Podcasts about Ursa Major

JOIN PATREON FOR AD-FREE LISTENING & MORE PERKS: patreon.com/sleepandsorcery Celebrate the Summer Solstice with friends, loved ones – and even some fairies – in tonight's folklore-inspired bedtime story for kids. Sleep & Sorcery presents Arthur's Corner: Magical Bedtime Stories for Young People. Inspired by fantasy, fairytales, and folklore, and using guided visualization, this bedtime story is especially designed for children but can be enjoyed by listeners of all ages. You can find more bedtime stories – for any age – at Sleep & Sorcery… this story is called The Longest Day. In tonight's folklore-inspired bedtime story, it is the longest day of the year: the Summer Solstice. You soak up the sunshine with your friends and family, enjoying the gifts of summer, before staying up late to watch the sunset. Soon the fireflies come out, along with some magical surprises. THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING ME THROUGH 100 ORIGINAL STORIES!   Music & Sound: A Glimpse of Avalon by Flouw, Ursa Major by Deep Inside, Via Epidemic Sound   Sleep & Sorcery is a folklore and fantasy-inspired sleep series. My name is Laurel, and I'll be your guide on tonight's fantastical journey. Sleep & Sorcery is one part bedtime story, one part guided meditation, and one part dreamy adventure. Follow along with my voice for as long as it serves you, and when you're ready, feel free to let go of the story and relax into sleep.     ✨Order the Sleep & Sorcery book!✨ https://www.crossedcrowbooks.com/shop-crossed-crow-books/p/sleepandsorcery Sleep & Sorcery: A Collection of Enchanting Bedtime Stories, Rituals, and Spells for Meaningful Rest, unlimited paperback now available from Crossed Crow Books. Limited edition hardcover is available as well. The book features many of your favorite stories, plus exclusive writings and a suite of rituals to enrich your resting and waking life. Stories like mine are best with headphones! For comfort and security when drifting off to sleep, SleepPhones are the best thing I've found. They won't fall out like earbuds, and they're not bulky or uncomfortable like most over-ear headphones.   Learn more: https://www.sleepphones.com/?aff=846     Now you can support Sleep & Sorcery on Patreon. Pledge a monthly donation to Sleep & Sorcery, which helps me keep making original bedtime stories for you. In return, you can qualify for exclusive supporter benefits, like episode scripts, bonus sleepy readings of classic literature, merch discounts, and giveaways. I hope you'll consider supporting me on Patreon, so I can continue doing what I love.   Visit patreon.com/sleepandsorcery to learn more and pledge your support.     Instagram | Twitter | Insight Timer | YouTube | Newsletter Signup   ✨Sleep & Sorcery MERCH✨ Show your love of Sleep & Sorcery – or get some gifts for the sleepy sorcerer in your life with this cozy collection of apparel, dream journals, die-cut stickers, and home goods. Visit https://bit.ly/shopmyth.   Want to get in touch? sleepandsorcery@gmail.com   Disclaimer: some links in this description are affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission if you decide to purchase the product, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting my work!  

