you are planning to visit the RSGB's National Radio Centre at Bletchley Park over the holidays, please note that it will be closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. On New Year's Eve, the NRC will close at 2 pm. The National Radio Centre will also be closed for essential maintenance works on Thursday the 2nd of January 2025. Outside of these times, volunteers look forward to welcoming visitors as usual. Remember that RSGB Members can download a free entry voucher for Bletchley Park from the RSGB website via rsgb.org/bpvoucher On the 6th of December, Ofcom announced an update regarding the timing of phases two and three of its amateur radio licensing framework, including changes to the new intermediate call signs and rules for Special event Stations. These phases were originally planned for December 2024 and March 2025 respectively, but Ofcom now expects to deliver them in the third quarter of 2025. For more information go to ofcom.org.uk  and search for ‘Licensing updates'. Please send details of all your news and events to radcom@rsgb.org.uk  The deadline for submissions is 10 am on Thursdays before the Sunday broadcast each week. And now for details of rallies and events The Sparkford Radio Rally is taking place on Sunday the 29th of December at Davis Hall, Howell Hill, West Camel, near Yeovil. Doors are open to traders from 7.30 am and from 9.30 am to the public. Admission is £2. Refreshments and free parking will be available. For more information, please contact Luke via 07870 168197 or email m3vhv@hotmail.co.uk Looking ahead to events coming up next year, the Lincoln Shortwave Club Winter Radio Rally is taking place on the 26th of January at The Festival Hall, Caistor Road in Market Rasen. Doors open at 10 am, and admission is £3. Hot refreshments and ample free car parking will be available. The cost of a table is £10. To book, please contact Steve Burke, M5ZZZ via 07777 699069 or email m5zzz@outlook.com Now the Special Event news There is still time to work The Humber Fortress DX Amateur Radio Club which is once again active with special callsign GB0MC until Thursday the 26th of December. The ‘MC' in the callsign stands for Merry Christmas. The Club would like to invite everyone to call in and give them a hearty “HoHoHo” and tell them what radio equipment you would like from Santa this year. The Club will also be live streaming on its YouTube Channel. OR100LGE is the special callsign in use by members of the Liège Radio Club, ON5VL to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The station is active until the end of the year on the 160 to 6m bands using CW, SSB, FT8 and FT4. QSL via Logbook of the World, eQSL or via ON6YH. QSOs will also be uploaded to Club Log. Starting in January 2025, members of the British Railways Amateur Radio Society will be operating Special Event Station GB0LMR to celebrate 200 years of the modern railway. QSL via the Bureau or direct by sending a Stamped Addressed Envelope to the address given on QRZ.COM. Now the DX news Mike, V47NH is active from St Kitts and Nevis until the 17th of December. The IOTA reference is NA-104. He will operate on the 40 to 10m bands and SSB. QSL via KC1NGS or Logbook of the World. The VP2VMM team is active from Anegada Island in The British Virgin Islands. They will be QRV in the 2024 ARRL 10m Contest which ends at 2359 today, Sunday. Outside the contest, they will be QRV holiday style using VP2V/homecall until Tuesday the 17th of December. QSL via Logbook of the World, Bureau, OQRS or direct to KU9C. Full details via QRZ.com S21DX is active from Bangladesh until the 19th of December. The IOTA reference is AS-140. The team is active on the 160 to 10m bands, SSB, RTTY and FT8. QSL via Logbook of the World or direct to EB7DX. A Danish DXpedition will be operating as TO0J from French Guiana between the 20th and 31st of December. They will be active on the 80 to 10m bands, CW, SSB, but mainly FT8. QSL via Clublog OQRS, Logbook of the World or eQSL. Now the contest news The UK Six Metre Group Winter Marathon started at 0000UTC on Sunday the 1st of December and ends at 2359UTC on Friday the 31st of January 2025. Using all modes on the 6m band, the exchange is signal report and locator. The ARRL 10m Contest started at 0000UTC on Saturday the 14th of December and ends at 2359UTC today, Sunday the 15th of December. Using CW and phone on the 10m band, the exchange is signal report and serial number. US, Canadian and Mexican stations will also send their State or Province code. On Tuesday, the 17th of December, the RSGB 1.3GHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 23cm band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On Thursday, the 19th of December, the RSGB 70MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 4m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA and G4BAO on Thursday the 12th of December 2024. We had another week with quiet geomagnetic conditions. Other than three hours with a Kp of four on the 9th of December, as of last Thursday when this report was being compiled it had been below three for the past seven days. Active region 3920 produced an impulsive M2.8 solar flare, peaking at 1006UTC on the 11th of December. A quick M2.0 flare was also detected around AR3922 in the southeast quadrant. There was also an M6.4 solar flare at 0648UTC on the 10th of December, but no Earth-directed coronal mass ejections were observed. The solar flux index, despite being predicted to reach 200 again, has been simmering away in the 160s and 170s. Nevertheless, the quieter geomagnetic conditions have helped HF with the extrapolated MUF over a 3,000km path often hitting 40MHz at times. However, the early sunset, which is around 1538UTC to 1621UTC at the moment depending on your location in the UK, means that the MUF drops off quite quickly in the afternoon. The average critical frequency at night is currently about 3.0-3.5MHz, which explains why the HF bands appear to be dead. The winter solstice is on the 21st of December, and we won't see much change until we get to mid-January. There is DX to be had with CDXC members reporting working YJ0CA (Vanuatu) on 15 metres, V73WE (Marshall Islands) on 30 metres and YI1QEA (Iraq) on 10 metres. So, at the moment, make the most of the daytime DX and greyline openings, and reserve the evening for Top Band and perhaps 80 metres. Next week, NOAA predicts that the solar flux index will remain around 170 to 175. The Kp index is expected to be around two or three, apart from the 19th of December when it could reach four. And now the VHF and up propagation news from G3YLA and G4BAO. The period of enhanced Tropo activity will have faded away by this weekend as the high pressure slips away into Europe and declines. This allowed low pressure to regain control from last Friday through the current weekend. There may be a chance of some rain scatter propagation on the GHz bands, although it doesn't look like a particularly good example.  All is not lost for Tropo followers, since the next high drifts in from the Atlantic early next week. The southern UK will benefit the most with Tropo paths to France and across Biscay. This lasts until midweek, to be followed by a return of low pressure for the second half of the week and probably a better rain scatter option than this weekend. The big Geminids meteor shower peaked yesterday, the 14th of December, but will linger throughout the month. The radiant source rises late afternoon and sets the following lunchtime and is most favourably positioned late evening and early morning, pre-dawn. Next, a consideration of aurora prospects, which are still a little enhanced by solar conditions. So, as usual, stay alert to an increasing Kp index above Kp=4 to keep in the game. Finally, remember that the period of Christmas and early January is well known for producing random out-of-season Sporadic-E. It's not possible to fine-tune Es prospects this far ahead, but it wouldn't hurt to monitor the f0Es traces on the www.propquest.co.uk website between now and mid-January. The Moon's declination is at maximum today, Sunday the 15th of December, and also on Monday, so expect long Moon windows with high peak elevations. Path losses are still low but rising, so it's still a good week for EME. The 144MHz sky noise is moderate to low all week. And that's all from the propagation team this week.

The Geminids is one of the most prolific meteor showers, but this year the Moon could get in the way. Find out how to make the most of the shower despite the Moon, as well as all the latest stargazing highlights, in the latest episode of the Star Diary podcast from the makers of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.   Transcription What's next for Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)?   Subscribe to BBC Sky at Night Magazine and submit your astrophotography images over on our website: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com   contactus@skyatnightmagazine.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The moon occults Saturn. Mercury moves to the morning. Vesper Venus. Mars turns around. And it's Geminid meteor time. Some scientists think those meteors didn't come from a defunct comet's dust after all.

GB2RS News Sunday the 8th of December The news headlines: Take part in the RSGB Construction Competition A new edition of RadCom Basics has been published A busy week with GB24YOTA hosted by many groups for YOTA Month During November, the RSGB used its Photo Friday feature on social media to highlight construction and practical skills. Photos included everything from Construction Clubs for newcomers to ground satellite repairs at university clubs. If these have left you feeling inspired and wanting to get creative, why not submit an entry to the Society's 2025 Construction Competition? There are six categories, including a new Outreach category that gives entrants the opportunity to create a project that can be reproduced in a school or public environment. Whether you are a seasoned constructor, used to building your own projects or a beginner looking to take your first steps in amateur radio construction, the RSGB would love to hear from you. Visit the RSGB website at rsgb.org/construction-competition  for full details of the competition and how to enter. For further inspiration, pick up a copy of the June Edition of RadCom and turn to page 36 to view last year's entries. The November 2024 issue of RadCom Basics is now available on the RSGB website for members to read. The publication is aimed at new licensees or anyone who enjoys reading about the fundamental principles behind the many facets of amateur radio. This issue includes part one of how to get on 40m with a small suburban garden, as well as articles on home construction and using repeaters. If you aren't one of the thousands of members who have done so already, you can subscribe to receive notifications about RadCom Basics via the RSGB Membership Portal. Log in and choose the “Manage preferences” tab. To read the latest edition go to rsgb.org/radcom-basics The RSGB would like to congratulate everyone who operated GB24YOTA last week. There was some brilliant activity on the air, including Wick High School Radio Club which had 12 student operators involved and inspired some to take their Foundation licence. If you missed talking to the group, you've got another chance to make a QSO with them today, Sunday the 8th of December. Taking over tomorrow, Monday the 9th of December is Hilderstone Radio Society, which will be operating between 9 am and 5 pm. Cray Valley Radio Society will host the callsign after 5 pm. The RSGB's National Radio Centre station GB3RS, will be on the air with GB24YOTA for the duration of Tuesday the 10th of December. NRC volunteers will also host youngsters from the 6th Bletchley Guides from 6 pm on that day, so do listen out and get on the air to make a QSO with this group. On Wednesday the 11th of December, Hilderstone Radio Society will be back on the air with the callsign for a second day. Bromsgrove & District Amateur Radio Club will operate as GB24YOTA from 6 pm on Friday the 13th of December. To finish the week, the RSGB's National Radio Centre station GB3RS will once again be on the air as it hosts the callsign over the weekend of the 14th and 15th of December. There are still operating spaces left if you'd like to get involved, but don't delay as GB24YOTA is only operational until the end of this month. Go to rsgb.org/yota-month  to find out more. The RSGB Contest Club recently announced that it is looking for volunteers to take part in the second World Wide Award event taking place in January 2025. To be part of the team you will need to be an RSGB member and hold a Full Licence. QSOs can be made using SSB, CW and digital modes. Foundation or Intermediate licensees can join in under supervision or take part in WWA as award chasers. To be part of the operating team email contestclub@rsgbcc.org  to register your interest. To find out more about the event search ‘RSGB Contest Club' on the RSGB website and scroll down to the section titled World Wide Award 2025. Poldhu Amateur Radio Club is celebrating the 123rd anniversary of the first radio transmission across the Atlantic in 1901. Visitors are invited to join members of the Club at The Marconi Centre in Cornwall between 9 am and 4 pm on Thursday the 12th of December to learn how the location played a crucial part in the history of wireless communication. As part of the celebrations, radio amateurs will be operating on various radio bands throughout the day. If you would like to operate as part of the event email secretary@gb2gm.org  You can find full details on the anniversary celebrations on the Club website via gb2gm.org Please send details of all your news and events to radcom@rsgb.org.uk  The deadline for submissions is 10 am on Thursdays before the Sunday broadcast each week. And now for details of rallies and events The Mid-Devon Amateur Radio and Electronics Fair is taking place today, Sunday the 8th of December, at Winkleigh Sports and Recreation Centre. Doors are open from 9 am to 1 pm. Entry is £3 per person and there is no charge for partners and under 16s. Free parking and Wi-Fi are available, as well as hot food and refreshments. The cost for traders is £5 per 6ft frontage with tables supplied. Booking in advance is recommended. Mains electricity is also available on request. Traders are asked to pre-book as soon as possible. Please contact Phil, G6DLJ via 07990 563147 or email wrg2024@hotmail.com The Sparkford Radio Rally is on Sunday the 29th of December at Davis Hall, Howell Hill, West Camel, near Yeovil. Doors are open to traders from 7.30 am and from 9.30 am to the public. Admission is £2. Refreshments and free parking will be available. For more information, please contact Luke via 07870 168197 or email m3vhv@hotmail.co.uk Looking ahead to events coming up next year, the Lincoln Shortwave Club Winter Radio Rally is taking place on the 26th of January at The Festival Hall, Caistor Road in Market Rasen. Doors open at 10 am, and admission is £3. Hot refreshments and ample free car parking will be available. The cost for tables is £10. To book please contact Steve Burke, M5ZZZ via 07777 699069 or email m5zzz@outlook.com Now the Special Event news Ian Astley, M0IAA will be operating as GB1WH on Wednesday the 11th of December. The special event station is being run to support and promote the excellent work done by Wakefield Hospice. To make a donation to the hospice or to hear more from Ian, visit QRZ.com The Humber Fortress DX Amateur Radio Club is once again running the special callsign GB0MC until Thursday the 26th of December. The ‘MC' in the callsign stands for Merry Christmas. The Club would like to invite everyone to call in and give them a hearty “HoHoHo” and tell them what radio equipment you would like from Santa this year. The Club will also be live streaming on its YouTube Channel. Special callsign HB50VC is active until the 31st of December to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Swissair Amateur Radio Club, HB9VC. QSOs will be uploaded to the Logbook of the World. QSL cards will not be provided. You can download a certificate for working this special event station from tinyurl.com/HB50VC-24 Now the DX news Carl, 2E0HPI, is in London from Monday the 9th of December until Thursday the 12th of December and will be operating from several Parks on the Air locations each day. He will be active on 10m SSB. eQSL is preferred or direct to the address on QRZ.com The T46W team is active from Cuba until Tuesday the 10th of December. They will be active on the 160m to 6m bands. Parks on the Air activity is also expected from references CU0292 and CU0298. QSL via CO6QK or Logbook of the World. The TO9W team is active from Saint Martin Island until the 13th of December. The IOTA reference is NA-105. The members will operate on the 160m to 10m bands, with a focus on the 40, 80 and 160m bands. QSL via W9ILY, Logbook of the World or ClubLog OQRS. Mike, V47NH is active from St Kitts and Nevis until the 17th of December. The IOTA reference is NA-104. He will operate on the 40 to 10m bands and SSB. QSL via KC1NGS or Logbook of the World. The VP2VMM team is active from Anegada Island in The British Virgin Islands. They will be QRV in the 2024 ARRL 10m Contest.  Outside of the contest, between Monday the 9th of December and Tuesday the 17th of December they will be QRV holiday style using VP2V/homecall. QSL via Logbook of the World, Bureau, OQRS or direct to KU9C. Full details via QRZ.com Now the contest news The UK Six Metre Group Winter Marathon started at 0000UTC on Sunday the 1st of December and ends at 2359UTC on Friday the 31st of January 2025. Using all modes on the 6m band, the exchange is signal report and locator. The ARRL 160m Contest started on Friday the 6th of December and ends at 1600UTC today, Sunday the 8th of December. Using CW on the 160m band, the exchange is a signal report for UK stations. US and Canadian stations will also send their ARRL or RAC section number. Also taking place today, Sunday the 8th of December, the RSGB 144MHz AFS Contest runs from 1000 to 1400UTC. Using all modes on the 2m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On Tuesday, the 10th of December, the RSGB 432MHz FM Activity Contest runs from 1900 to 1955UTC. Using FM on the 70cm band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Also on Tuesday, the 10th of December, the RSGB 432MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 70cm band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On Wednesday, the 11th of December, the RSGB 432MHz FT8 Activity four-hour contest runs from 1700 to 2100UTC. Using FT8 on the 70cm band, the exchange is a report and four-character locator. Also on Wednesday the 11th of December, the RSGB 432MHz FT8 Activity two-hour contest runs from 1900 to 2100UTC. Using FT8 on the 70cm band, the exchange is a report and four-character locator. Stations entering the four-hour contest may also enter the two-hour contest. On Thursday, the 12th of December, the RSGB 50MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 6m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. The ARRL 10m Contest starts at 0000UTC on Saturday the 14th of December and ends at 2359UTC on Sunday the 15th of December. Using CW and phone on the 10m band, the exchange is signal report and serial number. US, Canadian and Mexican stations will also send their State or Province code. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA and G4BAO on Thursday the 5th of December 2024. We had another week of high solar activity but limited geomagnetic disturbances. This meant that the upper HF bands were playing ball all week. The Kp index only exceeded four on one occasion, on the 30th of November when it hit 4.67, but otherwise, it has been low. With a solar flux index mainly in the 180s, this allowed the upper HF bands to shine. The maximum usable frequency or MUF over a 3,000km path has been consistently over 35MHz during daylight hours. The MUF over 100km has also been more than 14MHz around midday, making 20 metres almost a local band at times thanks to near vertical incidence skywave signals! If you have worked anyone in the UK on 20 metres let us know. An approaching active region just off the east limb of the sun was responsible for an M2.3 solar flare on the 4th of December, so perhaps increased solar activity is on the horizon. Next week NOAA predicts the week will start with the solar flux index starting in the 180s, perhaps then increasing to 200 as the week progresses. An increased geomagnetic disturbance is forecast for the period of the 10th to the 13th of December when the Kp index could increase to four. If this does come to fruition, we can expect MUFs to drop until the storming has passed. As always keep an eye on Propquest.co.uk for near-real-time MUF figures and solarham.com for Kp indices. And now the VHF and up propagation news from G3YLA and G4BAO. Meteor scatter is top of the list this coming week, with the big Geminids shower lasting throughout the month and peaking on Thursday the 14th of December. With a peak zenith hourly rate (ZHR) of 150 it's one of the most active and reliable of the annual showers. Other lesser meteor streams are also in play, so check the meteor scatter frequencies on 144, 50 and 70MHz where digimodes MSK144 and FSK441 will dominate activity. We have another period of primarily unsettled weather for the lead into this weekend, with deep lows bringing heavy rain, and perhaps some snow over northern hills. Watch out for very strong winds with potentially damaging gales in places. By the time many of you hear this on Sunday the 8th of December, we will be mid-way through the main event but hopefully, your antennas have survived. The better news is that the first half of the week is dominated by high pressure, so this brings a chance to repair antennas and get some Tropo time before a slow drift back to unsettled conditions in the second half of the week. For other modes, GigaHertz band rain and snow scatter will be worth considering especially over the weekend and again later in the week. Last Friday afternoon saw another big 50MHz F2 opening to North America, so continue to be vigilant if you're in the shack after lunch and the Kp index is below two. The solar conditions mean that there is still a chance of Aurora, although the Sun has been a bit quieter recently. Some days the f0Es trace on Propquest shows that weak Sporadic-E is still occurring. The Moon's declination is rising again and going positive on Monday. With falling path losses as we approach perigee on Thursday, it's a good week for EME. 144MHz sky noise is low all week. And that's all from the propagation team this week.

Tune in to your monthly stargazing companion with Leon and Beth as they explore the Borloo night sky this December. Marvel at Venus shining brightly in the western sky after sunset, now at its maximum elongation. Journey south to spot the faint Southern Birds constellations—Grus, Tucana, Phoenix, and Pavo. In the east, find Orion's Belt leading to Sirius, the brightest star, and Jupiter, which is at its stunning opposition. Look north to explore Cetus, the sea monster, and learn its mythological ties to Andromeda and Pegasus. Early risers, don't miss the Geminids meteor shower peaking on December 14th, offering meteors every few minutes before sunrise. Plus, celebrate the summer solstice on December 21st, marking the longest day of the year, and wish a happy birthday to a very influential person on December 25th.

December's long nights will offer stargazers plenty to see, including two meteor showers and the best views of Jupiter until 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Geminids Meteor Shower is coming up soon, as is the Ursids Meteor Shower. Although we are coming up on a full moon on December 15, which will interfere with visibility of some of the weaker meteors, these meteor showers are still worth checking out.

Episode 199 In this episode of the Observers Notebook podcast, host Tim Robertson talks to the Meteor Section Coordinator, Bob Lunsford about the upcoming Geminids Meteor Shower. The Geminids will next peak on the December 12/13, 2024. Bob gives us a brief history of the Meteor Shower, how and where to observe and details on reporting your observations and contact information. You can contact Bob at: lunro.imo.usa@cox.net The link for the details on the Geminids meteor shower: https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/#Geminids International Meteor Organization https://www.imo.net/ For the latest information from the ALPO Meteor Section you can visit: http://www.amsmeteors.org/ For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AssociationofLunarandPlanetaryObservers Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 I want to thank the Producers of this podcast, Steve Siedentop and Michael Moyer for their generous support of the Observers Notebook. Our Patreons: Jerry White Jason Inman Matt Will Steve Seidentop Stephen Bennett Michael Moyer Shawn Dilles Frank Schenck Damian Allis Carl Hergenrother Julian Parks Michael McShan Michael Blake Nick Evetts Rik Hill Stan Sienkiewicz

Two lonely girls encounter a voice in a closet. What does it want? And should they give in to its demands to be let out.Brittany Hague (she/her) has worked as a graphic artist, an independent interactive fiction maker, and short story writer. She lives in Seattle with her husband, two children, and familiars. Her short stories have appeared in the Night of the Geminids and Monster (Hidden Fortress Press) anthologies, Last Girls Club, and Black Sheep Magazine. brittanyhague@me.comYou can read "The Talking Thing" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.Website: kaidankaistories.comFollow us on: Twitter/XInstagramFacebook

What is in the This Week in Science Podcast? This Week: Interview W/Trace Dominguez, Mapping Mouse Brains, Culture Coffee, Crusty Protection, What Big Eyes, Emoji Diversity, Geminids, Free Range Cats, Particle Physics, VR For Mice, Brain Computing, And Much More Science! Become a Patron! Check out the full unedited episode of our science podcast on […] The post 13 December, 2023 – Episode 954 – How to Use Emojis For Science! appeared first on This Week in Science - The Kickass Science Podcast.