Ursa Major has been selected by Stratolaunch to develop and deliver 16 upgraded Hadley H13 engines. The UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has awarded a £5.15 million satellite contract for the Orpheus space domain awareness mission to Astroscale UK. Rocket Lab adds two new missions to Electron's 2025 launch manifest, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Craig Smith, Executive Director at Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority. You can connect with Craig on LinkedIn, and learn more about the Oklahoma Air and Space Port on their website. Selected Reading Ursa Major Awarded $32.9M Contract to Deliver 16 Hadley's Dstl announces Orpheus satellite mission contract - GOV.UK Rocket Lab Adds Two New Missions to 2025 Electron Launch Manifest, Schedules First Launch in Four Days' Time Millennium Space Systems Delivers Pair of Space Vehicles to Launch Site for NASA's TRACERS Mission Logos Space Services Raises $50 Million From USIT in Series A Round - Via Satellite NASA Seeks Commercial Feedback on Space Communication Solutions Skylo Sets Sights on Asia and Certifies Samsung Exynos 2500 as Analysys Mason Hails Turning Point for Satellite D2D Telespazio UK announces successful completion of critical phase in ALIGN programme ESA - Proba-3's first artificial solar eclipse T-Minus Crew Survey Complete our annual audience survey before August 31. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pour l'épisode de cette semaine, Anouk et Eva Bouillaut m'ont ouvert les portes de leur Chocola(sis)terie. Parce que oui, Ursa Major c'est avant tout une histoire de famille ! Chez elles, la gourmandise s'hérite, et elles se remémorent avec émotion le placard magique, gourmand et sucré qui ne désemplit jamais chez leur grand-mère.Avec leur troisième soeur Julie (aux commandes de tout l'univers visuel et de la communication d'Ursa Major), elles ont donc imaginé une chocolaterie qui mêle une autre de leur passion de longue date : l'espace. Ici, les planètes se croquent et les lunes fondent sur la langue… et nous régalent ! Alors pour découvrir tout ça, rendez-vous au 75 rue Sedaine dans le 11ème arrondissement de Paris.Au menu de cet épisode :

This episode we look at time and direction and the influence of geomancy--theories of Yin and Yang and a little bit of how people viewed the world through that lens.  For more, check out the blog page:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-127 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 127: Time and Direction in Ancient Yamato   Officers of the court stood in the pavilion.  The soft trill of water could be heard trickling from one reservoir to the next.  They watched closely, as the figure of a court official, one hand out, pointing at a measuring stick, slowly rose along with the water.  Eventually, the figure's outstretched arm indicated a line with a single character next to it. On cue, one of the officials began to beat the large drum that was nearby.  The rhythm was slow, but deliberate, and the sound was loud, echoing out to the mountains and back, showering the nearby palaces in a layer of sound.  Across the palace, people briefly paused, took note of the number of strokes, and by that they knew the time of day.  Without giving it much more thought, they then went about their business.     This episode we find ourselves partway through the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou—his formal reign started in 668, but he had been pretty much running things since the death of Takara Hime in 661 and, arguably, for much longer than that.  668, however, saw Naka no Oe ascend the throne in his new palace of Otsu no Miya, officially making him the sovereign.  And although 645 is the year Naka no Oe and others had started the Taika Reforms, it's not wrong to say that  that 668 and the start of Naka no Oe's official reign, brief as it would be, that he finally had the ability to bring it all together and set it into stone. We've talked about many of these reforms before on the podcast, but a lot of them were associated with the continued push to incorporate continental concepts into Yamato society, covering everything from court ranks to how to organize agricultural production.  Of course, there was also Buddhism, which we've covered numerous times, but there were other concepts coming across as well, including ideas about history and writing, as well as ancient STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  This included architects, and new ways of constructing buildings.  And it also meant ways of seeing the world, including things like directions and time.  And this is what I want to focus on this episode, taking a break from the primary narrative to spend some time on what we might call Yamato concepts of science, especially how they thought about the structure of reality organization of time and the universe – their cosmology, as it were.  After all, to better understand the reasoning and motives of people, it is helpful to try and understand how they saw the world, not just for translation—understanding what it means when an entry says something like the “Hour of the Horse” on an “Elder Wood” day—but also for understanding how things actually worked in their eyes.  For instance, the idea of ”auspicious” and “inauspicious” times and directions is something that most listeners probably don't incorporate much into their daily lives, but the Chroniclers and the people of Yamato absolutely did, so understanding concepts like this can sometimes be the key to unlocking why historical people may have taken the actions that they did.  In particular, we'll talk about things like yin and yang, five elements, ten stems and twelve earthly branches, and what all this meant for the Yamato ideas of organizing time and space. A large part of Yamato cosmology is tied to something called Onmyoudou, literally the Way of Yin and Yang, which in the organization of the Ritsuryo state fell under a particular ministry, known as the Onmyo-ryo.  If you've heard of Onmyoudou before, you likely have heard about the “Onmyouji”, practitioners who studied the flow of yin and yang—and who could reportedly do miraculous things with that.  A 10th century Onmyoji, the famous Abe no Seimei, is perhaps the most well-known, with numerous stories about his exploits, which were then turned into a fantastical series of stories by the award-winning author, Baku Yumemakura.  Those were then turned into Manga, movies, and more.  Abe no Seimei is like Japan's Merlin, or Gandalf, at least in the stories. Back to the organization we mentioned, the Onmyou-ryou was responsible for Yin-Yang theory, or Onmyou-dou, which included divination, as well as astronomy, or Tenmon-dou, and calendar making, or reki-dou.  While some of this was based on straight up natural observances, a lot of it was explained through older concepts of Yin and Yang theory.  Today, you might encounter a lot of this in the theories around Feng Shui, and this can also be referred to as “geomancy”, or earth divination.   To give a broad overview of Onbmyoudou and its origins, it is part of a large corpus of concepts focused around a concept of energy known as qi or ki—which forms the basis for a lot of Chinese and Japanese cosmology, or their concept of how the world worked.  Much of this is tied up in concepts that are modernly broadly called “Daoist” or associated with so-called Daoist practices.  That term can be a bit misleading, as strictly speaking, Daoism refers to the teachings of the legendary philosopher Laozi, in his book, the Dao De Jing, as well as works attributed to later authors, like the Zhuangzi. There is some controversy as to when and to what extent this strict Daoism came to Japan.  However, in the broader sense, the category of “Daoist “ practices includes an entire panoply of various folk practices, including concepts of Yin and Yang – and in the archipelago, many of these concepts were imported with the various books that people had acquired on the mainland, even if they weren't strictly tied to Daoist religious practice.  For example, there were aspects that were borrowed by various Shinto shrines, and others formalized into ritual practices under the new government.  And of course many of these became linked to various Buddhist teachings and practices, as well.   But what did this actually look like in concept and practice for practitioners of Onmyoudo in Japan? Let's start with the idea of yin and yang.  One of the earliest references comes from the Zhou Yi, the Zhou Book of Changes, the core of what we also know as the Yijing, the Book of Changes.  Here we see the idea that the universe began with a single force that split into two, and those two forces make up all of creation in one way or another.  Yin and Yang, or In and You—or even Onmyou—refer to these forces, which are characterized as shadow and light, moon and sun, female and male, cold and hot, etc.  So these forces are opposites, but it should be noted that they are not necessarily good or evil.  After all, too cold is just as bad as too hot.  Likewise too much darkness is as blinding as too much light. As most people have seen, yin and yang are often depicted as a circle divided into two comma shapes, with a smaller circle in each.  One side is white with a black circle and the other is black with a white circle.  This is the “Tai Chi” diagram, but the diagram itself doesn't seem to have been depicted like this prior to the 11th century, at least that we are aware. But the concepts are much older.    Now if you've heard of the Yijing, where it came from is something of a mystery.  One theory is that it started as a written account of folk wisdom, and may have even given instructions for things like when to plant and when to harvest, based on changes in various heavenly phenomena.   But overall it is organized into 64 chapters, each associated with a particular hexagram.  Start with a line, that can either be a full line – representing yang – or a broken line representing yin.  Stack three of these on top of one another and you get a trigram.  If you chart out every single possible combination of yin and yang lines, you get 8 unique trigrams, sometimes referred to as the baqua.  Stack two trigrams atop one another and you get a hexagram, a combination of 6 lines that can have 8 by 8 or 64 unique variants.   It's theorized that the Yijing resulted from taking all of the collected sayings or aphorisms and bits of advice and cataloguing and dividing them into 64 chapters, each one associated with a given hexagram. Going further, each line of the hexagram is  associated with particular line in Yijing, and various meanings are ascribed to it and its association.  It's a complex and fascinating system and I don't have time to go into it fully, but I would note that this was used as a form of divination—yarrow stalks or other means of random lot drawing that gives you a binary outcome – zero or one, yin or yang – could be used to determine the six lines of any given hexagram.  