Join us as we uncover the potential for a breathtaking new meteor shower, diving into the irony of lost fruit in space and exploring the tantalizing possibility of the speed of life after the Big Bang.In this episode, you will be able to:· Explore the potential new meteor shower and its implications for stargazers and astronomy enthusiasts.· Delve into the fascinating topic of lost fruit in space and its unexpected journey beyond our planet.· Uncover the mysteries of life after the Big Bang and how it shaped the universe as we know it.· Discover the Doppler effect, redshift, and slingshot effect, and how they have revolutionized our understanding of celestial bodies.'We're blessed with good fortune for this particular meteor display, as we are with the Geminids, because the moon is new effectively at the moment, so there's no moonlight'. - Andrew DunkleyLost Fruit in SpaceThe cosmic mystery deepens, as astronomers shed light on the curious topic of lost fruit in space. Tying in with a light-hearted reference to a popular television series, researchers examine how space travel affects the development of fruit flies sent to the International Space Station. This strange case brings us closer to understanding life's adaptation to zero-gravity environments.The resources mentioned in this episode are:· Visit the Dark Sky Traveler website at darkskytraveler.com.au to book a tour to witness the total solar eclipse in Texas and Cape Canaveral in April 2028.· Check out the Dark Sky Traveler website for information on a trip to Canada, which can be combined with the Texas and Cape Canaveral tour for a complete eclipse experience.· Stay updated on the latest episodes of Space Nuts by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.· Stream on demand at www.spacenuts.io, www.bitesz.com to catch up on previous episodes of Space Nuts and stay up to date with the latest astronomy and space science news. · Add your name to the Europa Clipper mission through the NASA website to become part of this exciting space exploration endeavor.· Submit your questions for the Space Nuts podcast by visiting the official website and using the provided form. Your questions could be featured in an upcoming episode.· Join the Space Nuts podcast group on Facebook to connect with other space enthusiasts and stay informed about the latest news, discussions, and events related to astronomy and space science.#MeteorShower #AstronomyEnthusiasts #NewAstronomicalPhenomena #SpaceDiscoveries . #Stargazing #MeteorShowerEnthusiasts #CosmicPhenomena #AstronomyNews #CelestialEvents #SpaceNutsPodcastThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/2631155/advertisement

KGMI's Jason Upton talks to "The Backyard Astronomer" Gary Boyle about the Geminids Meteor Shower that's peaking this week. Boyle is an astronomy educator, guest speaker and monthly columnist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

Researchers pinpoint the hormone responsible for nausea and vomiting in pregnant women. Are we one step closer to a male contraceptive pill? Tesla recalls more than two million cars in the US over autopilot concerns. In this episode:Professor Sir Stephen O'Rahilly explains potential treatment for morning sicknessHow to watch the Geminids meteor shower on Thursday nightThreads will let you push fact-checked posts further down your feedResearchers discover ultra-hard material that could rival diamondRevealed: the cost of replacing the Tesla Cybertruck's infamous windscreen wiperFollow us on X or on Threads. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#doğatakvimi ❄️ Bugün 13 Aralık 2023 çarşamba Bu gece ve yarın gece gökyüzünde şenlik var. Geminids - ikizler meteor yağmurunun en aktif günleri. Saatte 120 kadar yıldız kayacak. Olabildiğinde geniş gökyüzü görebileceğiniz, az ışıklı bir yerde sırt üstü yatın ve göğe bakın! İyi şanslar

Renae Kerrigan, the Curator of Science Planetarium Director of the Peoria Riverfront Museum Dome Planetarium, joins The Greg and Dan Show to discuss the annual Geminids meteor shower occurring Wednesday and Thursday night. Kerrigan notes the excitement surrounding the Geminids meteor shower, how it occurs, and the fun events happening at the Peoria Riverfront Museum. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Geminids meteor shower make a fantastic appearance this December, but why are they different than other meteor showers?  Tune in to learn all about meteor showers and the Geminids! Follow us at facebook.com/BackyardAstronomerAZ Check out the NAZ Astro mission of STEM education at facebook.com/NAZAstro Support STEM education patreon.com/NAZAstro Our awesome sponsors: facebook.com/manzanitains

A reliable meteor shower is building toward its peak, on Wednesday night. There won't be any moonlight to spoil the show, so if you can get away from city lights, it should be a good display. And if you want some earlier action, try tonight — some meteor experts say we could get an extra sprinkling. The Geminid meteor shower occurs every December. That's when Earth zips through the orbital path of its parent asteroid, which sheds bits of rock and dirt as it orbits the Sun. Earth sweeps up some of this debris. It vaporizes as it hits the atmosphere, forming glowing streaks of light. At the shower's peak, it might produce a hundred or more meteors per hour. And while most meteor showers are best viewed well after midnight, the Geminids offer more generous hours — from about 10 p.m. until dawn. Best of all, the Moon will be just past new, so it won't interfere with the fireworks. There's a possibility of some bonus meteors tonight. Earth may pass through the path of Comet 46P/Wirtanen. It doesn't spawn a regular meteor shower, but it does occasionally provide a few sparks. Some calculations show that we could fly through a trail of its “comet dust” tonight. And even if we don't get those bonus flashes of light, we will get a few early Geminids — a prelude to the main event late Wednesday into early Thursday. Tomorrow: mapping our place in the vastness of the Milky Way.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

Hosts: Steve Dunkley and AI Newsreader HallieTopics Covered:Geminid Meteor ShowerDeclaration of the Lunar Anthropocene EpochPotential New Meteor Shower from Comet 46P/WirtanenAustralia's Lunar Rover "Ruva" NamingUpdates on NASA's Psyche SpacecraftIran's Progress in Space ExplorationAdditional Notes: Listeners are encouraged to share their photos of astronomical events on social media. The episode also features engaging discussions on various aspects of space science and exploration, highlighting the intersection of human endeavors and celestial phenomena.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5648921/advertisement

Welcome to the daily304 – your window into Wonderful, Almost Heaven, West Virginia.   Today is Sunday, Dec. 10  Echo-Lit livens Charleston's West Side with art prints and literary tributes. The Geminid meteor shower peaks Dec. 14; head to a WV Dark Sky park for some amazing views. Relive your childhood at Snowshoe Mountain's tubing park…on today's daily304. #1 – From WV ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT – Located in the heart of Charleston's West Side, Echo-Lit LLC is a welcoming modern storefront adorned by a vivid mural of a young girl reading by candlelight in a West Virginia-themed hollow. Step inside, and you're greeted by a tapestry of art prints, literary excerpts and a trove of West Virginia-inspired treasures meticulously arranged along the walls. Jeanne Stevenson, the proud owner, embodies a fervor not just for art but for her home state. Her enthusiasm is palpable as she shares the robust support received from both state and federal entities to nurture her business. The journey wasn't solitary. Victoria Russo from the Charleston Area Alliance played a pivotal role by introducing Jeanne to Leslie Drake, Director of the U.S. Export Assistance Center and Caitlin Lizarraga, International Trade Manager for the West Virginia Department of Economic Development. This connection seeded opportunities and guidance crucial for Echo-Lit's expansion. Check out www.www.echo-lit.com to see some of the West Virginia-inspired artwork! Read more: https://westvirginia.gov/navigating-the-path-to-export-success-echo-lits-journey-begins/    #2 – From PLANETARY.ORG – Look up! The 2023 Geminid meteor shower peaks in the evening of Dec. 14, with meteors also visible on Dec. 13. The Geminids are expected to produce up to 120 meteors per hour at a dark site. The waxing crescent Moon won't interfere with dark skies, making this year's shower good for viewing. The Geminids are one of the Northern Hemisphere's best showers. They're also visible from the Southern Hemisphere, just with fewer meteors.  The best way to watch a meteor shower is from a dark sky site, so it helps to get away from city lights as much as you can. In West Virginia, Watoga State Park, Droop Mountain Battlefield State Park and Calvin Price State Forest are officially designated Dark Sky parks. Visit  www.wvtourism.com/stars to learn more. Read more: https://www.planetary.org/articles/your-guide-meteor-shower   #3 – From GARDEN & GUN –  Every year in mid to late fall, snow tubing parks across the South open for their seasons, drawing the coat- and mitten-clad masses for a little zero-skill, minimal-effort fun. But its age-reversing effect is tubing's real appeal: The exhilaration of flying down a hill, grin frozen in place, elicits childish glee in anyone eight to eighty years old.  In West Virginia, the eight-lane snow tubing hill at Snowshoe Mountain's Coca-Cola Tube Park boasts a six-story elevation drop that's been delivering thrills amid chills since the late 1980s. And when the sun goes down, Galactic Tubing blasts the excitement level out of this world. Multicolored lights above the lanes wash each ride in a revolving rainbow that attracts bigger crowds than daylight tubing. While the park stays packed during all open hours, the tubing team keeps an eye on ticket numbers to minimize wait times. Visit www.wvtourism.com or www.wvstateparks.com to learn more about snow sports in Almost Heaven. Read more: https://gardenandgun.com/articles/seven-southern-snow-tubing-spots/?   Find these stories and more at wv.gov/daily304. The daily304 curated news and information is brought to you by the West Virginia Department of Commerce: Sharing the wealth, beauty and opportunity in West Virginia with the world. Follow the daily304 on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @daily304. Or find us online at wv.gov and just click the daily304 logo.  That's all for now. Take care. Be safe. Get outside and enjoy all the opportunity West Virginia has to offer.  

GB2RS News Sunday the 10th of December 2023 The news headlines: 23cm recommendation approved at WRC-23 RSGB Examinations Standards Committee report published RSGB Elections process begins   The third week of the WRC-23 World Radiocommunication Conference has seen the approval of a new footnote to the 23cm amateur band at 1240 to 1300MHz under Agenda Item 9.1-b. This draws attention to the recently released ITU-R Recommendation 2164 that provides guidance to avoid interference to radio navigation satellite services, or RNSS, such as Galileo. This is a major landmark after four years of hard work which started after WRC-19 and now lays out the basis for guidance and next steps. IARU President Tim Ellam, VE6SH said that the addition of a footnote that provides guidance to administrations in the event of interference to the RNSS is a good regulatory outcome for amateurs and the primary users of this band. You can read more on this story at tinyurl.com/RecRNSS  The IARU team continues its work on other WRC issues including the development of agendas for future conferences. The RSGB special focus page provides regular updates and additional detail. You can find the page at rsgb.org/wrc-23  The RSGB Examinations Standards Committee has published its annual report, covering the operation of the amateur radio exams during the calendar year of 2022. You can read the report on the RSGB website. Go to rsgb.org/esc and click on Minutes, Papers and Reports in the righthand list. If you are keen to see amateur radio, and the RSGB, continue to thrive over the coming years, this is the time to volunteer for an RSGB Board or Regional Team role. This year the Society is looking for one elected Board Director, two Nominated Board Directors and eight Regional Representatives. You can find candidate packs, forms and further details on the Society's website at rsgb.org/election If you're interested but unsure, please read the information set out on the elections web page first and then have an informal chat with the RSGB Company Secretary. Email Stephen Purser, GW4SHF at company.secretary@rsgb.org.uk The RSGB Board is delighted to announce that Bob Beebe, GU4YOX has been appointed as the new Nominations Committee Chair. The Board would like to thank Stephen Purser, GW4SHF for his work in this role over a number of years, and it is pleased that he will continue in his other role as Company Secretary. You can find out more about the Nominations Committee on the RSGB website at rsgb.org/nomcom and you can email Bob via nominations.chair@rsgb.org.uk Don't forget that the last of the RSGB's Tonight@8 webinars for 2023 is at 8 pm tomorrow, Monday the 11th of December. It focuses on amateur radio construction and the RSGB Construction Competition. Jenny Curtis M7JNY, Colin Murray GM4EAU, and David Law G0LBK will talk about the projects they worked on and why they decided to submit them to the RSGB Construction Competition in recent years. Watch live on the RSGB YouTube channel or special BATC channel and ask questions via the live chat. To find out more go to the RSGB website at rsgb.org/webinars EIRSAT-1 launched on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA at 1819UTC on Friday the 1st of December 2023. 'EIRSAT-1' stands for 'Educational Irish Research Satellite'. A team of students at University College Dublin, with support from academic and professional staff, has designed, built, tested, and will operate, Ireland's first satellite, a 2U CubeSat. It has a downlink on the IARU coordinated frequency of 437.100MHz. For more information about the project visit eirsat1.ie The UK Six Metre Group Winter Marathon is underway. The objective is to work as many four-digit grid squares as possible, between 0000UTC on the 1st of December 2023 and 2359UTC on the 31st of January 2024, on the 6m band. Logs can be submitted until 12 February 2024. For more information visit uksmg.org It is now the second week of Youngsters on the Air month. Special callsign GB23YOTA has already been operated by a range of schools, universities and radio societies. The RSGB National Radio Centre is active today Sunday the 10th of December using GB23YOTA between 9 am and 5 pm. On Monday the 11th of December Hilderstone Radio Society will be on the air with St Peter-in-Thanet School in Kent between 12 pm and 6 pm. Mallaig High School will be hosting the special callsign for the second time this month between 12pm and 3pm on Thursday the 14th of December. Tommy M7OMY, who was involved with Youngsters on the Air month in 2022, is back again this year and will be operating GB23YOTA supervised by M0BOY for the whole of Saturday the 16th of December. Remember to listen out for all these young operators on the air and help make them feel welcome in the world of amateur radio. If you'd like to get involved and operate GB23YOTA, there is still time. Email Jamie, M0SDV at yota.month@rsgb.org.uk to register your interest or ask for further information.  And now for details of rallies and events The Sparkford Wireless Group Tabletop Rally, in aid of the RAIBC, will take place on Thursday the 28th of December from 9.30 am to 1 pm. The event will be held at Davis Hall, Howell Hill, West Camel near Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7QX. Entry is £3 and free parking and refreshments will be available. For more information, email Bob via wjh069@gmail.com The Lincoln Short Wave Club Winter Radio Rally will take place on Thursday the 28th of January at The Festival Hall, Caistor Road, Market Rasen, LN8 3HT. The doors will be open from 9 am and admission is £2. Ample free car parking and hot refreshments will be available. The tables cost £10 each. At 2 pm, after the Rally, there will be a used equipment auction. Items for the auction will be booked from 1 pm. Contact Steve, M5ZZZ for bookings and information via m5zzz@outlook.com or 07777 699 069. Now the Special Event News On Thursday the 14th of December, from 1700UTC, lots of special event stations from The Netherlands will be on the air. The callsigns in use will follow the format PA01MIL with each station having a unique combination of numbers in the callsign. The operators will be arranged into teams – each team containing two military personnel and one amateur. The stations will work on the HF bands using SSB. The objective of the event is to promote amateur radio so please do give them a call. Special callsign SX25GTC is in use until the 15th of December to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the formation of the Greek Telegraphy Club. Listen for CW activity on the 160 to 6m bands. QSL via Logbook of the World. See QRZ.com for information about certificates that are available. Now the DX news Burkhard, DL3KZA is active as YB9/DL3KZA from Lombok Island, OC-150, until the 18th of December. QSL via home call, direct or bureau. The V6EU team is active from Chuuk Island, OC-011, in Micronesia until the 16th of December. The team will operate on the 160 to 10m bands using SSB, CW, RTTY and FT8. QSL via DL2AWG. Now the contest news On Tuesday the 12th, the 432MHz FM Activity Contest runs from 1900 to 1955UTC. Using FM on the 70cm band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Also on Tuesday the 12th, the 432MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 70cm band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. The ARRL 10m Contest started at 0000UTC yesterday, Saturday the 9th and ends at 2359UTC today, the 10th. Using CW and Phone on the 10m band, the exchange is signal report and serial number. American, Canadian and Mexican stations also send their state or province code. On Wednesday the 13th, the 432MHz FT8 Activity four-hour Contest runs from 1700 to 2100UTC. Using FT8 on the 70cm band, the exchange is a report and four-character locator. Also on Wednesday the 13th, the 432MHz FT8 Activity two-hour Contest runs from 1900 to 2100UTC. Using FT8 on the 70cm band, the exchange is a report and four-character locator. Stations entering the four-hour contest may also enter the two-hour contest. On Thursday the 14th, the 50MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 6m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. The Stew Perry Top Band Challenge runs from 1500 UTC on Saturday the 16th to 1500 UTC on Sunday the 17th of December. Using CW on the 160m band, the exchange is your four-character locator. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA, and G4BAO on Thursday the 7th of December 2023 We dodged a bullet last week as a high-speed solar wind stream from a coronal hole sped past the Earth. Although the wind speed was often in excess of 600 kilometres per second, its Bz, or magnetic field, was pointing north. The net result was that most of this passed harmlessly away from Earth and the Kp index remained around three. Meanwhile, the solar flux index declined to 130 by Thursday, which is quite a difference from the 194 we had on the 23rd of November. Solar activity last week reached moderate levels thanks to multiple low-level M-class solar flares detected around active region 3513 in the northeast quadrant. This region also produced frequent C-class flares. Daytime MUFs over a 3,000km path mostly remained over 28MHz, while nighttime MUFs over a similar path length remained around 10MHz. As we head towards mid-winter, we may expect these nighttime MUFs to drop, with the result that the 80m band closes down for short-skip early on in the evening – the curse of the inter-UK 80m Club Championship contests! However, the 80m band may still be open over long distances and we are now entering the best time of year for low-band DXing. Keep an eye on the top end of the 80m band, around sunrise, for transatlantic signals. Next week NOAA predicts that the solar flux index may recover a little and be in the range of 130 to 150. Geomagnetic conditions will depend upon coronal mass ejections but are predicted to be good, with a peak of Kp4 on the 12th of November. There is a slender coronal hole on the Sun that could cause the Kp index to rise this weekend, ending the 10th, due to its associated solar wind stream. However, it shouldn't be too bad and any poor HF conditions are likely to be short-lived. Finally, NOAA has updated its progression forecast for Solar Cycle 25. It now predicts that this cycle will peak somewhere between January and September 2024 with a solar flux index of around 167 to 201. And now the VHF and up propagation news from G3YLA and G4BAO The present spell of unsettled weather at the end of the first week of December will run into the first half of next week. This brings a limited chance of rain scatter on the GHz bands, but there is a strong signal in the models for a major change of weather patterns for the middle of next week.  This will be the arrival of high pressure around Wednesday the 13th that will probably last into the following weekend, although there is some model variation in how quickly it will move away. The main result is that, although it begins as a cold air with high pressure with frosts, it will probably develop surface temperature inversions, which will be useful for Tropo. Towards the end of next week, as the centre of the high drifts east, it will allow more moist air at the surface and produce stronger ducting potential as well as develop an upper-level inversion for longer DX paths into the continent. The evening of the 14th of December sees the peak of the biggest and most reliable meteor shower of the year. The Geminids have the potential for a zenithal hourly rate of 150. The higher 50MHz and 144MHz activity usually provide the best chances, and a reasonably quiet QTH with 100W and a beam will bring you plenty of digimode QSOs. QSOs are even made by EME-class stations on the 70cm band and strong, long reflections on the lower bands can allow SSB QSOs if you're persistent enough. That said, MSK144 and FSK441 digimodes will be the most reliable. Aurora remains a possibility, but the isolated out-of-season sporadic-E blips on the Propquest NVIS plots last month have quietened down for now. For EME operators, Moon declination is negative, falling further and reaching its minimum on Thursday the 14th. Path losses are falling towards a minimum at perigee on Saturday the 16th. 144MHz sky noise is moderate until the 12th and 13th when the Moon and Sun are close in the sky. And that's all from the propagation team this week.

August Muller a research fellow at the Maria Mitchell Association discusses viewing the Geminids Meteor shower. The Geminids meteor shower peaks on the night of December 13th this year, with a high rate of meteors predicted.