This, in turn, would reference a chapter in the Yijing which was then interpreted as a sign as to how to read a given situation that you might find yourself in. What's really important to understanding the worldview of the time is this idea, represented by the hexagrams in the Yijing, that you can encompass everything about the universe by making and cataloging different amounts and arrangements of yin and yang. It's a science, as it were – a systematic approach to understanding the differences in the world by breaking it into component parts.    And if this seems preposterous, consider this:  today we understand that all things are made up of tiny atoms.  And these atoms are all made up of the same material—protons, neutrons, and electrons.  And yet, how those atomic particles combine create atoms with wildly different qualities.  And how those atoms then combine into molecules and so on and so forth describe how we explain everything around us.  So is it really so far-fetched? I'm not saying that we should suddenly start to figure out the measurements of yin and yang in everything, but if we want to understand how the people of the time saw their world, it may be helpful to hold an open mindand understand the assumptions that they were working from and where they came from.  As human beings, we naturally look for connections in the world around us, and this was no exception.  People would observe facts, know how that it worked, and often then would back into the reason for it.  This is a tale told across cultures, and we still see it, today.  At the same time, we've developed structured approaches to test out our theories, empirically. So for the moment, let's leave the trigrams and hexagrams, and talk about another idea that also gained traction as people were trying to figure out how the world worked.  This was the five elements theory also known as Wuxing, or Gogyou, in Japanese.  The five elements in this case are Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.  Some may notice that these, along with the sun and the moon, are used in Japanese for the days of the week:  Nichi (sun), getsu (moon), ka (fire), sui (water), moku (wood), kin (metal), do (earth). Buddhists, by the way, also had an elemental system with only four elements,  Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, possibly connected with some Greek influence, and brought along with Buddhist practice.  For now, however, let's focus on the five elements. The idea in wuxing is similar to that of yin and yang in that everything in creation is made up of these five elements in some degree and configuration.  Furthermore, there are creation and destruction cycles.  So fire creates ash, or earth.  Earth gives birth to metal.  Metal creates water—look at a cold piece of metal in a warm environment and see how the water droplets form on it, and imagine what that looks like without understanding humidity and how there could be water vapor in the air.  And then water creates wood, or plants—any farmer could tell you that without water the plants die.  And wood is where we get fire from. Of course, the reverse cycle is the opposite.  Fire eats the wood.  Wood drinks up the water.  Water rusts metal.  Metal tools plough the earth. And Earth can be used to douse fire. Finally, there is another cycle of weakening. ,. Because fire heats and weakens metal, metal chops down wood, the trees roots break up rocks, the earth soaks up water, and water likewise puts out or weakens fire. So the theory went, if these elements make up all matter, these relationships continue on a more complex scale in everything.  So if something was thought to contain a lot of “fire” element, then it would be potentially helpful if you needed “Earth” but destructive or at least weakening to metal and wood.  Properly accounting for these elements was important to achieve the results you were looking for, whatever that may be.   These were the kinds of things that were incorporated into traditional medicine practices, but also applied to auguries or divination about things like where and how to build a building.  Even today, Shrines will sell calendars that help people know the prominence of certain elements, and some folk remedies may look to balance elements, much as medieval European medicine was often designed to balance the four humors that ancient physicians believed were present in the human body. The chart of these five elements and their relationships is something you may have seen.  It is a five pointed star, often inside of a circle.  Of course this is also similar to a western pentagram, though typically drawn with the point of the star up, but it has nothing to do with Christian values or Satan, or anything similar.  Rather, it is just a way to represent these five elements, and you'll see it frequently in reference to Onmyoudou. The elements were used to categorize many different areas into groupings of five.  This includes grouping the various directions into five directions.  Of course, you may be wondering about that, since most societies usually mark four cardinal directions, and in this case, they did the same, but added the fifth as “center”.  And so you get things like the north is water.  It is related to cool, or cold weather.  It is represented with the color black. To the south, opposite of the north, is fire.  It is hot, and the color is red.  Of course, this probably doesn't take a huge leap to see the connections they drew: since these civilizations are in the northern hemisphere, the farther north you go, the colder it gets, and the farther south you travel, the warmer it gets, generally speaking, at least until you reach the equator. Meanwhile, the west was related to metal, and the color white, while the east was related to woods and forests, and the color…. Blue.  Alright, that last one, in particular, probably doesn't make sense to a lot of us.  After all, we likely associate blue with water, and wood, or trees, would be associated with brown or, possibly, green.  Well, in this case, it goes beyond that.  The north is water, but it is also associated with darkness—shorter days in the winter, and things like that Sothe association of north with black makes sense, but many also look at the ocean and don't necessarily see it as “blue”, or dark or even black, like Homer's famous “wine-dark sea”. Furthermore, although they have a word for it (midori), “green” was not a primary color in Japan, instead  considered more of a shade of “aoi”, or blue.  Even today they refer to a “green” traffic light as an “aoi shingo, not “midori” shingo.  So if you asked someone in the Asuka period to describe the wooded hills and fields, they would have likely used “aoi”.  And of course, we are missing the fifth element.  In the center we have the element earth and the color yellow. A lot of these different concepts were brought together during the Han period, when they were trying to syncretize all of the various philosophies and attempts to describe the world and bring them all together into a single system.  This meant that the Yijing, the wuxing theory, and others were mixed together with various other philosophies and theories of how the world work.  Things like the Shanhaijing, the Classic of Mountain and Seas, along with stories about immortals, the Queen Mother of the West, and more were all rolled together, and basically assumed to be true.  This included various real-world observations.  Therefore, there were many attempts to try and reconcile these various theories together. One of the other concepts, which we've discussed before, was the system of ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches.  We've mentioned this before regarding the sexagenary style of counting the years, but we'll recap here.  The ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches are concepts that go back to at least the legendary Shang period, and even show up in various bronzes Andit wasn't until later that they would be associated with other ideas.  The ten heavenly stems were each associated with one of the five elements, with each element being represented by a greater and lesser, or elder and younger, stem.  And then each of the twelve earthly branches were associated with animals—what we often call the Chinese Zodiac. We talked about how this applied to the calendar, in that it was used to track years in 60 year cycles, but also it was used to track days of the year.  The twelve earthly branches were also used for earthly directions.  The first, the rat, was in the north, and the order continued clockwise to the east, the south, west and then back to the north.  Now this means that the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west—all match up nicely with one of the twelve earthly branches, but as for northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest?  Those were all combinations of two branches.  So, for instance, the northeast was a combination of the ox and the tiger, or ushi-tora. Speaking of eight directions, where have we also heard the number eight come up recently? That's right: the eight trigrams, or bagua.  So each one of those trigrams, each representing a different concept, got associated with a direction as well.  This makes it easier to see where practices of geomancy came from.   You had a system with complex, overlapping associations between concepts and the physical world, and in the Tang dynasty, they used all of this  to understand not only  how things had happened, but also how the world would be in the future—in other words, they tried to use it to make predictions.  Hence the “mancy”. In the Yamato state, all of this became an official part of the government under the Onmyoryou: a branch of the government whose job is to make observations and figure things out from there, for the good of the state and the people.  They made observations of the heavens to figure out how the calendar should be aligned—which months should come at what time, and when there should be “leap months”, or intercalary months, to keep various astronomical phenomena in the correct seasons, which were also further divided up into 24 periods.  They also kept track of the movement of bodies like the various planets, because those planets were also assigned values, and thought to affect the flow of energy within this framework.  And so comets, storms, eclipses, and more were all important because of the theory that everything in the heavens impacted and were reflections of how things were happening on the earth.  Similarly, these various discussions of white animals and other omens were likely captured and catalogued by these officials as well, attempting to figure out what they meant. All of this also influenced things like how palaces, buildings, and even capitals, would be built and laid out.  For the palace, it was important the the sovereign be in the north, looking south.  In fact, many maps would have south at the top because that is how a sovereign would be viewing it, were it stretched out before them.  And one would need to consider various features, including mountains and streams, as all of those things carried various meanings, but it wasn't as simple as just finding the one thing that could affect a person.  