Our final episode of 2023 explores the sleepy but still vibrant natural world of December - from newts and frogs hibernating in the garden pond to colourful toadstools in the woods. Alice visits the Cairngorms in Scotland to retrace the steps of nature writer Nan Shepherd, while we mark the winter solstice and watch the Geminids meteor shower. To close, we hear one last Welsh folksong from Gwilym Bowen Rhys, the very old Christmas carol 'Ar fore dydd nadolig'. 'As the Season Turns' is a podcast created by Ffern in collaboration with the nature writer and author of the Seasonal Almanac, Lia Leendertz. Lia is joined by novelist Zoe Gilbert, composer and sound recordist Alice Boyd and folk musician Gwilym Bowen Rhys. Geoff Bird produces and Catriona Bolt is Ffern's in-house researcher. Each episode, released on the first of every month, is a guide to what to look out for in the month ahead - from the sky above to the land below. Ffern is an organic fragrance maker based in Somerset. You can learn more about Ffern's seasonal eau de parfum at ffern.co

What's in the Night Sky for December? Cosmic Corner is presented by Paul Evans, Sinéad Mannion, and Graham Sales. Highlights for December's podcast include details of the upcoming Galway Astrofest taking place on 27th January 2024, further information can be found at http://www.galwayastronomyclub.ie/. We are giving away 2 tickets to this great event. Early risers will be treated to a visible Venus, while Saturn and Jupiter are evening stars. Also, a chance to see the Geminids meteor shower on the 14th and 15th December in our favourite constellation Orion. May your skies be clear...Paul, Graham & Sinéad

Episode 176 In this episode of the Observers Notebook podcast, host Tim Robertson talks to the Meteor Section Coordinator, Bob Lunsford about the upcoming Geminids Meteor Shower. The Geminids will next peak on the December 14/15, 2023. Bob gives us a brief history of the Meteor Shower, how and where to observe and details on reporting your observations and contact information. You can contact Bob at: lunro.imo.usa@cox.net The link for the details on the Geminids meteor shower: https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/#Geminids International Meteor Organization https://www.imo.net/ For the latest information from the ALPO Meteor Section you can visit: http://www.amsmeteors.org/ For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AssociationofLunarandPlanetaryObservers Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 I want to thank the Producers of this podcast, Steve Siedentop and Michael Moyer for their generous support of the Observers Notebook. Our Patreons: Jerry White Jason Inman Matt Will Steve Seidentop Stephen Bennett Michael Moyer Shawn Dilles Frank Schenck Damian Allis Carl Hergenrother Julian Parks Michael McShan Michael Blake Nick Evetts Rik Hill Stan Sienkiewicz

Moon Phases: November 5 - the Last Quarter Moon is Sunday, good time for evening skygazing. November 7 - The Moon is at apogee, when it is furthest from the Earth November 13 - New Moon, good time for skygazing the entire night. November 14 - The very thin ‘day old' moon is near Mercury in the west just after sunset. A genuine challenge to catch this. November 20 - First Quarter Moon, great binocular moon gazing time, with Saturn nearby. November 22 - The Moon is at perigee, when it is closest from the Earth. November 25 - Jupiter is only 2 degrees away from the waxing moon. November 27 - Full Moon. Evening Sky: Saturn is nice and high in evening skies and always a joy to observe in the north. On 23 November, Saturn casts its deepest shadow over its rings …. well worth a look, or a photo. Jupiter is bright all night long all the month, and on November 2 - Opposition of Jupiter, Mercury returns to evening skies from mid-month onwards, and easily visible in the west towards the end of the month. Morning Sky: Venus is high and highly visible, and on the 10th, just 4 degrees from the crescent moon. As the month progresses Venus approached the bright star Spica. Stars to watch out for: Scorpius begins to sink below the western horizon. Orion, Canis Major, Carina, Puppis and Vela are beginning to rise in the east, but quite visible by the end of the month, and even easier to see in December. It's a great time to also observe the Magellanic Clouds and the double stars in Tucanae, and the beautiful Tarantula Nebula. December:: Dec 22 - Earth is at Solstice Geminids Meteor Shower - combining with the New Moon, the Geminids will be very nice this year, peaking on Dec 14, but in Australia, best on the morning of Dec 15th, with a show of about 60 meteors/hour expected in Northern Australia, and about 30/hr in the south, depending on the darkness of your sky, from about 1am onwards. Expect to see some very bright ones. Ian's Tangent: Hand-held ‘pocket portable' sundials

In this episode, we're going to be talking more about meteors - including the source of the Geminids meteor shower, asteroid Phaethon - as well as hot planets, hungry black holes, and how we're working to uncover the identity of dark matter. (This episode was originally released on YouTube May 6, 2023.)   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

In this episode, we're going to be talking more about meteors - including the source of the Geminids meteor shower, asteroid Phaethon - as well as hot planets, hungry black holes, and how we're working to uncover the identity of dark matter. (This episode was originally released on YouTube May 6, 2023.)

It has been a hot summer and there's a good chance you might be taking a trip to the beach, whether that's the ocean, one of the Great Lakes, or a smaller body of water. So we've brought in ocean and coastal safety expert Bruckner Chase, who talks about how to stay safe while swimming in waves and water temperatures where hypothermia could become a concern — and it's not as cold as you might think. Chase works with lifeguards, government agencies, and organizations from all across the globe. He is the host of NOAA's Wave Safe video series and has been featured on the Weather Channel many times. We want to hear from you! Have a question for the meteorologists? Call 609-272-7099 and leave a message. You might hear your question and get an answer on a future episode! You can also email questions or comments to podcasts@lee.net. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Welcome, everybody to the Across the Sky podcast, our Lee Enterprises National Weather Podcast. I'm meteorologist Joe Martucci based at the Jersey Shore here. Summer, of course, in full swing, although fall is creeping around the corner. But we're talking about wave safety. We have Bruckner Chase. He is a coastal and ocean safety expert. I know him personally. He is fantastic. AC really loves his craft. But let me ask you guys, Sean and Matt, have you guys been to beaches here? You know, I have not been to the beach this year. I think I've told you all I'm saving my pennies and going to Italy in September. So I have not done the beach this year. But nonetheless, I do love the beach. I love the Outer Banks in North Carolina. And I really liked what Bruckner had to say about the differences between some of the hazards on the East Coast versus the West Coast, not having been really spent a lot of time at the West Coast beaches. It's nice to see this this broader, broader scope that he was able to do to bring us in on. And I have not made a beach trip either this summer. Of course, I am in Chicago now. We do have beaches in Chicago. There does lake beaches. And if you've never been on the Great Lakes, never been to Chicago, when you are standing on Lake Michigan, you think you're at the ocean or somebody just dropped you down, Maybe like I'm at the ocean, right on it. No, the lake is just that big. It is the ocean. You get wave action on it. So I have been to a Chicago Lake Beach, but not an ocean beach this summer. I've always been a little bit nervous. I got to be honest about going to the beach. And I feel like oftentimes I think, well, if I just want to swim, I'm just going to get in a pool because there is the uncertainty about the ocean course. There's the everything that gets overblown about sharks, and I'm not worried about that. But there is the unknown about, you know, what is in the water. Are there rip currents out there? What are other things? You know, this is this is the wild. You're not in a controlled situation. You're exposed to the elements and everything that's out in the ocean. So talking about beach safety and the hazards at the beach again most of time is going to be fine. But it is always in the back of your mind, like, I just like one more thing to be concerned about. So I think that's why it was just great to bring him on. A guy, talk about all the different things you do need to keep him out. You can definitely have a great time at the beach, but things to keep in mind to make sure you stay safe. Absolutely. And without further ado, we'll jump into it. Let's talk to Mr. Chase about ocean and water safety. And now we welcome on Bruckner Chase. He is an ocean and coastal safety expert who works with lifeguards, government agencies and organizations from all across the globe. He is the host of NOAA's Wave Safe Video series. He's been featured on the Weather Channel many times. That's how we first got to knowing each other a little bit here. He's also an ocean adventure athlete who has weight for this, swam 25 miles across Monterey Bay, across Lake Tahoe for 22 miles. And maybe the most impressive part has the world record for swimming without a wetsuit in Alaska. Bruckner is also a chief in an American Samoa village. He's from Memphis, Tennessee, and lives in my home state, the great Garden State of New Jersey. Bruckner, thanks for being on the Across the Sky podcast. We appreciate it. It is great to be here. And I would suggest taking a boat across Monterey Bay is probably far easier if you check the weather first than swimming across it. I could imagine. And I do want to get into some of those adventures that you have taken, but I just want to say, you know, I'm glad just personally what we've done over the past couple of weeks with you being so close to being along the Jersey Shore and promoting wave safety here. My first question for you is, you know, I know you're not a meteorologist, but what interest do you have and weather and how did that start? You know, I've got a lot of interest in weather right now and really involved with the American Meteorological Society as well. I've spoken at their last two conferences for broadcasters and communicators. And I think one of the things when I began originally my career with NOAA's started working with Natural Sanctuaries, which oversees the country's marine protected areas, when over the last several years I've been working with National Weather Service on coastal safety and the near-shore environment, as all of you know, is so impacted by weather, whether it's wind gradient portraits and waves and small craft advisories. If you're going to be in on or near the water or on the shore, the weather is really going to impact your experience there. It's going to make it a great day. It's going to make it a safe, Danny, or it can make it a dangerous day. And you need to be aware of all those changing conditions are going to impact where you are and what you're planning on doing. So tell us about the The Waves Safe series that you've been doing. If you're listening through one of our newsroom websites, you can see Bruckner's videos on there. We have them up. But what is waves safe? And tell me about the process of making it because you are talking about the whole country with this, but you're making it a little regionalized, which I think is makes you different here. When I came in with National Weather Service, you know, we had released The Ripcord Survival Guide, which focused on one specific beach hazard, which was rip currents. And we recognized, though, that rip currents were not prevalent in all of the shorelines around the U.S. in U.S. territories. And we also realized that there were a lot of other households that impacted people at the shore, not necessarily fatal impacts, but non-fatal life changing impacts as well. So National Weather Service and I, we got together saying we need to kind of expand the narrative about what people need to look for on the shore. So Wave Safe was meant to take kind of a social science approach added to the oceanographic meteorological approach of what is the science of the shore. And we wanted to take a demographic and geographic specific look at hazards. So I was charged with writing the series and then became the host of the actual video content and had the opportunity to speak to weather forecasting off to those within National Weather Service all over the country. We knew we wanted to target five main areas the East Coast, the Pacific Northwest, Southern California, Hawaii, in in American Samoa. And we wanted to look at the hazards that those forecasting meteorologists needed to communicate to that group specifically in, say, the Pacific Northwest. So here we'll talk a lot about, you know, hurricanes and how they impact the coastal environment. But you sit at Northwest, you had log rolled, you had sneaker waves, you had cold water immersion, you had pocket beaches that were, you know, could become more dangerous as tides changed significantly. So the Wave Safe series was we spent two or three years really looking at what are the hazards in specific areas, how do we communicate those not just so that people would watch the videos, but so how could we convey actions in awareness that would actually help protect individuals and communities? Because it wasn't just about impressions, it was about changing behavior to have a positive impact on fatal and nonfatal incidences out the shore. Yeah. Rutger I think that's real interesting how your really dive in and looking at differences and really across the planet, but just looking at the U.S. as well, because I think it's oftentimes does get oversimplified. And you just talk about beach safety in general, but there actually are regional differences. And I'm curious about that because you talked about the threat of rip currents. Are there certain areas that are more prone to rip currents and where we see more rip currents in other locations? Yes, as you guys know, rip currents are very determined. And now National Weather Service has a forecasting model so they can predict where it's more likely or higher risk for rip currents. It a record is a very localized event, 25, 50 years Y and really depends upon both wave action, idle action and limit what's going on underneath there. And so when you've got sand beaches like you have along much of the East Coast or around the panhandle of Florida or the Gulf Coast, they're going to be more prevalent to high out rip currents kind of forming because of the way that bottom can be shaped. But when you've got really steep drop offs close to shore like you may have in the Pacific Northwest, or you've got a rigid reef bottom that doesn't contour the way our sands do, rip currents may not be as much of a risk. And we often look at our surf Lifesaving Australia, which is kind of the gold standard around the country, or not just protecting the beaches, but really gathering information about beach growing communities and putting that towards actionable stuff that their surf lifesaving clubs can implement to keep people safe and what their research ground and what they push out in their annual reports. Up to 80% all when we start waiting. Answers are not rip currents. It's a lot of the other hazards that happen along the coastline. And I think that and just talking about rip currents are leading me to believe that rip currents are the only dangerous birds we miss the opportunity to protect people, say, in the Pacific Northwest or it might be something very different. Yeah, to that point, we hear about rip currents all the time here and and I have my eastern bias as well with that. But what are some of the other you know, once you go after rip currents, what are some of those other those other risk factors? And obviously they're going to be greater in some locations than others. But what are two or three of these things that do come to mind right after the rip currents? Well, I'll tell you, one of the biggest risk factors, because in looking at risk, you need to look at both the people involved and then the physical element that you're discussing and a risk factor. And one of the things that we're trying to address in this next phase of work with National Weather Service is people that aren't from the shore missing, interpreting their swimming ability with the conditions in front of them too often. And you see this in the early drownings in Panama City, Florida, where you've got people coming from anyone say Memphis, Tennessee. I used to come from coming down to the shore, not understanding that even though they know how to swim in a backyard pool or country club pool, the conditions near shore could be completely different. And often the risk factor that's really high is how do we teach people to understand what a two or three foot wave really means for them, or perhaps their seven or eight year old child? And I think as far as just hazards, which can be dangerous, is breaking waves and understanding that even a 2 to 3 foot wave packs a really strong punch if you're not prepared for it. And often what can happen is if you look at some of the nonfatal and fatal drownings, combinations of wind direction, wind strength, wave direction and wave size, knocking people over what an immediate condition in a near-shore environment. That's not what they expect deeper than they expect. And then realizing that, according to Surf Life Saving in Australia, 48% of people that visited the beach said they could not swim at least 50 meters in the ocean without touching the bottom. So if we talk about surviving a rip current, if you pulled out, if you take numbers like that, where 50% of the people cannot even swim 30 meters in the ocean, then it doesn't take much as far as wave and wing box to really make even swimming out of a rip really dangerous and difficult. So I think that really kind of turbulent, unpredictable conditions in a car or near shore or swagger become as deadly or more so than rip current because they can lead to catastrophic events warming. From there. So frightening. So with all of this, you know, we've said it before, you you want to make this a positive experience when you're talking about wave safety, it's not to scare people. It's to empower people. So in these videos. Right, right, right. That mindset instead says saying, hey, like, don't do this, you know, say in a way that empowers you to, you know, tackle the ocean appropriately. Keep in mind, I started working with Noah, talking about our marine sanctuaries, these amazing, beautiful places that are really kind of the place where we kind of protect our wildlife and our our shore environments, our coastal environments, our coral, our marine heritage. And every one of the Waves Safe series, we wrap it up because we want people to have a lifetime of positive experiences that the shore you know, we live at the shore here and and that's an important part of both our culture, our community and even the economy. And I think that we can make any of these dangerous elements like rips or waves a positive experience. And we focused on three main right wanted people to respect the ocean, which really means kind of respect that it's dynamic and changing and it may be stronger than our swimming ability that we can wear. The second is situational awareness. Be aware that things are always changing tides, currents, weather, wear, whitening. It's always evolving and changing, and often you can keep it positive by recognizing that, hey, it was really glassy and calm this morning. Lunch time you come back, the winds are switched. Now it's a little bit more dangerous. So that positive experience this afternoon, we need to stay on the beach or this is the day to go up to the boardwalk and recognizing those changing conditions can impact how safe things are. And finally, you know, take ten. We want to give people the skill set and take ten is focused on rebounding second victim drownings and getting people the skills that it may wind up in. Almost a loved one who is in trouble when they see someone trouble while we give them the tools so that they can live to be the hero, that they'd all become a tragic second victim. Because again, a lifetime of positive experiences at the shore is our number one goal. And brother, I want to shift gears a little bit, but I kind of want to still, I think, is relevant for people who are not boaters. But I do want to talk about boating a little bit because one of the most common things I see get issued by the National Weather Service are small craft advisories. And often the question I get is what exactly does that mean? What does it take to get a small craft advisory and what do they mean by small craft? So for boaters, but I think there are also just a lot of people that will see that on their boat. A small craft advisory and they're not boating. They just want to go to the beach and swim. But like is there, that's something I should be concerned about, that there's a small craft advisory. Does that impact swimmers as well? Absolutely. I think it's a really important question. And some people we we've talked about that, you know, a weather forecast will kind of tell you what is going to happen across a general area. Often before we head to the beach will shop for small craft advisories, will also look at surf reports and surf reports. Often if you look at somewhere like surf Line, where they drill down and beach specific or small craft advisories, it'll be drilled down to a specific county or area. A swimmer or someone going into the water is pretty much a small craft. You know, there's a a small entity that's in the water. And what delineate it's a small craft advisory or triggers that is really is something that probably is is set by National Weather Service, accepted by the weather forecasting offices and has templates that they follow. And I would encourage everyone to look what up to know what triggers that warning were your area. Well, what it often will mean is turbulent, disorganized conditions near shore, driven by wind and swell, and a combination of how they interact that make it not, you know, hard to navigate or control if you're running a small boating craft, a motorized boat. But imagine if it's hard to control or dangerous for someone in a motorized watercraft. How much worse that could be if you're on a stand up or or on a kayak or your swimming, that impact on you in those situations can be much, much worse. Even if you just look at offshore winds, that often would be a component in a small craft advisory pushing someone further away from the beach into dangerous situations in which they cannot get themselves bound for. All right. Well, we're going to take a brief break. And on the other side, we're going to have more with Proctor Chase. You're listening to the Across the Sky podcast. And we are back with the Across the Sky podcast. New episodes come out every Monday where ever you get your podcast or on your favorite newsroom website. We are back here with Brock near Chase. Well, we were talking a lot about wave safety. He is the host of the Wave Safe Program with Noah here. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about yourself. BRAWNER Here. So, you know, when I was writing your biography, the first thing I had to ask you about was your swim in Alaska, your record setting, no wetsuit swim first. Why did you want to do that? And then secondly, how do you how cold was the water when you were swimming? So so the well, we'll start with the water Temperature of the water temperature was 54 degrees. Okay. Which I think that time was slightly warmer than the air temperature. So you probably got in. There were snow on the mountains back lined up. I you know, I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and got rescued from drowning twice before I was ten. I learned to swim in a country club pool and I I moved to Santa Cruz, California, several years ago, and I guess I just fell in with the wrong crowd. You know, They go, yeah, we're going out to swim in Monterey Bay. And I was like, Wasn't that where all the great white sharks research and they grew? Yeah, yeah. But, you know, we're fine with them. It's, it's a symbiotic relationship. And I'm like, what? You give them your first warning. That's a symbiotic part of it. So I, I started I had been a swimmer in college and found that swimming in cold water in the ocean was something that for some reason I was really a well-adjusted to and had done some some long swims and kind of pushed the envelope a little. But I'd been an endurance athlete on land for four decades, and I heard about a eight and a half mile swim around Pennock Island in Alaska, and I had never been up there before and going up to Alaska to do a swim around the island at the time sounded like a really kind of unique challenge and ended up just fell in love with the place and had one of the best swims I've ever had. My wife was on a kayak supporting me around. We had a orca swim past while we were on the back side of the island and ended up winning the race, beating all the relays and setting a course record that I think still stands today. Incredible. Wow. What kind of background precautions in a situation like that? I mean, I know there's you know, you're not probably tied to a kayak or anything like that, but I mean, are there any kind of background safety things in place and what are they in a situation like that? When I first started working at National Marine Sanctuary, I was working with them as an extreme endurance athlete and swimmer that was doing these kind of unique swims across parts of the sanctuaries. Monterrey Bay is one of the National marine sanctuaries. I did a swim between a couple of islands in American Samoa. I did a swim from the underwater research lab, El Dorado, back to the to the land, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. And so, you know, the base in Alaska was a race. So there was protocol and safety boats throughout the course. And there were young and old people. Not a lot of people apparently line up to go and do swims in Alaska. Go figure. But there are people quolls on there on an aquatic estimate. And then most of people don't even they're more remote on of adventure swims. I've done we have a pretty extensive support crew. We've done a lot of our own work. We know the waters. I've done an extensive amount of training to prepare. And then we we talk to a researcher who's in weather and wildlife and water to kind of as best as possible learn what to expect. So, you know, kind of look at the risks of some of these things no one had done before. And we kind of address each of those points and we get to a point where we feel, you know, this is safe and we can do this. And then it's just up to me and my training and the crew to see if we get all the way across. Real quick before I turn this one over to Matt, is there we hear a lot about hypothermia for for people who are boating, especially in the spring. The water's too cold. I'm imagining there's not like a magic number, but is there a range for people who aren't acclimated or where you are? Sure. Like a water temperature that's like, wow, this this is this is legit, too cold. If I fall into this, I'm going to you know, I could go into shock, hypothermia or something like that. Absolutely. In fact, I work with National Weather Service and I would encourage people to go to the cold water safety segment in National Weather Service on on post on beach Hazards. And we have some standards of what to expect. But there are examples of a warm water, hypothermia. Even someone who falls off a boat in Florida in the water, that's 76, 77 degrees, they can eventually become hypothermic. They can lose function or they can, you know, die and drown people that aren't operated. In my estimation, once you get water below 70 degrees or so, it causes a physiological kind of shock to the system. And often in that one minute to minute window where you're trying to get your breathing under control, you kind of been kind of shocked into kind of a frantic respiratory rate. People often get into trouble just with that immediate response and then the hypothermia. You know, they say that you've got a handful of minutes to kind of get your breathing under control. And then with most people through acclimated, you've got maybe 10 to 15 minutes of functional motion control where you could get yourself out of a dangerous situation. Many times, obviously, if you fall through a frozen lake and get really cold water, that's 30 to 33 degrees. The effect is going to be even faster. But even in 55, 58 degree water in the Pacific Northwest, someone who gets knocked off of a say by a wave fall into that water bay, don't have a lot of time, get out of that water and self-rescue before they end up becoming a victim. And that's you know, I spent some time working with the Customer Rescue SA program. And really what they try to do is some of them can stay calm and afloat. It gives rescuers time to get to them and sadly, cold water really cuts down on that, that time that someone can keep themselves above water and safe and kind of sticking with the time theme, even when we're not talking about water temperatures, they're a recommended amount of time. And I think this is especially important when it comes to, you know, parents and their kids because they see their kids having a fun time at the beach, playing in the water, you know, everything looks good. But at some point you don't want to interrupt the fun. But is there a time amount that the kids should be in the water before they need to come out and at least take a break? Like what kind of a time window should parents be keeping an eye on? Like now? Maybe my kid's been out there a little bit too long, might be getting a little bit too tired, might become more susceptible to the waves or, you know, you know, just, you know, reaching that point of exhaustion, what is kind of like a time window. People should kind of keep in mind when they're in the water before they need to come out and at least take a break for a while. Really. The question for asking really draws on some of my training as a wilderness first responder and just hypothermia set up, whether it's water or air and looking for the early warning sign of that, which is, you know, uncontrolled, shivering, loss of motor control, you know, a discoloration and lips and fingertips and stuff. So parents watching those early signs in the hypothermia continuum and getting your kids out of the water and warming them up so that that doesn't, you know, it kind of progressed. But that's also, you know, the same with surfers. I mean, you can get to the point where you can lose control and maybe not be able to paddle back. Yeah. And then so really kind of intervening, recognizing the early stages of hypothermia, if it's because you're at the shore in the water or just along the shore and the wind and cold temperatures are kind of impacting you or recognizing those early signs that hypothermia and intervening before it progresses to a dangerous point. Hey, Bruckner, I'm going to turn to lifeguarding a little bit. I know you do a little bit of lifeguarding work here at the Jersey Shore. And, you know, you said you're someone you've done a lot of work with Australia. I'm kind of curious, like you compare lifeguarding here in the United States to Australia, like what are some best practices that we're doing? What are best practices that people in Australia are doing? And have you been able to bring over some, you know, concepts from Australia to the U.S. and vice versa? Well, I've been really lucky and with the upper township Beach Patrol and Strap here in South Jersey, I'm also with the Mooloolaba Surf Lifesaving Club in Australia. I've worked with Surf Lifesaving Australian Surf Lifesaving Queensland, all on a larger level on some programs. I've also spent some time in Poland working with their lifesaving community, so I've been able to kind of absorb and look at how people protect the community and help people some very diverse shorelines with very varying resources. And I think that the main thing is lifeguards need to do a good job of educating the community, clearly, indicating where there are dangerous, that people should be aware out. And then hypothetically, the bus case is intervening so that, you know, lifeguards don't need to get wet, but a preventative approach to guarding some of these areas will keep everyone safe. I mean, there are instances of lifeguards being injured or passing away tragically during rescues. I've spent some time in Hawaii, and while we were filming waves safe, we actually had a rescue, a patron that was visiting from Minnesota that got into trouble. And I help one of the lifeguards bring them in at Waikiki. But I think the best practice is really communicating to the community what the dangers are for that specific beach are being consistent with how you communicate. And I think one of the best practices that I really appreciate, Australia is their national organization that sets the standard for all the surf lifesaving clubs. So you have a very uniform process of communicating beach hazards, uniform behavior and operations across each surf lifesaving pop. And I find that it's a little bit different in the U.S. because it's not as mandated across the entire country. So there are a lot of regional differences, which often falls to the beachgoer to recognize and look for. What do I need to know and how is it communicated at this specific agency and at this location? Yeah, and before we wrap up here, I just kind of want to go with your big takeaway. I mean, if you have that one message that you want to get out to people when you're talking about safety at the beach, what is what is that big takeaway message? You know, I spent a lot of time working on it for the Wave Stage series and knowing that lifeguards are going to go off duty after Labor Day, you're going to see a lot your ramen there. The takeaway three things respect the ocean, and that is respecting the dynamic environment that may be stronger, more powerful than what you've experienced. It can change from day to day, from year to year, the kind you visited last year on your vacation may be different this year because of the way storms of the winter reshaped the beach. Respect the ocean. It changes. It can be dynamic and can be dangerous. It can't be situationally aware of the weather of the water, of the people around you or the people in your party that are there with you. Be aware of changing conditions. You can buoy dangerous situations and finally take tent, which is really kind of our call to action. Protect yourself first to save others. We want to prevent both primary drownings. And too often when someone charges in to see someone in trouble and we end up with two backups. So those two the three things respect the Ocean state situationally aware hey ten to protect yourself and save others. Awesome. Very helpful stuff. Brockmire, as always, tremendous resource of what you're doing with Noah and with other organizations, bringing forth, you know, safety and, you know, communications and beachgoers who are going all across not only the Jersey Shore but all across America this summer year. So appreciate you coming on, Bruckner and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks again. Looking beyond the atmosphere, here's Tony Rice with your astronomy outlook. The Perseid meteor shower peaks this weekend, and it's one of the three most active meteor showers of the year. But this one has the benefit over December's Geminids or January's Quadrantids, peaking at a time where you don't have to bundle up to see them. Nearly every article on the Perseus mentions the number 100 when discussing how many meteors might be seen. Some use the only slightly more accurate phrase up to 100. The reality is most of us won't see nearly that many. That century number comes from the zenith hourly rate or is the h.r. This is a handicapping system of sorts used to correlate reports of meteor activity from around the world. That zenith part means it's being calculated on the radiant or point in the sky where the meteors appear to be coming from being directly overhead, something that's only possible to happen at one latitude and only for a brief time. Z are also mathematically eliminates light pollution and clouds the real enemy of seeing the most meteors. All that being said, though, the Perseus are definitely worth going out to see. And to see the most look to the darkest part of the sky. And meteors can appear anywhere, not just around that radiant point and those hours before sunrise. Those are the best because the radiant point is in the highest point in the sky and that hides the fewest meteors below the horizon. But above all, be patient. The longer you look, the more you'll see. You'll also be amazed how many more stars you'll see just after 15 minutes of letting your eyes adjust to the darkness. And on that, leave that phone inside. Each time you look to a light, the 15 minute timer starts over. That's your astronomy outlook. Follow me at RTP hockey for more space. Stuff like this. Thank you again, Bruckner for hopping on the podcast. 54 degrees Ocean waters and Alaska. Not my cup of tea, but it's definitely Bruckner's and I'm glad it is for him. But on a serious note, lots of good stuff in there. I mean, we say that every podcast, lots of good stuff. I think what what Bruckner Or what separates Bruckner here is that he actually goes out to these places and actually does talk about the weather hazards in those locations. He is an expert not just for, you know, the East Coast, but the West Coast, Gulf of Mexico. He's been to American Samoa many times. So he really has all of the United States, you know, in terms of the shore and what hazards that can bring on lock and how to empower all of us as we go, you know, to the beach, to the bays for the rest of the summer here. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I can't imagine swimming in 50 degree water. I mean, I would just lock up in a hurry once it gets below 70. I'm just not a very happy, happy dude. I've swam in some sixties upper sixties, you know, when I've gone to the beach and I'm stubborn, I'm just going to wait in it, maybe ride a couple of waves, and then that's done. But, you know, you've got to acclimate to that stuff. And the idea that that you could go, you know, hypothermia could set in at 74, 75 degree water, that's a little shocking to me, to be honest. I think Bruckner is a candidate for our most interesting man in the world. Right? This lady is that that bio you read, Joe, at the start? It's like that raises that raises your eyebrows. Like this guy has some stories to tell. It stirred up. I mean, we barely got into it with him. But I think, you know, you know, he's using that hash of all these things on the water that he's done to spread it. I mean, clearly, they're going to be people that haven't done nearly as much as what he's done and maybe have no desire to. But for someone who's been in the water that long, I mean, you learn a lot about it and the fact that he's you know, now his main mission is spreading safety and awareness. I think there are a lot of good tips that he's spread there out there. And I really like, you know, when you go to the beach, he talks about how excited you get. And, you know, you're especially when you have kids with you. And so sometimes you you know, you're just focused like get in the water. But like, you know, I think what he mentioned was that take ten like just take a quick pause. Look at your surroundings. You know, look, are there any signs of rip currents in front of you before you run into the water? So as much as the emotions can get the best of you when you're having a fun day at the beach. Keep in mind that safety in taking some pause is taking a break, even just getting out of the water to take a break and looking at the water before you get in. Like that's real good advice. Respect the ocean. Yes, respect the ocean. The ocean will respect you. All right. And we are going to wrap it up here for another episode of the Across the Sky podcast. But we have many more episodes lined up for you here. Next Monday, you're going to hear from Zeke Hoare's father about warm ocean waters. You might have heard about that 101 degree ocean water temp off the coast of Florida and one of the bays we're going to talk about the warm ocean waters we've seen. We have Douglas Cossa coming on August 21st talking about heat and football. By the time you listen to this. The NFL's Hall of Fame game will have already happened, kicking off the preseason. So that is coming up. And then on Labor Day weekend, we're going to Sally Warner talking about warming the deep oceans from hurricanes. And that is very important as well. So we have a number of episodes lined up here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of SpaceTime, we bring you the latest discoveries and developments from the world of space. Astronomers have made a groundbreaking revelation, uncovering a never-before-seen method by which stars meet their demise. Join us as we delve into the details of this extraordinary phenomenon. Australia is making significant strides in space communications with its new project. We explore the progress of the country's ambitious plan to establish an operational optical laser communications network, enabling seamless communication with spacecraft both in orbit and in deep space. Unravel the mysteries surrounding the captivating Geminids meteor shower. Discover the unique origin of these meteoroids, which light up the sky and create one of the most spectacular meteor showers observed each December. In our Science Report segment, we delve into the fascinating discovery of ancient cave engravings found in France. These engravings, created by Neanderthals, offer valuable insights into our prehistoric past. We also explore the vital role of the male Y chromosome in the fight against certain cancers, as revealed by a recent study. Additionally, uncover the astonishing findings that suggest the colossal Megalodon shark was warm-blooded, challenging our understanding of these ancient marine predators. Lastly, join Alex on Tech as he explores the vulnerabilities and potential risks associated with hacking voice authentication security systems. Tune in to the Space News Podcast for an exciting and informative journey through the latest space discoveries and scientific breakthroughs.