As they observed differences they would also have to catalogue what happened and try to determine what the cause could be, based on their understanding of the world.  And in the archipelago this would also include an understanding of Buddhist and local kami-based wisdom and knowledge as well. One of the things in the Chronicles that inspired this episode was something I actually mentioned last time,  a record from 666  talking about Chiyu, a Buddhist priest of the Yamato no Aya family, who presented a south-pointing chariot to the sovereign, Naka no Oe.  this appears to be the same Chiyu from a similar record in 658, which also refers to him building a south pointing chariot.  So did it take him eight years, or is he just now presenting it to the sovereign?  And what, exactly, is a south-pointing chariot? Well, as the name implies, a south-pointing chariot is a two-wheeled chariot that always points south.  More appropriately stated, it is a wheeled device with a figure on top, much like a weather vane, which always points south.  This is usually described as the figure of a person or an official pointing in the appropriate direction.  This was a mechanical, rather than a magnetic compass. As the chariot, or carriage, is wheeled around, the two wheels spin.  The wheels themselves are independently connected to a series of gears.  If the wheels spin at the same rate, then their movement cancels each other out.  However, if one wheel turns more than the other, then it will cause the figure on the top to rotate.  Of course, as the chariot turns to the right, the left wheel, traveling along the outer diameter, will travel farther than the right.  This will cause the figure to turn counter-clockwise to the left, but from an outside observer's perspective, it will continue to point in the same direction, even as the chariot itself turns.  Turning to the left would cause the opposite effect. Though it may have been used earlier, there appears to be reliable written evidence of a South Pointing chariot starting from the third century.  The first one was based on much earlier stories of a similar device, but it is unclear if it was a chariot, some other device, or even just a legend that was told as historical fact.  From the third century on the design appears to have been continuously improved upon. I should point out that all we have is descriptions—we don't have any actual south pointing chariots, let alone diagrams showing how the mechanisms worked.  There is the possibility that it used a kind of differential gear to work automatically, but we don't have any actual evidence.  There are other theories that it may have required some kind of manual switch, so that it would attach to one wheel or the other as needed.  That would require that the chariot be moving in either a straight direction or turning in one particular direction, which seems rather unwieldy. I noted some of the problems with this, and even moreso in a place like Japan, where 70% of the terrain is mountains.  Up and down hills, along paths that are likely anything but the smooth, paved surface we have for roads today—and even those have plenty of irregularities and potholes that could throw off any such device. And if you want to use it for any real distance, then you have to factor in other things, including the curvature of the earth.  After all, with the earth being a sphere, any chariot traveling due west to east or east to west, other than at the equator, would have one wheel traveling farther than the other one.  Granted, at the scale we are talking about, it probably is all but negligible, and the rough terrain and simple slippage of what were most likely wooden gears probably entered a lot more variability than the earth's curvature. One of the other issues is that the chariot only points “south” if you set it up to do so.   And if you know that, well, why do you need a south-pointing chariot?  Ultimately, it seems that this is more of a novelty item, good for impressing crowds and demonstrating some engineering principles, rather than an actual, useful invention.  After all, it was forgotten about and recreated multiple times, often centuries apart.  Had it been a truly useful invention, it probably would have been kept in constant use.  Meanwhile, I suspect that there were a fair number of farmers and others who knew that you could more easily and reliably use the sun and stars, as long as the weather was clear. There is also some evidence of an understanding of magnetic compasses since at least the 2nd Century BCE.  Early Han sources suggest that a spoon made of naturally magnetized ore could be placed on top of a polished bronze surface, and it would align itself north to south.  We don't have any actual surviving examples, however—there are later versions that you can find, where the plate is divided up into various directions, and then a magnetized “spoon” is placed on top, but nothing has actually come from Han tombs.  Furthermore, this seems to mostly be for geomantic purposes.  A more practical compass, with a magnetized needle, seems to have been developed by the 11th century, which could then be used for actual navigation. By the way, the “spoon” as a compass pointer may be in reference to the “Big Dipper” constellation, which was envisioned as a spoon, or ladle, in shape.  The seven stars were often used in geomancy, likely because of their importance, at least in the northern hemisphere, of pointing to the north.  So there's some thought that the “needles” of these early compasses weren't litterally  spoon shaped, but symbolically representive of the Big Dipper or the