GB2RS News Sunday the 18th of December 2022   The news headlines: Train the Trainers courses RSGB Convention videos Planning Advisory Committee recruitment   After a forced break during Covid, the RSGB will be restarting Train the Trainers courses in the spring of 2023. It is hoped that three courses will be run across the country. The team would like to run the courses where demand is greatest, rather than arrange three courses where there is no demand. If you are an existing trainer, or would like to become one, and would like to attend a course during the year, please contact  g7lfc@rsgb.org.uk  The team would also like to hear from clubs that are willing to host a course so that it can match demand with availability. For further details about the course, what it covers and what is required from hosts, please visit rsgb.org/train-the-trainers The RSGB has released four individual presentations from its 2022 Convention which cover a wide and interesting range of topics. Philip Lawson, G4FCL gives an introduction to test equipment whilst Phil Catterall, G4OBK talks about adventure radio in Europe. Taking a look back into history, Dr David Abrutat provides a fascinating insight into Bletchley Park and the Y Services between 1939 and 1945. Finally, as a link with December's YOTA month, young radio amateurs Dan McGraw, M0WUT and Hamzah Shah, 2E0HXS share their experiences and learning from the YOTA summer camp in Croatia this year. Find these and other RSGB Convention presentations on its YouTube channel at youtube.com/theRSGB The RSGB Planning Advisory Committee assists RSGB Members with planning advice. It is looking to recruit additional committee members to help with this valuable service. You should be involved with, or retired from, a discipline associated with the planning process or have a good working knowledge of the planning process. The committee would particularly like to add a planning enforcement officer or a lawyer to the panel. The duties include assisting Members with planning enquiries, enforcement notices and appeals but will not include the actual preparation of planning applications on behalf of Members. If you think you can assist, please contact the RSGB Planning Advisory Committee Chair John Mattocks, G4TEQ by email at pac.chairman@rsgb.org.uk The RSGB HQ email system encountered a technical fault between the afternoon of Tuesday the 13th of December and the morning of Wednesday the 14th of December. If you emailed the RSGB during this period, it is likely that your message was not received and will need to be resent. To help, the RadCom team has extended the deadline for submissions to the magazine to Monday the 19th of December. So, there is still time to send in reports and items for the Club Calendar and Around Your Region sections of RadCom. The RSGB apologies for any inconvenience the fault may have caused. The RSGB National Radio Centre at Bletchley Park will be closed for two days on the 10th and 11th of January 2023 to allow electrical maintenance work to be undertaken. When booking a visit on any other day, remember that RSGB members can download a free entry voucher to Bletchley Park from the RSGB website at rsgb.org/bpvoucher The RSGB has made two announcements about exams this week. The first gives details of how to book for the Direct to Full exam from January, and the second outlines necessary changes to the exam fees. Further details of both can be found on the RSGB website. Go to rsgb.org/exams and choose the Exam Announcements option in the righthand menu. RSGB HQ will be closed for Christmas and New Year from 12.30pm on Friday the 23rd of December until 8.30am on Tuesday the 3rd of January 2023. Next Sunday, the 25th of December, the GB2RS News script will be prepared as usual and read at the discretion of individual news readers. There will be no GB2RS broadcast on Sunday the 1st of January 2023. During the holidays, if you need information about amateur radio, exams or RadCom you'll find lots of pages on the RSGB website, www.rsgb.org  And now for details of rallies and events The Yeovil Amateur Radio Club Rally will be held on Thursday the 29th of December at Davis Hall, Howell Hill, West Camel, Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7QX. Doors will be open from 9.30am to 1pm and admission is £3. Free parking is available. The event will include bring and buy as well as 20 tables for traders. For more information contact Bob on 01963 440 167. The Lincoln Shortwave Club Winter Radio Rally will be held on Sunday the 29th of January at The Festival Hall, Caistor Road, Market Rasen, LN8 3HT. Doors open at 9.30am and entry is £2. Refreshments are available on site and talk-in is available on 145.375MHz. For more information email Graham via contact@m1dhv.co.uk The Canvey Rally will be held on the 5th of February at Cornelius Vermuyden School, Dinant Avenue, Canvey, Essex, SS8 9QS. The Rally is expected to be the usual hive of activity with plenty of traders and an indoor boot sale. Hot food and drinks will be available. Contact sears.enquiries@gmail.com for further information.   Now the Special Event News Special event station CN22JIM ends its two-week run today, the 18th, from the High Atlas Mountain range in Morocco. The ‘India Mike' suffix to the callsign was chosen in celebration of International Mountain Day which is held on the 11th of December each year. QSL via RW6HS. Today, the 18th , is the last chance to work the nine special event callsigns hosted by The Qatar Amateur Radio Society to celebrate the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Look out for the HQ station callsign A722FWC, as well as eight callsigns that contain sequential numbers, from A71FIFA to A78FIFA. The stations are active on the HF bands and via the QO-100 Satellite. QSL via the bureau, Logbook of the World or directly. Today is also the last opportunity to log special callsign PV22CUP. The Brazilian Amateur Radio League is using the callsign in celebration of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. QSL via Logbook of the World and eQSL. Celebrating the 15th anniversary of Summits On The Air France, special callsign TM15SOTA will be active until the 30th of December. QSL via eQSL. Special event stations GB1900HA and GB1900HW have been operating since the 24th of January to mark the 1900th anniversary of the beginning of the construction of Hadrian's Wall. The defensive fortification is the largest Roman archaeological feature in the British Isles. The stations will be active until Friday the 23rd of December.  Now the DX news Tony will be active as 3D2AG/P from Rotuma Island, Fiji, OC-060, until the 20th of December. He hopes to operate using CW, SSB, RTTY and some FT8 on the 160 to 6m bands. QSL via Club Log. Lester, W8YCM will be active as W8YCM/6Y from Jamaica, NA-097, until January 2023. QSL directly via his home callsign. Vincent, F4BKV will be active as XW4KV from Laos until the 23rd of December. His main activity will be on QO-100 from as many as 12 grids. He will also do some operating on the 40, 20, 15 and 10m bands. QSL via F4BKV and Logbook of the World.  Now the contest news The UK Six Metre Group Winter Marathon began on Thursday the 1st of December. The contest will run until the 31st of January 2023. Using all modes on the 6m band, the exchange is signal report and locator. Today, the 18th of December, the Stew Perry Top Band Challenge will end its 24-hour run at 1500UTC. Using CW on the 160m band, the exchange is your four-character locator. On Tuesday the 20th of December, the 1.3GHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 1.3GHz band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator.  Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA, and G4BAO on Friday the 16th of December 2022 Things hotted up last week with a healthy increase in sunspot activity. The number of sunspots ramped up, giving us a solar flux index of 165 by Thursday. The other upside was the fact that geomagnetic conditions were quite settled with the Kp index remaining between one and three all week. There were some downsides. We have had an increase in the number of solar flares, with a total of 14. Of these, 11 were M-class. This is all happening around active region 3165, which is now a prime candidate for an X-class solar flare, the most powerful. There were reports of poor HF propagation on the morning of the 15th, which can possibly be attributed to the solar flares on the Sun. The graph of the maximum useable frequency, measured at Dourbes, looks rather like a roller coaster ride, with the extrapolated MUF over 3,000km being more than 38MHz at 9.15am and below 19MHz 20 minutes later. The moral of this story is that if HF propagation seems to fail just give it 20 minutes and see if it recovers. According to NOAA, the high solar flux index won't continue for much longer. It predicts that the SFI will reduce to between 115 and 120. The Kp is also predicted to stay low, at least until the 22nd when it is forecast to rise to five, possibly because of a returning coronal hole from 27 days ago. And finally, both the Chilton and Fairford Digisondes are offline at the moment, so please select Dourbes if using Propquest.co.uk And now the VHF and up propagation news The cold weather will be displaced as a temporary mild spell brings higher temperatures, plus wet and windy weather, during this weekend.  Eventually, colder westerly air with showery troughs will return from the west, but still with further bands of rain. There will probably be some good rain and snow scatter opportunities for the GHz bands. Tropo looks a bit thin, although there may be a brief enhancement on Sunday morning to France and the Low Countries but this will be gone by the afternoon. The other modes like meteor scatter and aurora are still a consideration, but much less predictable. With the Geminids meteor shower past its peak, there are two minor showers to look out for this week. The Leonis Minorids are active from the 5th of December to the 4th of February, reaching a maximum on the 20th of December with a low Zenithal Hourly Rate, or ZHR, of around five. The Ursids are active from the 17th of December to the 26th of December reaching a maximum on the 22nd of December, also with a low ZHR of around 10. Moon declination went negative on the 17th, so Moon windows will continue to shorten and zenith angles decrease. EME path losses are falling as we head towards perigee on Christmas Eve. 144MHz sky noise is increasing all week and on Friday we get close to an eclipse, so it will be very high during the whole Moon pass. Lastly, to repeat the ‘heads up' from last week about midwinter Sporadic-E, it is still worth mentioning since it usually becomes a reference after the event, and it would be nice to be there before it happens! So, employ the usual check of HF and VHF clusters from 10 to 4m and use www.propquest.co.uk and its EPI or Es probability index plots to see where the most likely areas for Es are located. Like summer events, rarer mid-winter Es are often associated with powerful jet streams and this unsettled weather is a good source for these. And that's all from the propagation team this week.

The Geminids.

It's hard to think of something that's moving at 80,000 miles per hour as slow. But that's the case for Geminid meteors. The bits of rock that create the meteors are a good bit slower than those that form most other showers. And that's good for skywatchers — it means the meteors last a little longer than most others. The Geminids are expected to be at their best tomorrow night, peaking before dawn on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the Moon will be in view then, washing out the fainter meteors. But many of the Geminids are fairly bright, so the shower is worth a look. Geminids are spawned by what appears to be a dead comet. It's lost its ices, leaving only a rocky core. So it doesn't produce a tail when it gets close to the Sun, as active comets do. But it does shed grains of material along its orbit. Earth flies through this path every December. Or at least it does now. The shower was first seen in 1862, with not many “shooting stars.” The rate has gone up since then. So today, the Geminids produce one of the best showers of the year — 75 to a hundred meteors per hour. But that's under especially dark skies, with no moonlight to mess with the show. By the way, the shower's name comes from the constellation Gemini. That's the point where the meteors appear to “rain” into the atmosphere. But they can streak across any portion of the sky, so you don't have to look toward Gemini to see these bright slowpokes.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

The Geminids meteor shower is the highlight of this week's stargazing guide, which also sees the Moon pass several bright stars.TranscriptHow to see the Geminids meteor shower Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It is time to check the nighttime sky. That is because the Geminids Meteor Shower is on now. The Geminids are widely regarded as the best meteor shower of the year. It started on the seventh and will run to the seventeenth with the peak viewing period coming on the night of December 13 and early morning hours of the 14th.

This week on The Cosmic Companion, we begin a two-part series, exploring the winter sky. We are going to take a look at what you can see using just your eyes. We'll welcome Andrew Fazekas back to the show. He is National Geographic's Night Sky Guy, and we'll talk about exploring the winter sky using eyes alone. We'll also take a look at how to view the Geminid meteor shower peaking on the 14th and 15th of December!  Winter is often considered the best season for amateur astronomy. Heat rising off the ground in summer can make for wavey air, similar to heat rising above a chimney, distorting views of objects behind it. The cooler conditions of winter reduces this effect, providing better viewing during the winter season.  Viewers in the Northern Hemisphere can head on out a little after 8pm this December, to see Orion - one of the easiest constellations to find - hanging out above the southeastern horizon. Look for the three stars lined up as the belt of this celestial hunter. Just beneath the belt, you should see the Orion nebula - a stellar nursery appearing as a fuzzy patch of light, making up the center of three stars of its sword...Listen to the podcast version of this episode here or watch it as a video!Join us next week on The Cosmic Companion for the second part of this look at the winter sky. In part two, we'll take a look at - you guessed it - the objects you can see in the night sky this winter using a telescope - even if you have never used a telescope before! We will be joined by Michael Petrasko from Insight Observatory. Make sure to join us, starting on 17 December.  If you enjoyed this episode of The Cosmic Companion, I'd love it if you could download, share, like, and maybe tell a friend about the show. It'd be much appreciated!  Sign up for our newsletter while you're here. You'll never miss an episode.  Happy Holidays and clear skies!JamesThe Cosmic Companion w/ James Maynard is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Cosmic Companion w/ James Maynard at thecosmiccompanion.substack.com/subscribe

GB2RS News Sunday the 11th of December 2022 The news headlines: RSGB Elections Australian Licensing Changes GB22YOTA at the National Radio Centre The RSGB is calling for volunteers who are willing and able to give their time and enthusiasm to ensure the Society continues to develop and thrive. This year there are nine roles to be filled and the results will be announced at the RSGB's AGM in April 2023. An explanation of how to apply for the Nominated Board Director process, as well as the candidate packs and forms for President, Elected Board Director and Regional Representative, are all on the Society's website at rsgb.org/election At the end of September 2022, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, or ACMA, proposed that Australia's amateur radio operators move to a class-based licensing scheme in July 2023, opening a consultation period that closed at the end of November 2022. The Wireless Institute of Australia has replied to the ACMA proposals with a comprehensive evidence-based response. The ACMA proposes moving Australia's radio amateurs from individual apparatus licences to one licence for the amateur service as a whole. The principal reason cited is a reduction in the administrative burden for both the ACMA and the amateur radio community. The immediate benefit would be that licence and licence-renewal fees would disappear. The Wireless Institute of Australia's response to the consultation can be found at tinyurl.com/WIAsubm The RSGB National Radio Centre at Bletchley Park is pleased to announce that it will be hosting GB22YOTA on Saturday the 17th of December. Any young amateurs, or those who are interested to learn more about amateur radio, are welcome. The National Radio Centre is located within the grounds of the Bletchley Park Museum. Entry details and opening times can be found on the Bletchley Park website. RSGB members can download an entry voucher for a free day pass to the National Radio Centre from the members' portal on the RSGB website. The RSGB is looking for volunteers for two new roles: RSGB Lecture Chair and RSGB Social Diversity Officer. The deadline for applications is Monday the 16th of January. Full details of both roles, including how to apply, are on the Society's website at www.rsgb.org/volunteers Does your school or college run an amateur radio club? Or are you interested in setting up a club at your school or college? Following the success of University Corner, the RSGB's online list of universities with amateur radio clubs, the Society has launched School Zone. This brings together details of schools and colleges that have an active amateur radio club. If your school or college has a club and would like to be included in the online list, please send details to comms@rsgb.org.uk Contact details should include the club callsign, if it has one, the school website URL and an email address for the teacher or adult who runs the club. If you are a pupil member of the club, please check those details before you send them to the RSGB. You can find the new School Zone webpage at rsgb.org/school-zone  The RSGB's Transatlantic Centenary Tests is running throughout December to celebrate the Centenary of the first amateur radio signals to cross the Atlantic. There are awards available for working the special stations. Over 40,000 QSOs were made in the first week. There are still opportunities to get involved so go to the RSGB website at rsgb.org/tct to book an operating slot. The RSGB's RadCom team is looking for authors to contribute to the magazine. Previously unpublished features and articles are always welcome for consideration. At the moment, the team is particularly interested in hearing from people who enjoy writing about antennas. To contact the RadCom team please email radcom@rsgb.org.uk And now for details of rallies and events The Yeovil Amateur Radio Club Rally will be held on Thursday the 29th of December at Davis Hall, Howell Hill, West Camel, Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7QX. Doors will be open from 9.30 am to 1 pm and admission is £3. Free parking is available. The event will include bring and buy as well as 20 tables for traders. For more information contact Bob on 01963 440 167. The Lincoln Shortwave Club Winter Radio Rally will be held on Sunday the 29th of January at The Festival Hall, Caistor Road, Market Rasen, LN8 3HT. Doors open at 9.30 am and entry is £2. Refreshments are available on-site and talk-in is available on 145.375MHz. For more information email Graham via contact@m1dhv.co.uk The Canvey Rally will be held on the 5th of February at Cornelius Vermuyden School, Dinant Avenue, Canvey, Essex, SS8 9QS. The Rally is expected to be the usual hive of activity with plenty of traders and an indoor boot sale. Hot food and drinks will be available. Contact sears.enquiries@gmail.com for further information. Now the Special Event News Datta, VU2DSI will be active as AU2JCB until Tuesday the 13th of December to commemorate the birthday of Indian physicist and radio pioneer Jagadish Chandra Rose. He will be operating on the HF and VHF bands using SSB and FM. QSL directly to his home callsign. Members of Wingles Radio Club in France will be active as TM90GF until Saturday the 17th of December. The special callsign marks the 90th anniversary of the death of General Gustave-Auguste Ferrie, a pioneer in the field of military radio communications. QSL via the bureau, eQSL or directly to F4KLR. The Qatar Amateur Radio Society has announced that nine special event callsigns will be active until Sunday the 18th of December to celebrate the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Look out for the station HQ callsign A722FWC, as well as eight callsigns that contain sequential numbers, from A71FIFA to A78FIFA. The stations are active on the HF bands and via the QO-100 Satellite. QSL via the bureau, Logbook of the World or directly. Special callsign PV22CUP will be active from Brazil until Sunday the 18th of December. The Brazilian Amateur Radio League is using the callsign in celebration of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. QSL via Logbook of the World and eQSL. Now the DX news Ferdy, HB9DSP will be active as 5H3FM from Zanzibar Island, AF-032, Tanzania until Tuesday the 13th of December. He will operate SSB and some FT8 on the 20, 15 and 10m bands. QSL via Logbook of the World or via his home call. Take, JI3DST will be active from Miyakojima, AS-079, until Thursday the 15th of December. He will be operating SSB, CW and FT8. QSL via Club Log and LogBook of the World. Lester, W8YCM will be active as W8YCM/6Y from Jamaica, NA-097, until January 2023. QSL directly via his home callsign. Now the contest news The ARRL 10m Contest ends today, the 11th, at 2359UTC. Using CW and phone, the exchange is signal report and serial number. American, Canadian and Mexican stations also send their state or province code. On Tuesday the 13th of December, the 432MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 70cm band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Also on Tuesday the 13th of December, the 432MHz FM Activity Contest runs from 1900 to 1955UTC. Using FM on the 70cm band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On Wednesday the 14th of December, the 432MHz FT8 Activity Contest runs from 1900 to 2100UTC. Using FT8 on the 70cm band, the exchange is a report and four-character locator. On Thursday the 15th of December, the 70MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 4m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Next Saturday the 17th of December, the Stew Perry Top Band Challenge will start at 1500UTC and run for 24 hours. Using CW on the 160m band, the exchange is your four-character locator. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA, and G4BAO on Friday the 9th of December 2022 There's an old Chinese curse that says: “May you live in interesting times”. Well, the last week has been very interesting from an HF propagation perspective! The solar flux index increased from 111 on the 30th of November, to 148 on Thursday the 8th. During that time, we had more than 50 C-class solar flares and two M-class flares, while the Kp index ranged from one to five. So, it's been a bit like having all four seasons in one week! HF propagation has varied dramatically as a result, with round-the-world echoes and spotlight propagation being very prevalent at times. Spotlight propagation is defined as a small geographic area that is favoured with good propagation at any given time. The Norfolk Amateur Radio Club operated G6ZZ for 48 hours as part of the transatlantic centenary celebrations and worked more than 1,500 stations. Station manager Chris, G0DWV reports his highlights as: “Hearing my own echo as the signal went around the world on several occasions, being called by VK, Australia, and ZL, New Zealand, at 5/9+30dB with no one else on the band. And hearing echoes that made it impossible to understand the caller's voice.” At the moment, it seems like it would be easy to dismiss an HF band as being closed when it could be wide open half an hour later. The Sun is currently peppered with spots of all sizes. The USAF predicts that the good conditions could continue for a few days yet, with the solar flux index falling from 150 on Sunday to 110 by the end of the week. Calm geomagnetic conditions may continue and there are currently no coronal holes in view. But please note that it only takes a single coronal mass ejection to spoil things. And don't forget that the low bands come into their own in Winter as well. This is a good time to look for DX on 160, 80 and 40 metres, especially in the late afternoon, after dark and at sunrise. And now the VHF and up propagation news This week's VHF propagation highlight is the Geminids meteor shower. This is predicted to reach a broad peak over several days on either side of 1300UTC on the 14th of December. The Geminids zenithal hourly record has reached 140-150 in all recent years so expect a good one with SSB QSOs possible for the better-equipped stations using good operating techniques, and the chance of 70cm digimode QSOs as well. The broad peak has a habit of declining quite quickly once it's over. In this present turn to cold winter conditions, prospects for high pressure and tropo are looking limited, apart from a weak ridge over northern Britain. Although even this is not a strong player. Current weather conditions may appeal to the experimentally minded. Intense cold and snow-covered ground can produce strong shallow surface temperature inversions, so there may be interesting tests to be done in some parts of the country. Also, watch out for snow scatter on the high GHz bands if you see snowstorms around. The solar-driven conditions mentioned in the previous section suggest that further possibilities exist for auroral propagation, given a high Kp index. The dearth of Sporadic-E during the autumn months usually has a brief respite around this time of the year from mid-December to mid-January. It's very random but follow the usual summer routine of checking the clusters and maps to select the right directions. Although these isolated events can occur at the usual afternoon or evening times for Es, they can and do crop up in the morning and around the middle of the day. Moon declination is positive but decreasing this week so Moon windows will shorten and zenith angles decrease. Path losses are at their highest with the Moon at apogee on Sunday night. 144MHz sky noise is low all week. And that's all from the propagation team this week.

GB2RS News Sunday the 4th of December 2022 The news headlines: Special Contest Calls, Expansion of Qualifying Events Exams and Syllabus Review Group Recruitment Bath-Based Intermediate Licence Distance Learning Ofcom has recently authorised an expansion of the list of Special Contest Call qualifying contests. It now includes the World Wide DIGI contest and the British Amateur Radio Teledata Group Sprint PSK63 contest. Full details of how to apply for a Special Contest Call can be found on the RSGB website at rsgb.org/scc The RSGB is seeking to appoint additional members to the Exams and Syllabus Review Group, formerly known as the Exams Group. Membership of the Group now includes places for club tutors who hold a Full amateur radio licence and have taught the Full Syllabus for at least two years. If you are interested in making an application or require further information, please email the Examination Standards Committee Chair Tony Kent, G8PBH at esc.chair@rsgb.org.uk Further information about the ESRG can be found on the RSGB website at rsgb.org/esrg The closing date for applications for the next Bath Based Distance Learning course for the Intermediate exam is Thursday the 7th of December. Following application, students must complete some short pre-course study and a quiz to ensure they are able to use the Bath Based Distance Learning systems and to see if it suits their needs. That work must be completed by the 21st of December. The course starts on the 4th of January 2023 with exams expected in May. For full details and an application form, please e-mail Steve, G0FUW, via g0fuw@bbdl.org.uk The RSGB's final Tonight@8 webinar of 2022 is this Monday the 5th of December. David Palmer, G7URP will explore 100 years of BBC technology and innovation. You can watch the presentation and ask questions live on the RSGB YouTube channel or via BATC. There is more information about the presentation and how to take part on the RSGB website at rsgb.org/webinars The RSGB has released two further RSGB 2022 Convention presentations this week, the first of which wasn't part of the Convention live stream so is brand new to people watching online. Werner Hasemann, DJ9KH explains the preparations and realisation of a low-budget DXpedition in his presentation “Z66DX, Activating Kosovo under special circumstances”. The second presentation is called “Digital ATV, Opening New Horizons” in which Dave Crump, G8GKQ describes how easy it is for the home constructor to transmit and receive digital ATV without the need for the specialist camera or receiving equipment that used to be required. These and other presentations are in the RSGB 2022 Convention playlist on the RSGB YouTube channel at youtube.com/theRSGB There are two big events taking place during December. YOTA Month encourages youngsters to get on the air and the RSGB has supported this for many years. The special callsign GB22YOTA is being hosted by schools, clubs and individuals so listen out for it on the air and have a chat with the young operators. The RSGB's Transatlantic Centenary Tests also run throughout December and there are awards available for working the special stations. There are still opportunities to get involved in both events so go to the RSGB website at rsgb.org/yota-month to find out how to host the YOTA callsign or check out rsgb.org/tct to book an operating slot for the Transatlantic Tests. And now for details of rallies and events The Yeovil Amateur Radio Club Rally will be held on Thursday the 29th of December at Davis Hall, Howell Hill, West Camel, Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7QX. Doors will be open from 9.30 am to 1 pm and admission is £3. Free parking is available. The event will include bring-and-buy as well as 20 tables for traders. For more information contact Bob on 01963 440 167. We regret to announce that the Callington Amateur Radio Society 2023 Rally, usually held on the last Sunday in March, has been cancelled because of a conflict with an alternative amateur radio-related event at the venue on the same day. Notice of the alternative event will be provided by the organiser. Now the Special Event News On Thursday the 1st of December, GB1WH began operating. The Special Event Station has been established to promote the work done by Wakefield Hospice. For more information, visit the GB1WH QRZ.com page. GB1LJF began its on-air activities on Thursday the 1st of December. The Special Event Station is operating to celebrate the manufacturing of the English Electric Lightning aircraft in Lancashire. More information is available via the GB1LJF QRZ.com page. Now the DX news Ed, N2HX will be active as PJ7PL from Sint Maarten, NA-105, until the 10th of December. He will be operating CW, SSB, RTTY and FT8. QSL via his home call. Ferdy, HB9DSP will be active as 5H3FM from Zanzibar Island, AF-032, Tanzania until the 13th of December. He will operate SSB and some FT8 on the 20, 15 and 10m bands. QSL via Logbook of the World or via his home call. The Qatar Amateur Radio Society has announced that nine special event call signs will be active until the 18th of December to celebrate the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Look out for station HQ A722FWC, as well as eight call signs that contain sequential numbers, from A71FIFA to A78FIFA. The stations are active on the HF bands and via the QO-100 Satellite. QSL via the bureau, Logbook of the World or directly. Now the contest news The UK Six Metre Group Winter Marathon began on Thursday the 1st of December. The contest will run until the 31st of January 2023. Using all modes on the 6m band, the exchange is signal report and locator. The ARRL 160m Contest ends today, the 4th, at 1600UTC. Using CW only on the 160m band, the exchange is a signal report. American and Canadian stations also send their ARRL or RAC section. Today, the 4th, the 144MHz Affiliated Societies Contest runs from 1000 to 1400UTC. Using all modes on the 2m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On Tuesday the 6th of December, the 144MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 2m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Also on Tuesday the 6th of December, the 144MHz FM Activity Contest runs from 1900 to 1955UTC. Using all modes on the 2m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On Wednesday the 7th of December, the 144MHz FT8 Activity Contest runs from 1900 to 2100UTC. Using FT8 only on the 2m band, the exchange is a report and four-character locator. On Thursday the 8th of December, the 50MHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes on the 6m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. The ARRL 10m Contest starts at 0000UTC on Saturday the 10th of December and runs until 2359UTC on Sunday the 11th of December. Using CW and phone, the exchange is signal report and serial number. American, Canadian and Mexican stations also send their state or province code. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA, and G4BAO on Friday the 2nd of December 2022 Last week was characterised by unsettled geomagnetic conditions that had not been forecast. The Kp index fluctuated between three and five nearly all week, resulting in reduced HF propagation, especially over polar paths. The solar wind just refused to abate with speeds over 600km/s being commonplace. A southward-facing Bz interplanetary magnetic field just added to the problems. In the CQ Worldwide CW contest last weekend, signals from the west coast and Midwest were badly affected, with one station in Colorado sounding very fluttery and weak. Strong aurorae were also recorded in the polar regions. Nevertheless, some good scores were made in the contest. It was a case of making do with what was available, HF propagation-wise! By Thursday, the Fairford Digisonde was reporting F2-layer critical frequencies in the region of 10MHz, with an extrapolated MUF over 3,000km well above 28MHz around noon. Sunspots remained on the decline all week with the solar flux index struggling to get to 110. But the good news is that could now all change. Solarham.net reports that the beginning of December will see a potential influx of sunspots. A new active region is now beginning to turn into view off the southeast limb and was the source of a number of minor C-Flares on Wednesday. In addition to this, old regions 3140, 3141 and 3145 from earlier in November are about to turn back into view from behind the northeast limb. NOAA predicts the solar flux index could increase to 120-125 next week, which would be a welcome upturn. We may also be entering a more settled phase with regard to the Kp index too, with NOAA predicting a maximum index of two or three all week. However, a solar coronal hole will become Earth-facing on Saturday, so we expect the Kp index to rise perhaps late Sunday or Monday. The ionosonde data server in the States, for the Propquest foF2 graphs, is still having problems, but it is being worked on. In the meantime, you will see a backup plot from Fairford to keep things going. And now the VHF and up propagation news The main weather theme for the coming week is that of colder north-easterly winds, but with some high pressure off the North West to give a chance of slightly enhanced Tropo, at first in western Britain. This will probably be spoiled, in eastern areas, by showers coming in from the North Sea. GHz band rain-scatter options with the North Sea showers should be worth considering but, on this occasion, the showers may be relatively limited. So, don't expect too much. The solar conditions are still showing signs of activity, which can bring some VHF propagation options, such as aurora on 6m to 2m given a good trigger. So, look for high Kp indices above about five or six to make it worth checking. Meteor scatter is, of course, an ever-present option for surprising us with any random activity. These sporadic meteors are more frequent around dawn, and the big Geminids shower in December is less than a fortnight away. Moon declination is positive and increasing this week. So, Moon windows will lengthen and zenith angles will increase. Path losses are high and increasing this week. 144MHz sky noise is low to moderate, reaching 500 Kelvin next Friday. And that's all from the propagation team this week.

Episode 155 In this episode of the Observers Notebook podcast, host Tim Robertson talks to the Meteor Section Coordinator, Bob Lunsford about the upcoming Geminids Meteor Shower. The Geminids will next peak on the December 14/15, 2022. Bob gives us a brief history of the Meteor Shower, how and where to observe and details on reporting your observations and contact information. You can contact Bob at: lunro.imo.usa@cox.net The link for the details on the Geminids meteor shower: https://www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/#Geminids For the latest information from the ALPO Meteor Section you can visit: http://www.amsmeteors.org/ For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 Subscribe on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AssociationofLunarandPlanetaryObservers I want to thank the Producers of this podcast, Steve Siedentop and Michael Moyer for their generous support of the Observers Notebook. Our Patreons: Jerry White Jason Inman Matt Will Steve Seidentop Matthew Benton Ken Poshedly Stephen Bennett Michael Moyer Shawn Dilles Frank Schenck Damian Allis Carl Hergenrother Julian Parks Richard Hill Michael McShan Michael Blake Nick Evetts FRAS

GB2RS News Sunday the 27th of November 2022 The news headlines: 146 to 147MHz NoV Extension HF DXpedition FundTrustee Required RSGB Convention Presentations Ofcom has agreed to the RSGB request to extend the 146 to 147MHz Notice of Variation for a further year. It is available on a non-interference basis and the NoV is subject to a 30-day notice period of change or withdrawal. Full licence holders can apply for the 146 to 147MHz NoV via the RSGB website at rsgb.org/nov The RSGB assists HF DXpeditions to the rarer countries through a fund that is supported each year from the proceeds of a raffle held at the annual RSGB Convention, as well as income from legacies and donations. The Society is looking to appoint a fifth Trustee for the HF DXpedition Fund who, given the increasing number of applications, will also act as Secretary to the group. Applicants should be enthusiastic HF DXers with an interest in DXCC and IOTA. For further information about the role and how to apply, go to the volunteer vacancies section of the RSGB website at rsgb.org/volunteers The RSGB has released two individual 2022 Convention presentations. In the first, Professor Alwyn Seeds, G8DOH talks about “Building a VHF/UHF Contest Station”. The second presentation is by Hans Summers, G0UPL who explains “The QCX CW transceiver kit story: design, development, five years of production and evolution”. Part of the second presentation was live-streamed during the Convention but you can now watch it all on the RSGB YouTube channel – go to youtube.com/theRSGB and choose the RSGB 2022 Convention playlist. On Saturday 3 December at 1400UTC, AMSAT SA and the South African Radio League are hosting a webinar about Hamprojects. This is a platform to facilitate complex projects that are beyond the possibility of individuals or even one amateur radio society or club. The concept was developed by Willi Vollenweider, HB9AMC as part of the IARU Region 1 Shaping the future of Amateur Radio initiative. During the webinar, Willi will explain Hamprojects in detail and how individual radio amateurs and groups, or amateur radio cubs, can participate or initiate their own projects and attract international participation. The webinar is free to attend and open to anyone who has an interest in technology and a desire to become part of future innovation. Register as soon as possible, as participation is limited to 150 persons, via tinyurl.com/hamrprojects Don't forget the Transatlantic Centenary Tests event that starts at 0000UTC on Thursday the 1st of December and runs for the whole month. There are awards available for working the special stations and, if you are an RSGB Member and hold a Full Licence, still opportunities to book an operating slot. Go to rsgb.org/tct for full information. And now for details of rallies and events Bishop Auckland Radio Amateur Club Rally will be held today, the 27th, at Spennymoor Leisure Centre, High Street, Spennymoor, County Durham, DL16 6DB. Doors open at 10.30 am for everyone and 10 am for disabled visitors. Admission is £2 and free to under-14s who are accompanied by an adult. Talk-in will be on 2m channel V44. Contact Bob Dingle, G0OCB on 07710 023 916 for further information. The Midlands Round Table event will be held on Saturday the 3rd of December. The day will follow a relaxed schedule with talks aimed primarily at Microwave, Amateur Television, Amateur Satellite and other innovative areas of amateur radio. There will be tables provided free of charge for the junk sale and for any free items attendees wish to give away. The event is being held at Eaton Manor, Eaton-under-Heywood, Church Stretton, Shropshire, SY6 7DH. The event venue will be open from 9 am and proceedings will start at 10 am. Questions and requests should be directed to Paul, G8AQA on 01694 771 441. The Yeovil Amateur Radio Club Rally will be held on Thursday the 29th of December at Davis Hall, Howell Hill, West Camel, Yeovil, Somerset, BA22 7QX. Doors will be open from 9.30 am to 1 pm and admission is £3. Free parking is available. The event will include bring and buy as well as 20 tables for traders. For more information contact Bob on 01963 440 167. Now the Special Event News Leyland and District Amateur Radio Club will be active as GB9LD for Lancashire Day today, the 27th of November. Activity will take place on the 40m to 70cm bands. At 1500UTC the club will read the Lancashire Day Proclamation on HF and toast His Majesty King Charles III, Duke of Lancaster. All are welcome to join in. Enquiries to ladar@mail.com On Thursday the 1st of December, GB1WH will begin operating. The Special Event Station has been established to promote the work done by Wakefield Hospice. For more information, visit the GB1WH QRZ.com page. GB1LJF begins its on-air activities on Thursday the 1st of December. The Special Event Station is operating to celebrate the manufacturing of the English Electric Lightning aircraft in Lancashire. More information is available via the GB1LJF QRZ.com page. Now the DX news Today, the 27th is the last chance to work Alex, K6VHF. He is active as 4L1FP from Tbilisi Georgia. He is operating SSB, CW and FT8 on the 80 to 10m bands. QSL via Logbook of the World, Club Log or directly to K6VHF. Don, K6ZO will be active as 7Q6M from Malawi until the 29th of November. He will be available on the 160 to 6m bands using SSB and CW. QSL via Logbook of the World or directly to K6ZO. Special Event Station CX100B will be active until the 30th of November. The station is operating to celebrate the centenary of the first radio broadcast in Uruguay which took place on the 6th of November 1922. QSL via CX1AA and Logbook of the World. Special callsign ZW200ESQ is active until the 30th of November to celebrate the bicentennial of the Brazilian Navy. Operations will take place from the premises of the Brazilian Naval School's Communication Group. Activity will be on all bands from 80m to 70cm using CW, SSB, digital modes and FM on satellite. QSL via the bureau or directly to PY1JR. Bob, W7YAQ and Al, K7AR will be active as K8H from Tutuila Island, OC-045, American Samoa until the 1st of December. They will be operating two stations on the 160 to 10m bands. QSL via Club Log, Logbook of the World or via W7YAQ. Now the contest news Today, the 27th, the CQ Worldwide DX CW Contest ends its 24-hour run at 2359UTC. Using CW only on the 160 to 10m bands, where contests are permitted, the exchange is signal report and CQ Zone. On Monday the 28th of November the RSGB FT4 Contest runs from 2000 to 2130UTC. Using the 80, 40 and 20m bands, the exchange is a report and four-character locator. Thursday the 1st of December sees the start of the UK Six Metre Group Winter Marathon. The contest will run until the 31st of January 2023. Using all modes on the 6m band, the exchange is signal report and locator. The ARRL 160m Contest begins at 2200UTC on Friday the 2nd of December and finishes at 1600UTC on Sunday the 4th of December. Using CW only on the 160m band, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. American and Canadian stations also send their ARRL or RAC section. Next Sunday, the 4th of December, the 144MHz AFS Contest runs from 1000 to 1400UTC. Using all modes, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA, and G4BAO on Friday 25th November 2022 We dodged a bullet last week when a large coronal hole failed to produce a geomagnetic disturbance. Despite many predictions that we could expect an upturn in the Kp index, it looks like the solar wind missed the Earth, probably because the hole was too low in the Sun's southern hemisphere. As a result the Kp index never went higher than 4, actually 3.67 globally, and things remained calm. This was good news for HF, although a low solar flux index below 120 all week was nothing to get excited about. At the same time, the improvement in low-band conditions, as we head into late Autumn, is making up for it. Top Band contacts have been recorded with 3B8 Mauritius, and Peter, G3PHO has even made it into the USA in the late afternoon on 160m FT8. So, if you've never worked much on Top Band, and you have the antenna for it, give it a try. Failing that, try the top end of 80m SSB around sunrise in the UK for contacts with the USA. Next week, NOAA predicts that the solar flux index will remain around the 120-125 mark. The good news is that there are no large coronal holes currently visible and there have only been minor C-class flares with CMEs that have not been Earth-directed, so geomagnetic conditions are likely to be good. That is, at least until the 1st of December when we have a predicted Kp index of four, which may disrupt contacts mainly on polar paths. This is good news for this weekend's CQ Worldwide CW contest, which is a great opportunity for you to up your country totals or for your Worked All States award. Now a footnote for those occasions when the propquest.co.uk graphs are not updating. It can be a local effect at one of the stations, such as Chilton, which has been offline recently. Usually selecting one of the tick boxes in the top right of the graphs will show Fairford or Dourbes when available. However, last week and maybe still, we have a complete blank for all three ionosonde station plots, which is much more likely to be a server issue in the States where the data is hosted. You can check the Propquest server is working by selecting the “Archive” or “Averages” tabs. In any event, the ionosonde data plots will come back automatically once any issues have been resolved. And now the VHF and up propagation news The unsettled spell of weather continues into the first half of next week so could provide some further rain scatter opportunities on the GHz Bands. The broad south-westerly pattern may well switch over to an easterly after midweek as high pressure builds across Scotland. This could bring a return of Tropo for some parts, but looks a bit weak, while the south will continue to be affected by low-pressure systems. It will feel colder, with some models hinting at wintry conditions being a possibility, so wrap up well if you plan to do any portable operation! The Alpha Monocerotids meteor shower noted last week is over but the small November Orionids, active until the 6th of December, reaches its peak on Monday the 28th. Get ready for the big Geminids meteor shower in December. It commences on the 4th reaching a ZHR of over 100 between the 14th and 15th. More about this closer to the shower peak. Moon declination is increasing again and goes positive on Friday. So Moon windows will lengthen and zenith angles will increase. Path losses, on the other hand, start to increase again this week after last Friday's perigee. We have to wait until mid-2026 before maximum declination coincides with the lowest path loss, but we are moving in that direction again. 144MHz sky noise is low all week, not getting above 300 Kelvin until next Sunday. And that's all from the propagation team this week.

Data on 824 fireballs observed by the digital cameras of the European Fireball Network in 2017-2018 II Analysis of orbital and physical properties of centimeter-sized meteoroids by J. Borovicka et al. on Sunday 25 September Meteoroids impacting the Earth on a daily basis are fragments of asteroids and comets. By studying fireballs produced during their disintegration in the atmosphere, we can gain information about their source regions and the properties of their parent bodies. In this work, data on 824 fireballs presented in an accompanying paper and catalog are used. We propose a new empirical parameter for the classification of the physical properties of meteoroids, based on the maximum dynamic pressure suffered by the meteoroid in the atmosphere. We then compare the physical and orbital properties of meteoroids. We find that aphelion distance is a better indicator of asteroidal origin than the Tisserand parameter. Meteoroids with aphelia lower than 4.9 AU are mostly asteroidal, with the exception of the Taurids and alpha Capricornids associated with the comets 2P/Encke and 169P/NEAT, respectively. We found another population of strong meteoroids of probably asteroidal origin on orbits with either high eccentricities or high inclinations, and aphelia up to ~ 7 AU. Among the meteoroid streams, the Geminids and eta Virginids are the strongest, and Leonids and alpha Capricornids the weakest. We found fine orbital structures within the Geminid and Perseid streams. Four minor meteoroid streams from the working list of the International Astronomical Union were confirmed. No meteoroid with perihelion distance lower than 0.07 AU was detected. Spectra are available for some of the fireballs, and they enabled us to identify several iron meteoroids and meteoroids deficient in sodium. Recognition and frequency of fireballs leading to meteorite falls is also discussed. arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2209.11254v1

You've probably already noticed spells like Quicksilver Swords, Geminids of Ulg-ish, Ravanacks Gnashing Jaws and the dreaded Purple Sun causing havock on the tabletop. In this video I will look at ways you can defend against your opponents Endless Spells.

Do you have a pup who loves to play in the ocean, loves to play fetch in the sand, or loves to dig holes in the sand?  Did you know that these activities can pose a life threatening risk for your furry friend?On episode 12 of the Snorts, Slobber, & K9 Adventures Podcast, Jane Kleinberger (dog mom to @kino.thehighlifedog) shares a horrifying story about how a few hours of frolicking on the beach almost cost Kino his life. Prior to talking with Jane, I had never heard of sand impaction, did not realize how common it is for dogs, and definitely didn't know that my dog could die from it! This was such an eye opening episode for me and is an episode every dog parent needs to hear.  Jane does a wonderful job of sharing her story and providing tips for how to keep your dog safe.And if you are looking for a dog friendly adventure spot in California, you are going to want to hear Jane's fantastic review of Mammoth Lakes. Mammoth Lakes is a year-round resort town located high in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains about 5 hours from LA and 3 hours from Reno, NV, and only an hour away from Yosemite!   With an abundance of lakes and streams fed by the slow melting of the snowcap, it is also home to some great hiking spots for you and your pup as well as a great spot for fishing and mountain biking. Year-round the night sky provides a fantastic light show that humans and dogs will enjoy – especially during periods of meteor showers like the Perseids and Geminids!  

This video previews Generals Handbook 2022 Season 1. In this video I'll preview the Universal Endless Spells and highlight where their rules have changed. I won't touch on faction specific endless spells. Generals Handbook 2022 was provided to me by Games Workshop at no cost in advance of instore release. I'm under no obligation to do a review or will Games Workshop have any control of what's in this video.

GB2RS News Sunday the 19th of December 2021 The news headlines: GB2RS Christmas arrangements Volunteers sought for Board and Regions Comoros DXpedition postponed Next Sunday, the 26th, will see the final GB2RS script for 2021. The deadline for news is being brought forward to 10 am on Tuesday the 21st of December, instead of the usual Thursday. The news reading on the 26th is optional, as the RSGB appreciates that not all newsreaders will be available, but the script will be on the RGSB website so all can see it. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the newsreaders who read the news on a variety of platforms for their service to their fellow amateurs throughout the year. We'd also like to remind amateurs that there has been a long-standing convention to keep 145.525MHz free of traffic at 10 am on Sundays, to allow the news reading to go ahead without interference. Thank you to all those who listen on Sunday mornings, and the other times that the news is read, to those who call in afterwards to speak to the newsreaders, and to everyone who listens via platforms. There will be no script prepared for broadcast on Sunday the 2nd of January 2022 due to RSGB HQ being closed. Newsreaders may, of course, choose to run a net at their normal transmission time, but under their own callsign only. We'd like to remind Members that the RSGB is looking for volunteers for roles in the Regional Team and on the Board. The deadline for completed nominations is 23:59 on 31 January 2022. There are eight vacancies for Regional Representatives and one for an elected Board Director. You can see further details about the roles and about how to apply at rsgb.org/election The Comoros Islands DXpedition that was to take place sometime between mid-to-end January in 2022 has been postponed. The Covid situation makes it safer for the team not to travel now. It should take place later in 2022. Having listened to feedback, the RSGB is delighted to announce that from the January 2022 issue onwards, it has been making RadCom available online for Members to read in the same week that the hard copy arrives through the letterbox. The January 2022 RadCom is now online at rsgb.org/radcom Have you ever thought of becoming a GB2RS Newsreader? The team to the northwest of Manchester is looking for someone to join them, to broadcast on Sunday morning and/or evening on 2m and 4m. Applicants must be members of the RSGB and hold a Full or Intermediate licence. For more information, please contact the northwest team via Annick, M0HDE, email annickmorris@gmail.com. For general guidance about joining the GB2RS service, please contact the GB2RS Manager, Steve, G4HPE, via gb2rs.manager@rsgb.org. To mark 100 years of British broadcasting, the BBC will be putting on special events throughout 2022. As part of the celebrations, the staff amateur radio club, the BBC Radio Group, will be active throughout the year using the special callsign GB100BBC. Ofcom has kindly permitted operation from club members' home stations, as well as from BBC premises around the UK, and locations associated with BBC broadcasting such as transmitter sites. In addition to online QSL options, a traditional commemorative QSL card will be available via the bureau. View the GB100BBC page on QRZ.com for more information and look for GB100BBC on all bands and modes. Operations will commence on New Year's Day from the club shack in Broadcasting House, London. The winners of the RSGB and ARRL 160-Meter Transatlantic Centenary QSO Party are Rick Niswander, K7GM and Bob Barden, MD0CCE. They receive a quaich, a traditional Scottish drinking cup representing friendship, from the GMDX Group of Scotland. For more information see the RSGB website. Gwyn Williams, G4FKH has decided to stop running the Predtest.uk website. It will cease on the 22nd of December 2021. The site has been running for a few years now after Gwyn worked with numerous programmers to give a more user-friendly and graphical output to the ITU's ITURHFPROP propagation prediction program. Predtest has been a very useful tool in the HF user's armoury, allowing point-to-point and area coverage predictions among others. The RSGB Propagation Studies Committee would like to thank Gwyn for all his hard work on Predtest over the years. Users are being encouraged to move over to James Watson's Proppy tool, which offers a similar experience to Predtest and is also based on ITURHFPROP. You can find Proppy at soundbytes.asia/proppy/ Alternatively, VOACAP.com offers a similar experience and is based on the well-known VOACAP software. RSGB HQ will close for the Christmas and New Year period from 4.30 pm on the 23rd of December. It opens again at 8.30 am on the 4th of January. During that time, if you need information about amateur radio, exams or RadCom you'll find lots of information on the RSGB website, www.rsgb.org. And now for details of rallies and events Now is the perfect time to let us know your group's rally or event plans for 2022. Email radcom@rsgb.org.uk with details and we'll publicise your event for free in RadCom, on GB2RS, and online. There are already over twenty rallies in the calendar for 2022. Now the DX news Chris, ZS1CDG plans to be active as 7P8GOZ from Lesotho between the 20th and 26th of December. He will operate holiday style on 40, 20, 15 and 10 metres using FT8. QSL via Logbook of The World or his home call. Brad, VK2BY will be active as HS0ZNR in north-eastern Thailand until the 21st of January. QSL direct to VK2BY and Logbook of The World. Victor, WB0AA will be active as V4/WB0AA from St Kitts, NA-104 between the 22nd and the 30th of December. He will operate CW and SSB on the 10 to 160m bands. QSL via his home call and possibly Logbook of The World. Now the Special Event news GB120MT is being operated by Chelmsford ARS to mark the first successful reception in Newfoundland from the Marconi transmission at Poldhu in Cornwall. The station will be on the air at various times until the 1st of January 2022. Now the contest news There are no RSGB HF contests at all this month. When operating in any contests, please keep yourself and fellow amateurs safe by following pandemic-related government rules. The Stew Perry Top Band Challenge ends its 24-hour run at 1500UTC today, the 19th. It is CW only and the exchange is your 4-character locator. On Tuesday the 1.3GHz UK Activity Contest runs from 2000 to 2230UTC. Using all modes, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. The Christmas Cumulatives take place between the 26th and the 29th of December from 1400 to 1600 each day. Using the 50 to 432MHz bands, the exchange is signal report, serial number and locator. On the 26th of December, the DARC Christmas Contest runs from 0830 to 1100UTC. Using CW and SSB on the 3.5 and 7MHz bands, the exchange is signal report and serial number. German stations also send DOK or NM. The Worked All Britain Christmas Party runs from the 26th of December to the 6th of January. Using all modes on any band, the exchange is your WAB book number. Now the radio propagation report, compiled by G0KYA, G3YLA, and G4BAO on Friday the 17th of December After a period with zero sunspots, we're pleased to announce that the drought is over. There are now at least five active groups on the solar surface and this could even increase over the coming days. The solar flux index had leapt up to 103 from 89 on Thursday and could go even higher. This puts us in the fun zone for 10 metres and it will be interesting to see what is workable over the next week. There is an increased risk of solar flares during this time and we have already seen some C- and M-class events. Solar flares and their associated coronal mass ejections are generally detrimental to HF propagation, with flares causing short-lived blackouts and CMEs causing a lowering of MUFs a few days later. On Thursday the solar wind speed had increased to more than 500 kilometres per second and with a negative interplanetary magnetic field, or Bz, the Kp index had climbed to three as a result. Let's hope it doesn't climb much higher. The US Air Force predicts that the Solar Flux Index will remain above 100 until perhaps Wednesday the 22nd, when it may decline to the high 90s. But we really are in uncharted territory at the moment so keep an eye on SolarHam.com for regular updates. And finally, this week is a good time to contact Santa Claus in Lapland. OF9X is on the air in the Arctic Circle over Christmas and has been spotted on 80, 40, 30, 20 and 10m so far. He will be operating CW, SSB and FT8. The DX cluster is probably the easiest way of knowing where the station is on the bands at any one time. Good luck with making contact! And now the VHF and up propagation news. The welcome return of high pressure and tropo conditions from the middle of the past week should last through to the middle of the coming week. This means there will be plenty more chances for further enhanced propagation on VHF/UHF bands and hopefully for the SHF UKAC on 23cm on Tuesday evening. The position of the high is such that even Scotland will enjoy some of the tropo and paths to the south across Biscay and into northern Spain are worth investigating. From mid-week, there are signs that the Atlantic weather systems will break through again, which will take away the Tropo options. One intriguing set of charts shows a front across the middle of the country with mild air to the south and cold air to its north on Christmas Day. Plenty of excitement potential there, but at such long lead times it's no more than one of many possible outcomes at present. For a little extra joy this Christmas, we are moving into a time of year that can offer surprise winter Sporadic-E, that's mid-December to mid-January. Little predictability is available for these events, but do make use of the Propquest charts at propquest.co.uk to get a hint of your chances; focus upon the jet stream maps, the NVIS tab to see the foEs values and the EPI index for mapped distribution of any possible hot spots. Last week's Geminids meteor shower produced some excellent QSOs up to and including 70cm for the well-equipped stations. The tail end of the shower should continue to make meteor scatter interesting. The Moon is at peak declination meaning plenty of time for EME contacts but with yesterday's apogee path losses are at their highest. 144MHz sky noise will be low this week. And that's all from the propagation team this week.

If I saw 17 shooting stars during this year's peak of the Geminids meteor shower, does that mean I get 17 wishes? Meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere all the time, but often we don't notice them because we're not looking up. It's the same with good things in our life. We don't see them because we're not looking in the right direction.

The Whalers return to the broadcast, at least in clothing. The drive to raise funds and toys for the Salvation Army continues this morning. Brian's life flashed before his eyes, or at least he saw a shooting star. The Geminids are here if you want to check them out and these are a different type of shower.  Today's Birthdays include Venessa Hudgins, but most importantly Lisa Shactman. Musically is  Saturday Night Fever movie premiere in 1977.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Geminids are back!!! The most exuberant and prolific meteor shower out there! And guess what? This is one of two meteor showers that doesn't come from a comet… tune into this episode for the details and how YOU can catch this stunning show of shooting “stars”!! Download the Callin app for iOS and Android to listen to this podcast live, call in, and more! Also available at callin.com

Links and resources mentioned:   This post includes links to the details on how we [Jon's family] celebrate each Sabbat: https://naturalisticpaganism.org/2014/12/14/starstuff-contemplating-by-heather-and-jon-cleland-host-celebrating-meaning-in-our-lives-through-family-holidays/   Grandma's cheat sheet summary of holidays to give relatives, (just click on the top image and print it for your own copies). https://naturalisticpaganism.org/2018/07/11/grandmas-cheat-sheet-by-starstuff-contemplating/   The First Cosmala rite of passage is described in the book "Faithful Practices" by Wikstrom, on pages 65-90. I'll attach a screen shot of that section. The overall page to guide making your Cosmala is : http://solstice-and-equinox.com/universebeads.html   The book is at: https://www.amazon.com/Faithful-Practices-Everyday-Ways-Spirit/dp/1558968113/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=faithful+practices+wikstrom&qid=1638716819&sr=8-1   The Ancestor Cards for Samhain dinner grace can be downloaded and printed from: http://naturalpagan.org/kidspirit/ancestorcards.pdf   S2E45 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host Mark.  Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we are having a really exciting episode. We're interviewing two folks who are naturalistic pagans, who are parents, and we're going to talk about parenting. In, you know, and, and developing practices for families that and raising kids within a written naturalistic pagan tradition. So I'd like to welcome first of all, Lilith, who is a parent and serves on the atheopagan society council and is an ecologist. So she really checks all the boxes for the kind of folks that that you know, we think are doing great work in the world. Welcome Lilith.  Lilith: Thank you for having me. Mark: And then also we'd like to welcome Dr. Jon Cleland Host.  Yucca: Welcome back in fact. Mark: back. Yes. Because you were interviewed on here before you have so many accomplishments, to your name. I don't really know where to start, but you're a scientist and I'm a materials analyst. And also have had a lot to do with the growth of naturalistic paganism from very early days. So welcome to you as well.  Jon: Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Yucca: So why don't we just do a quick around and all of us who are parents here, just maybe mention a little bit about you know, just briefly the, the families that we have and, and when, and how we got into paganism. So, Lilith do you want to start with that? Lilith: Sure. All right. So I, my oldest is 22. I and it's, I have a 22 year-old son, and then I have a 21 year old son. I have an 18 year old daughter. I have a 13 year old son, a five-year-old daughter, and a two and a half year old son.  Mark: Well,  Lilith: Thank you very much. Yucca: Wonderful. So you've got the full range of experiences there. Lilith: I have quite a spread. Yes. Yucca: yeah. And before we hit the record button, you were mentioning that with some of them you were pegging already. And then with the older ones, that was a transition when they were already older kids. Lilith: Yes. So I, I definitely did not identify as pagan. Like if somebody had asked me what religion I was, I would have said atheist until my son who is now 13 was quite little. Like he probably doesn't remember when my answer wasn't pagan, if somebody asked me. So it's been, since I started using. Label for myself. It's probably only been about a dozen years. So at that point, you know, my head children who were eight years old, seven years old already. So, yes, it, it didn't, it, it definitely doesn't predate my children, me, all of them anyway, me considering myself pagan, but I definitely think I was, I just didn't use that label. So it's a little bit strange. Because I, we used to celebrate the solstice and the Equinox and I just didn't have a label for it. But you might get a different answer if you were to ask them actually this MI  Mark: That might be a great episode to do some  Lilith: right. Mark: to bring in, you know, second generation folks and see what their experiences are.  Jon: Yeah. Lilith: Yeah, I know my oldest would definitely be an interesting one too, to question. Cause he's a, he's a philosopher. Mark: Ah, cool. Interesting. So, Jon, why don't you tell us a little bit about your family?  Jon: Okay. So, let's see, thinking about thinking about when things happened. I was raised Catholic. I had a fine childhood. I was not unhappy at all being raised Catholic and, and all that was an enthusiastic ultra boy and all that. I it was in about boat when I was maybe 19. I started to find a few things that I thought. Real. And so I thought, okay, fine. Everything's still Catholic is just this one little thing that's not real. And then it was two and then it was three. And you know how that goes pretty soon as like, ah, okay, this isn't working at all. So, so I went to be just a regular, you know, regular atheist and and I found that to be a little bit empty. So I started just watching the, the sunrise on the winter solstice thinking that this is something that humans have been doing for at least tens of thousands of years, maybe hundreds on all kinds of continents. And and about that time I met my current wife, Heather and she was, she was doing similar. She was kind of in a similar place and together we kind of started to. Add things. We, we found that to be very fulfilling and with the winter solstice sunrise. And so we thought, well, we should pay attention to the summer solstice. And so we noticed that, and my, my birthday is near an Equinox anyway. So we're already celebrating that and she knew about the wheel of the year, but I really didn't then after a little while we kind of had put together most of the wheel of the year because the cross quarters are holidays in America anyway, most of them. And and so, so I, I think that she clued me in on the fact that, Hey, you know, we're celebrating the pagan wheel of the year. I'm like, whoa, look at that. So, so that was. That was after our first child was born, but really when he was very young, like two and we were kind of almost already there by the, you know, by the time he was born. So really all my kids grew up in a pig and family. I can't really count too much before about age four, you know how that is. So, so, and that's even my oldest. So, so my kids, I've got four kids all boys and the oldest one is a junior at Michigan state right now. So he's he's 20 and the next oldest is a senior in high school, so he's 17 and then I've got a eighth grader and and one child in second grade. So, so that's the spread there? Not quite as wide, but wide enough to keep me busy. Yeah. Mark: Why don't we talk a little bit about about practices? One of the things that's really great about did you want to say first Yucca?  Yucca: should jump in. Mine are, yeah. Which  Mark: So, used. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you see being one of the hosts.  Yucca: but yeah. Well, folks have been listening for a long time, have probably caught bits and pieces, but I have a five-year-old and a just turned three year old. And I was actually raised as a pagan, so it was just kind of, it was, that's just how we are. And my partner is as well, so. We didn't really have a decision to say, oh, we're going to raise our kids this way. It was just, this is the way our life is. And I've been having a great time at it. Not very much sleep, but a great time at it since. Yeah. Mark: Well, great. So yeah, I would like to talk a little bit about practices. Are there, are there things that you do with your family, like at particular stations of the wheel of the year or daily, or I don't know, something special on their birthdays or any, any particular individual traditions that you've created for your families? Lil, if you wanna, you wanna tackle that first.  Lilith: Sure. Well, I think my. Started kind of innocently and that so I've always had just kind of a mixed feelings about cut flowers, for example. So when my kids were little, you know, most people were getting bouquets for mother's day or or Valentine's day anniversaries and things like that. My family always knew I preferred things that were living. So it started with get a plant and then it was get mama tree. And and so every year we would go and kind of visit what we had planted the year before. Oh. And the year before that, the year before that I didn't bomb for a really long time. And then, you know, implant the next thing. And that was probably the first time I realized we had like an eight typical tradition going and it just kind of morphed from there. So, but that, that was the one that sort of started, or it came about really organically as the kids were recognizing, like they wanted to do something for me that I would really appreciate and they re they knew don't cut something, you know, plant something. And, and so that, that one has proven to be really the ground. what we built everything on. So then it became, now we plant something on emo because well, it actually, it changed because we used to live in Northeastern, Pennsylvania, where winter is like 14 months a year. And now we live in the Gulf coast of Alabama, where summer is like 20 months a year. So, so we really have changed quite a bit. Like you couldn't, you know, you can't get into the ground at all in Pennsylvania, in February, but down here, I, I that's when you have to, if you don't plant your tomatoes by Valentine's day, it's too late. So, so things really changed a lot. So, so then, you know, rather than planting things and over mother's day, we were planting them in February and for you know, the various mid mid-year times. And that is how everything. Began and everything we have is tradition in our family. Just sort of stems off of that. It's all things on our land that we do every holiday, but that's how it all began. Mark: Nice, but that's wonderful. That sounds great. Yoko, would you like to talk about some of your family traditions?  Yucca: Yeah, well, we definitely really enjoy the wheel of the year. The oldest is getting to the point where she can remember and be excited that it's coming up. The youngest is still to sort of like what's happening next. Oh, yay. But you know, we, we also live in a rural context and it's all it's know, what is happening in our local environment is really noticeable. And especially for the kids, because we make a point of being outside as much as possible when we did live in a city that was harder. Right. But where we are now, it's just like, Nope. Out, get out the door. Yes. I know it's 32 degrees outside. That's why you have a hat, helped the door and playing and hanging out. So we do, we follow the, we live the year and we've talked about that a lot on the podcast. But with the kids at the age, that mine are the really key thing that we do. And this is incredibly important for me, it as a, as an adult too, but as our star time and our son time, and it's a moment of eat twice a day, you know, getting out and just being present for a moment, practicing a little bit of mindfulness and just awareness. And you know, my kids are pretty typer, typical little people, but for those moments, because we practice it time and time again, you know, they can calm down and just be, be there, hang out with the stars or hang out with the, with the rising sun. So that's what I think at the core for us right now is just that daily experience.  Mark: Sure. Well, and, and even just doing that plants, the seed of the idea of a daily practice, right. You know, even, even, you know, at those very, very simple levels, that's really important. I think that's, that's wonderful.  Yucca: And that's something that I think that a lot of families do anyways. And just may not be super aware that they have that, that routine, you know, the book before bed or the, you know, everybody gets up in the morning and eats breakfast and brushes their teeth. Like we have these things built into our days anyways. Everybody does, most people do. Right. But then you can just add in some intentional bits in there.  Mark: Right. Right. Jon, how about your family? What are some examples of you do?  Jon: Right. I let's see where to start. Just as Yucca was saying, the, the wheel of the year is, is certainly. But a nice framework to, to try to get these in order with one thing that I should mention is the rites of passage are so important in human lives and you know, there's, we had a a very nice ceremony for each of the kids for their naming like, like a baptism except without the water and supernatural. So, so that's very important. The kids, of course, aren't really aware of that. The oldest ones are barely aware of it for the youngest kid. So there's that and the one might think, okay, well then you've got marriage and none of the kids are to that age yet. But in between that, we have had an additional Rite of passage that has worked really well. And that has been the first cosmology where when the kid is old enough, when the child is old enough to understand our history, even, even in very broad brush brush strokes. And they see my cosmology over here on the wall and they see me talk about it and use it. And when it gets to the point where they can understand enough of it to make their own. Then that's a big event and they'll make one. We usually make the first one with maybe about 20 events. Just as a side note, a cosmologist string of beads that each bead represents an event from the big bang until today. So you've got like one for the big bang and one for the formation of solar system. And one for, you know, maybe the first life on land or the first dinosaurs or something like that. My own cost model has a couple of hundred beads on it, event beads. The kids will start one with just 20 or so, but but that's a big thing and we have a whole party. We usually couple it with our fall Equinox party where, you know, a lot of people are coming over and the big event, in addition to them getting cards and gifts and things like that, where their first cost model is that the. You know, go in front of everyone and say, okay, this first beat is for the big bang. Okay. This first, this second beat is for whatever and they go through the whole thing and and, and it's been great. It's been a wonderful thing and a really nice addition as a Rite of passage to, to have something in there where the kid can learn, because the kid isn't gonna learn much from a baptism of course, or, or a naming. And they're not going to learn much about the, you know, the marriage is after they're not a kid anymore. So that's been great. The wheel of the year, we have traditions for each of the holidays on the wheels a year. I, I could go through them. They are all kind of a mixture of our own invention and traditional things. And of course, the reason for that is as parents, it's difficult to do everything completely new and different from. It's easier to do, right? You can't, you have to kind of balance between it doing things enough with society. So the kids don't feel left out. Don't it's not a huge burden to, to try to do things on a completely different schedule. You have to kind of balance that with still making all the holidays real and fun and teach real things and teach important things and still have a good time. So, so that's an important balance. And like I mentioned before, we're lucky that almost all of our big holidays are very close to our pig and holidays for historical reasons. So if I was going to look at it, I can do just a basic, real quick. For the winter solstice or you'll we have a an advent you can think of it as, as an advent thing. It's got little doors and we open the door every day. The kids are mad because they're missing today's door. And it's got little prizes and stuff. I put it in there, stuff about the star, sometimes a little note or something like that because the winter solstice is all about stars, about our star, about our stellar origin, things like that. And then after that, hold on a second, let me deal with. Lilith: since he stepped away for a second, I I'll hijack just briefly what he said about tying in kind of tying to tie in holidays with kind of mainstream stuff. That's going. And one of the things that we've done that he reminded me when I was listening to him is that we take a moment during each holiday to kind of compare how other cultures throughout the world has, have expressed their joy or sorrow or whatever the holiday, you know, may be for and, and kind of looked for similarities. And then hypothesized, why might we all be feeling the same way about the same time of year what's going on in the time of year, that makes us feel this way. And, and what he was saying about doing his comparisons with you know, pagan versus mainstream holidays, it just kind of made me. Then I think a lot of us do that. We make those observations between ourselves and others, and it's just kind of a neat way to see globally how everybody in through time, you know, as his cousin Lala would show in the later parts of it you know how we've, we've really we're so, so, so similar. And it's very unifying for children. I think. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Jon,  Jon: right. I'm back.  Mark: We'll have you continue in just a second, but I want to point out that one of the things that all three of you have brought up repeatedly is the concept of pedagogy, the concept of teaching and learning as an element and an aspect of how you celebrate these holidays with your kids. Because of course, kids are sponges for knowledge, that's, that's their thing. That's how they're coming to acclimate to being an operating adult in the world. And I, I just think it's great that there's a very conscientious intention there to provide learning experiences through these, the lens of these holidays. Jon, you want to tell us about your next.  Jon: Sure. So then on winter solstice, we go and watch the sunrise. They're doing that with Heather for a long time. And that's been wonderful. We'd go to some different place for a week. Can have a good view to the to the Southeast there. And then we come back and we have gifts that we open that have been, you know, underneath our winter solstice tree and stuff like that. We have lights decorating the house and all that kind of stuff. I especially liked the different colored lights, because remember this holiday is all about stars. Both are our star dust origins, and the star that's coming back and the stars are different colors. People think they're all white, but they're not, they're all different colors, Bates based on her current Russel diagram. And that's another concept that can be taught and reflected on because it makes it a lot more interesting than a bunch of boring little white spots. Cause they're not little and they're not white. So. So that's so that's great. We we then for in bulk we will put candles, sink them down in the snow for the wheel of the year, let them burn down. And that tells us, we make, we use that as a kind of divination to say how fast we're going to get spring. And that's a really interesting time to discuss how we can have a fun time talking about how long it's going to be until spring knowing that these candles don't actually predict anything, but it's still fun and it's still useful. So, so we do that. We make snow cream with snow. We then for Ostara, we'll do all the bunnies and eggs and baskets. And talk about new life returning and about the real fact that it's really nice to be able to see the summer, you know, approaching and the land waking up here in Michigan, when it's been, you know, buried under cold, snow and dark for so long belting, we will make some flower baskets and we'll plant our garden, make sure our garden is in good shape. For the summer solstice, we try to do stuff outside. We'll do kayaking or swimming or, or something like that. That we don't have a lot of traditions around the holiday. We just want to make sure we're having a good time outside. For Lu NASSA, we will bake bread. We will have some kind of harvest usually going to pick blueberries that a local blueberry patch or something like that. And by the way, for all of these it's. Special sacred day. You don't have to do any work. They don't have to do their chores. I actually let them drink pop here in Michigan as popped by the way, not soda. And and and so they know that this is important because just like mark you've mentioned before these holidays, they teach what we think is real and what we think is important. That's what a spirituality is. It's understanding what you think is real and what you think from that is important. And so I make sure that that comes across in everyone because that's, cause they're gonna learn. They're gonna learn either way, no matter what. And the only thing you can decide is what you're going to teach them what they are going to learn as opposed to, you know, consumerism or supernatural things or, or they just believe whatever's written somewhere or something like that. Yeah. So then for the fall Equinox, we have more of a harvest theme. We have people over and celebrate our community. And SALWAN is one of the it's between it and winter solstice. Those are the two big, big, big holidays. And part of that is cultural inertia, of course, for the winter solstice. But really for me, ancestor, my ancestors are such an important part of my spirituality. And of course, as the recognition reg recognition there, that all of us have some good ancestors and some really bad ancestors and a whole bunch of ones in between. But for that, we go through the ancestor cards. I have these ancestor cards we put up that take us all the way from the big bang until today. And we celebrate all of our ancestors before dinner. Every day we talk about our ancestors, we do ancestor grace for someone can name an ancestry, they're human or otherwise. And what they're thankful for from that answer. Maybe we'll get to some fun stories. There's some neat stories around all of these, but one of the ones that's been really interesting is and fun is a little while ago, we were talking about ancestors and I have a lot of German ancestry and one of my German ancestors last name was a Gandalf on a German it'd be more gone build. Right. And so I often tell the kids about that and we talk about, you know, who that person was and all that stuff. Her name is Clara. And and so we're doing that one time doing the ancestor grace one time. And one of the younger kids says I'm thankful today for my ancestor Gandalf, because I know that if I ever have to face a Balrog, I'll know what to do. So fun, stuff like that. And of course we do the trick or treating too. And I emphasize with the kids that Solomon is. The real important and sacred recognition of our ancestors and celebration of our ancestors. And it's also all the fun stuff of Halloween, of trick-or-treating and candy and ghosts and, and stuff like that. And they're quite, they're quite good if you asked them, you know, you know, what's, what is Halloween? Oh, it's this fun stuff we do. And it's stuff we do around sound. And so in is the, the sacred part, the meaningful part and the fun part and Halloween is just the fun part with a lot of candy. So, so anyway, that's the whole wheel of the year that, that we celebrate and all prey listener, all of those, there's longer descriptions with additional things on on the webpage, on the blog. I have a central link. That's under our powerful Sabbats is the name of the thing. And on there is links to all that. Yucca: And we'll put that in the show notes Mark: thank you  Lilith: I have to, I have to interject here really quick. Well, while he was speaking, just now I got. Texts from my daughters. She just hit a deer with her car and she's panicking. She's okay. But she's panicking. So I'm actually gonna hop off for a minute. She's in North Carolina and I'm an Alabama, so there's not much she needs except for her mama for a minute to just talk to her on the phone. And and then I will hop back on if it's possible.  Mark: Sure.  Lilith: So I just wanted to make my excuses really quick and then I will get back on if I can as soon as she's calm. Yucca: Okay. Jon: Good luck with that best Mark: Yeah. Thank you. Lilith Jon: we one of the things that we do, one of the holidays that we have. In addition to the wheel, the years to go and see the Perseids in August, because that's a wonderful new year shower and it's not freezing cold. Like the Geminids are, you know, in, in about a week.  Yucca: We've been spotting them already, actually. Jon: oh yeah. Awesome. Yucca: So that's, we've had the nice, clear skies freezing, absolutely freezing, but they're, and they're definitely the geminids right. I can see, you know, where they're coming from in the sky. Jon: they're coming from. Right. See where the radiant is. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. One time. Oh jeez this is more than a decade ago. It was, it was the night of the Geminids. We didn't have a moon and I knew it was going to be really tough to get a bunch of young kids to go and sit still in the cold.. And so, so I said, all right, you guys, listen, you know, their kids are like, like six and four and, and two, and I'm thinking I don't know if this, I still look at we're in the middle of a town,. It's not horribly dark, but it's decently dark. It's not a big town. And I said, look, why don't we just go lay on the deck on the back deck? And maybe we'll see a couple, but at least we'll have gone out and tried. And they're like, nah. And they're like, all right, that'll be good. You know, it'll be good. And he'd get bundled up and we go out there and I'm thinking, I'm thinking this is going to last about six minutes maybe before they're too cold. And that's about how it went. But we were laying out there and all of a sudden this giant meteorite across, it lasted several seconds to cast shadows and wherever it was like, whoa. So yeah, sometimes you're lucky. You never know, Yucca: Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. Jon: but speaking, but the reason I thought of the Perseids was this past summer, we drove up to Lake Huron to see the Perseids. It's not that far from here and on the way there in the Thumb area of Michigan, it's a bunch of. Farm open farm areas and know cities and stuff like that. And, and we hit a deer hard and it was, it was a mess that we had to deal with the car is the car drivable? It's the middle of the night because we thought, you know, it's dark meat, yours. You want it to be dark. You want to go up there at like, you know, three in the morning or something. So it was like two 30, again, this is out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, it can be, it can be bumpy. It can be bumpy to hit a car. I had to take care of things with the deer. It was only Jon knew is an inch Navi for a DOE. And I wanted to offer some same some tobacco to thank it for its life. And I didn't have any, because we were in the other car. I have it in my car just in case something like this happened. And so we flagged someone down and I asked them if they had two things. I said, I was, I said, do you have that I could borrow a hunting knife and a cigarette and the guy and the guy said, yeah, we got a hunting knife right here. And I've got a, I've got a real good vape kit you can hit the here to calm you down. And I said, I said, okay, that won't work, but the knife will help. So thank you. So that was, that was just a few months ago. So,  Mark: Well, well, Well, the, another thing that we were going to talk about in terms of parenting as a pagan and specifically as a naturalistic pagan one, that's, you know, rooted in the science and in the empirically verifiable world pagans have, in some cases, very disparate values that the mainstream culture the, you know, the, the predominant kind of Christian values that are very shame-based and all that kind of stuff really are not the way the pagan community approaches things. How do you, how do you go about teaching or modeling Val, you know, your, your values with your kids? Know you wanna go first?  Yucca: Well, I think you said the keyword in there is the modeling,  Because people pay more attention, whatever age. Right. And remember, we talk about kids. Sometimes we talk about kids as if they're not humans, but they are right. They are, you know, there's still some brain development differences in size differences and things like that, but no people learn. They are people and people learn by what we do much more than what we say. And so trying to model that, and then again, miner are very young. But when appropriate talking about. But we try really hard not to be preachy about  it. Right. And actually my I'm despite doing a podcast, I'm not much of a talker. So it's usually my, my partner, who's much more of a charismatic words person is very good about, you know, sitting down and having a conversation about what happened and why we think or made the choices that we did. But we choose to really be very open and not do any of the, because we said so, but let's talk about this, let's explain it. And Hey, sometimes there are topics that, you know, we don't want to go too into detail with as young as the kids are, when it, you know, got to talk about things like sexism and you know, the violence in the world and things like that. But we try and go as far as we think they are able to handle at that time and never, ever lie about any of that. All right. We never do any of the let's make up a, a white lie or pretty lie to cover things up. Mark: Great. How about you, Jon?  Jon: Yeah, I, I, I agree. Yucca has covered a lot of the main points that I wanted to hit and say really a lot of it comes down to them noticing and paying attention much more to what you do than just what you say. And so, and so modeling is a very important part of that. As far as trying to think one of the, one of the, the honesty is a very important one as y'all can man. We didn't do, we do, we'd let the kids figure out the gifts for winter solstice and told them that if they ask questions, we will answer honestly and see if you can figure it out. And after they get to about, you know, five or six, they figure it out and we tell them, congratulations, you figured it out. That's excellent. You, you can't tell your brothers they have to figure it out on their own. So, so that's true. The the values, I think that, I think that a lot of it comes down to showing a respect for life, discussing why we have a respect for life, why these things are important, why we're doing things to make a better world. And and why that's, you know, that's important for everyone and that we are benefiting from people who have helped make this world better. And we are continuing to pay that forward to future generations. Yeah. A lot of times I've, you know, I've realized that you can tell an awful lot about a person's priorities from two things from their calendar and from your checkbook. And I try to make sure that that mine are in line and I point that out to the kids when it comes up for, when we talk about why we're doing something.  Mark: Yeah. that makes a lot of sense. While I I'm thinking that there's a, there's another sort of related topic about, you know, interaction with other families because you know, a pagan family. Just have a really different operating culture than say a Christian family where, you know, like an evangelical Christian family, where the father is the patriarch and the mother is the help meat and the children are property. Right. Jon: Right. Mark: so do you have experience with interactions like that or conflicts that may have arisen or techniques or approaches for avoiding those kinds of conflicts?  Yucca: That's rough. I mean, there's, there's several layers to that within our own family. We tend to, to be very picky about how we spend our time, like Jon was saying with the calendar. And when people in our lives are really toxic to be around, we choose not to be around those people. Right. And they're you know, there are some people who are, you know, close family members that sometimes we will make exceptions for. We actually talked about that last week. Right. Oh where my family is developmentally. We're so young as a family. And COVID has been such a huge chunk of that. Right? My, my youngest wasn't even walking when COVID started. Right. You know, let alone talking. So we just don't have the people who have been in our lives have been very, very select because of our value about just spending time with the people who are nourishing, but also not being around a lot of people because of the social distancing. So I don't know if that's something that maybe Jon you'd be able to speak to more with a wider range of, of ages. Jon: Yeah, a little bit. I, I think that it comes down to the basic fact that I wish I had a good way to make things perfect. The nice in that kind of situation. And I don't I ha I can I just like, just like you had mentioned, you know, there's things we can do to, to help make things as good as possible. And one of them that I've found is to be clear, right, from the start to say, look, this, this is what we celebrate and why I, you know, I, I, I don't think that these things are real and, and if that's going to be pushed, then you know, we're not going to just let that be pushed on our kids and not say something about it or change something or enforce boundaries. At the same time, I've found that being clear and honest and nice, and kind about that situation from the start really. Keep things from getting bad. Usually I'm a good example. My parents, my parents are devout Catholics and, and early on, I explained to them that we weren't. And and after some time, you know, I would say, look, this is how we're doing things and raising the kids. And if you want to give us gifts, that's fine. But these are, these are the holidays. And we'd appreciate it. If you didn't give them a Jesus filled Christmas card on the 25th. And so, and so actually with only a little bit of bumpiness at the start, very little, my parents were like, oh, well, you know, the kids are more important and we want things to be good. And so they have done a great job of really helping us celebrate our holidays and. And not pushing that hard at all. The, at one time I got a phone call from my mom in you know, the first week of April or so. And she said I think isn't something coming up. I think it's Esther when's Esther. And I said, no. Okay. All right. And I realized, this was my fault. This was completely my fault. I sure I've mentioned it and things like that. But so what I did was I made up a nice little nice little one page thing that described who will the year describe each holiday and the basic themes and and gave that to her and let her have it tacked up at the house and all that kind of stuff. And that has really helped. I've called it. Grandma's cheat sheet. I'll send the link for that too, in case anybody wants it, it's really, really useful because I think that, I think that one of the most important things to make. Discussions go easier. The whole interaction go easier if that's possible. Sometimes it is sometimes it's not. And if it's possible to make it go easier, clear communication, honest, open communication from the start really, really helps. It's been nice to see that very often things can go well and they have in a lot of situations. A lot of people I care about even very fundamentalist Christians that I'm good friends with from college. Week we quickly see that things are very different and we're like, okay, this is how we can interact and do fun things together and, you know, and maintain our boundaries. And don't feel that either one is hurting things with the family and a place that wouldn't feel good. So, yeah.  Mark: Yeah. that's really interesting. It, it occurs to me as you say that, that sort of the Trump card for dealing with parents, his grandchildren, because they're gonna want access to grandchildren under pretty much any circumstances. So you can set some conditions and, you know, they'll most grandparents I think will go along with it. Jon: And a lot of times that kind of conflict can start even sooner than that. You're certainly right. That's, that's the, that's the big thing. But I don't know how many times I've seen people have a wedding that was a very Christian wedding because their parents said you have to have a very Christian wedding and neither the person believed that didn't want anything to do with it. And they kind of went through it and I'm like, no, you guys, this is your wedding. You can do it the way you want. Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: Hm. So another topic that we had discussed or mentioned that we wanted to discuss was involving kids in specific practices. Like, and this is one that I see a lot of parents ask about, especially when they're just coming into paganism is how do I get my kid involved with. With ritual, right? How do I do this in a way that isn't going to make them be like, Ooh, mom, dad, or feel forced, or, you know, so is there Jon, is there any advice or any, you know, little gems of wisdom that you've come across? Jon: I can think of a few things. First of all, I want to echo what Lilith mentioned is it makes a huge difference. What age the kid is when you. But all needs start as young as possible with the kid. If the kid can walk, they can carry something in a ritual. Another one is to make these rituals kid friendly. You don't have, don't be standing around in a circle for 45 minutes while someone reads you know, some big, long thing. The kids aren't going to like that make them very kid-friendly because, because really that's, what's important. I, I talking with, you know, there's all kinds of different people. There's all kinds of different pagans. And I, I have to remind myself sometimes that I, I mean with me, I try to make every decision based on. The guide of trying to think, okay, what can I do here? That will be the best for future generations, regardless of my own convenience, regardless of what's easiest right now, regardless of all those kinds of factors. And when you look at things that way, a lot of things change. And one of the things that changes is that kids become extremely important. They are the next generations. They're the ones that are going to pass things along to other people. And and to have a spirituality that is reality-based and is beneficial and wants to help future generations means that your first concern has to be kids above. If you did this ritual, right? If you felt personally fulfill there, or if you're having your enough transcendent, mystical experiences or whatever, the kids are a lot more important than if you feel personally inspired and one with the universe all the time. And so when I keep that in mind, I want to make the rituals so that the kids can enjoy them in and get something out of them. Not so that I feel I've done the ritual perfect. That no one messed up. Right. It's okay to mess up. That's perfectly fine. You're making it fit the kid. So if you start early on you can get the kid involved with the rituals. If they see you're enthused, then they're a lot more likely to be enthused. As, as a little as mentioned, it can be difficult as if they, if you're trying to get them into stuff. When they're older, it can be difficult to keep them involved with stuff when they get older, for instance a daily practice. I have a daily practice, a daily practice that I go through every morning as the sun come, usually as the sun comes up or a route that the eye is not work that well to pass that along to the kids at their ages, it takes, you know, a certain amount of time and, and discipline and stuff like that. That's really not there for the kid when they're getting ready for school or something like that. And that's fine. I found in that case that, you know, I really don't want to push it because the last thing you want to do is make them reject things and be bitter and not want to do so. So it's, it's a, it's a tricky balance to, to, to try to see and try to feel when you can say, okay, let's do this. Okay. Let's do this to the, to the point where, okay, it's not working. Okay, fine. We're we're gonna, you know, do something else that the kid likes or something like that. So again, no, No perfect way I can think of that makes everything work. It's just a lot of effort and balancing and enjoyment. Really. You want to have fun? That's one of the really neat things about kids is that they give us adults an excuse to be silly and have fun. There's a lot of things that I do with the kids that if I was doing alone, everyone would be like, society would be like, what is, what is he you know, we should check on this guy. It really wouldn't be as much fun anyway. And so a lot of this, a lot of this stuff falls into that category.  Mark: Yeah. And, and I think, I mean, part of what I've seen also is that. Along with that idea of, you know, not, not having someone drone on for 45 minutes while people standing around, around in a circle with their feet hurting is having a different set of rules for kids, especially young kids when it comes to rituals. I mean, it isn't fair to expect a toddler to stand still. That's not what they do. They run around and they're loud, even when the ritual calls for people not to be loud. And to me, the solution to that is not to remove them and have some childcare person somewhere. In most cases, I mean maybe in some cases that would be okay, but I think you tolerate it. I think you, you, you get them accustomed to being in a ritual circle just by letting them run around and, you know, pick up and hand you sticks or whatever it is that they feel like doing.  Jon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if you can come up with something that they can do as part of the ritual, then that's great that they it's really good to get them involved. I don't know how many times I've had. You know, carry the water around the circles, sprinkling water and carry the incense around for the direction of air and things like that. They like the hands-on things. That's what works a lot better with them.  Mark: Sure. Yeah. It's like, you know, being the, the flower bearer at a wedding, you know, kids love that kind of thing. It's a real job. You're, they're doing a real thing. That's actually helping with the ceremony and it's theirs  Yucca: yeah.  Mark: and it requires no skill.  Jon: Yeah.  Mark: handfuls of rose pedals. That's all you gotta do.  Jon: One thing that I really like about the wheel of the year when it comes to rituals and ideas and concepts, is that it gives us a structure to do, to hit a certain concept, a certain. Every year, because we can't teach something to the kids. Once it takes repetition over and over and over for them to pick something up. And, and the you know, the fact that we come around to in bulk again, you know, it gives us a chance to really teach those things.  Mark: sure. Do you have any like ritual products that persist for a year and then get burned or buried or something and then recreated?  Jon: So sometimes we do, we don't have a tradition of anything that we always do that on. But we, but for, but like, like a certain arrangement of cattails or something like that, a cat tail weaving or something like that, that we'd burn at and maybe make make during the summer when the cat tails are up, you can't make that thing. And in bulk, of course you all, you could, you could go across the ice and get some, we have actually done that. I don't have a set practice that I do every year like that, but that's one of those things that I think is a great idea, could work really well for some families. And I would, I would recommend it. Mark: Hm.  Jon: I've heard it worked well on a number of cases at least.  Mark: Well, I'm thinking about my tradition. For example, of, I go for a walk in a cemetery on Halloween day, every year, an old Victorian cemetery, beautiful old cemetery out here and there. And I, I break a Sprig of a huge tree or a Cedar tree that then dries on my ultra for a year. And I use it to light the Sao and fire the following year.  Jon: Oh yeah. That sounds really nice.  Mark: So, I mean, it's just, it's a little thing, but it's the kind of thing that kids can help you with, you know, find me you know, find the twig that we're going to break off of this tree, you know, and then thank the tree and you know, this is going to be what lights our fire next year, but it has to sit and dry because we can't light it this year. It's it's too green.  Jon: Yeah, that sounds great. And it reminds me of another thing that as human beings, we have such a, such an emotional connection to fire and when, and that's why we have it in our rituals. And I think it's a great thing to have in our rituals for, for a number of reasons. And kids are humans and they especially connect with that. If you can do things like that, they, they really like, you know, even, even just candles and certainly a fire in the middle of the circle or something like.  Mark: Yeah. Yeah. A fire is a very energizing event for people. And it's, to me, it's very interesting, you know, it's like, if you, if you light a fire on the beach, you will meet strangers because they will come to the fire. They're just, they're attracted by that, that flame. And they come over. It's it's such an interesting thing. Well, it seems as though Lilith is not going to be able to rejoin us here. I was glad that we got to interview her for as long as we did. Yucca. Are there other topics that we had identified that we haven't covered? Yucca: Well, we do have the topic of co-parents and it sounds like Jon, you and I, we both are, it sounds like our partners are both, you know, a hundred percent in with us on it. But this is something that may not always be the case for families. Right. And when you, and having split families in all of the different kinds of arrangements can be challenging on just in general, but especially when adding in different, just whole approaches to life.  Mark: Right, right.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Yeah. I can see that being very, very challenging. I mean, presumably some, if you marry somebody you're at least tolerant enough to not feel that their, their beliefs are an abomination.  Yucca: Yeah. Well, sometimes people change over time though. Right? They, they realize, you know, this is where we were when we met, but I'm not that way anymore. And Hey, we have three kids together. Right. Or whatever it is, or, or they're kind of cool with it, but their parents are real pushy and you know, they don't Jon: And they're not standing up to them. Right,  Mark: Or their church is, you know, very ideological and, you know, keeps telling them that they should not tolerate difference right. In their family.  Yucca: Yeah. Jon: Yup. Yucca: a. Jon: I don't have a huge amount to add there. I don't have a lot of experience in that area. The best I can say is to, in a case that's not too divergent, I guess, try to find what common ground you have and celebrate that. And then you know, and you can you know, work with the kid on the, on the rest themselves, you know, in discussion with the other parent and, and go from there. That's the best I can, I can come up with. I'm sure that that can be a very difficult situation in some situations.  Mark: Yeah, I'm sure it can.  Jon: Yeah, I think that I think that one of the areas that we, that you might be able to get a lot of common ground in is there is of science and critical thinking. A lot of times, even if, like, for instance, let's say someone was a. Liberal Catholic, right? When it comes to science, they're usually completely on board with that, even if they have a bunch of other supernatural things. And I found the wonder of the wonders of our universe and nature outdoors, especially with the younger kids, just to get them out in nature and, and experiencing that is something that really sidesteps a lot of the ideological stuff. And it's still very valuable. So that might be an area where you can get to the critical thinking might be a little bit trickier, but maybe not sometimes, you know, you can say, we want to teach critical thinking and we want people to test ideas and it, depending on how compartmentalize things are that might've actually worked fine. I bet I found critical thinking to be a major part of what I teach them.  Mark: Yeah.  Jon: Things like teaching them to watch and think about everything. Like when we're driving up to a traffic light and I can see the traffic, like in the other direction from the side, you know, and I can see it turn yellow. And and I say, okay, you guys, I'm gonna use magic powers to turn the light from red to green. Here we go. Magic powers, magic box, magic powers, magic powers. And the kids are like, whoa. And after a little bit where, you know, doing that a few times with kids get a little older, they're like you looked at the other thing and I'm like, yeah, I'm glad you figured that out. And I tell them exactly how it works and I'll, you know, do stuff like that all the time. So they can learn that people trick you and they will trick you with easy things that you can figure out if you watch. That's something that, you know, that might not be an ideological difference if you, you know, depending on the season,   I did want to mention one of the thing if I could and that's the tricky balance that we often have with regards to how much we guide them in a naturalist or a pagan path. And on one hand, you know, most of us are pretty progressive and a lot of us have come from households where we were really you know, brainwashed and indoctrinated in ways that encouraged us not to think critically and not to investigate other paths. I think that partly as a result of that, partly as a result of that, sometimes progressive people, pagans, especially seem to perhaps go too far the other way. And say, oh, I'm not going to, you know, try to move them in a certain direction. They can develop their own spirituality and decide for themselves what's true and not true and real and not real. And they can pick any path they want and I want to be mostly hands off.  And I think that there's an important balance there between guiding and teaching, critical thinking and teaching that some beliefs are incorrect, harmful, and are pushed in society. And that if we don't have critical thinking, and if we don't seriously examine the impact of beliefs, then it's easy for people to be taken in and harmed and society. by you know, certain approaches, these approaches that we're using are I found them in many others have found them to be wonderful, fulfilling, and life-giving, and I don't want to fail to give my child a chance to have that. I think that I think that we can go too far and trying to be hands off. You can go too far and trying to be hands on, of course, but I don't think that's as big a threat to us because of our past. And a lot of cases, imprinting giving them a foundation is not the same thing as indoctrination. And I think it's okay as a loving parent to give them an option for a solid foundation with real values based on reality, evidence, critical thinking and practices that work in ritual and and, and holidays and things like that. I think that's, I think that's okay. I think it's okay to say that out loud. I think it's okay to do it. And it's, like I said, it can be a tricky balance. But I've seen too many times when people say parents say, oh, I don't want to force my spirituality on them. And they give them almost nothing. And the kids grows up with a very empty and bare approach to spirituality and says, oh, you know, this fundamentalist group down the road is having a party. And so, you know, I'm going to go and join them. And pretty soon this is a homophobic racist, you know, anti-abortion protest or type person. I've seen it too many. Mark: I think that's really well said, Jon. We, I mean, one of the things that is delightful about being a pagan is that our practices are in many cases fun, even when they're solemn there's a pleasure in doing them. It feels meaningful. It feels important. There's a, there's a momentousness to to what our rites feel like. And I think that that's, you know, that's the sort of thing that is going to keep kids wanting to do those kinds of practices over time, you know, living a life that embraces happiness and pleasure, living a life that is kind and receives kindness. You know, I, I think if you grow up with those experiences, it's going to be very hard to get drawn into some context that is not so much about that.  Jon: Yeah, I think so. And I've had to talk with the kids a number of times you know, different kids at different times when they get really concerned because several of their friends are telling them that they're going to be tortured forever because they're not in such and such church. And, and that is a real threat that they can, you know, be harmed by that kind of an abusive threat system and giving them the defenses against that, to understand that that's not real and they don't have to be afraid of it is good parenting. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I agree. I agree. I think that's a great note to sign off on actually. Because obviously what we want for the kids in our community is good parenting. More than anything else, I mean, that is just so important. Thank you, Jon. And thanks Yucca for taking an interviewee chair this week.  This has been a great conversation and there's, I know there's so much more to be said about parenting generally. I mean, it's a never ending, never ending conversation for parents. But I hope that our listeners have had a chance to get a bit of a peak inside some naturalist pagan households with kids and how they're conducting their, their rituals and observances and talking about their values. And welcome your questions. If you have any further questions by all means, email thewonderpodcastQ@gmail.com. That's the wonder podcast Q s@gmail.com. Thank you, Jon. And thank you Yucca, and thanks to Lilith who had to leave early. It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much.  Jon: Thank you. And it was an honor to be here. Yucca: Thanks everyone.  

Producers: Hazel Stark & Joe Horn Host: Hazel Stark Night in the northern tier comes much earlier in the winter than in the summer. For an added bonus, during our colder months we also happen to have the best shot at getting crystal clear skies thanks to the lower humidity. This week, in fact, you can watch the Geminid meteor shower at a conveniently early time and revel in the abundance of “earthgrazers,” or meteors that barely enter our atmosphere at a very shallow angle and create notably long, bright, colorful tails as a result. Photos, a full transcript, references, contact information, and more available at thenatureofphenology.wordpress.com. The post The Nature of Phenology 12/7/19: Geminids first appeared on WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives.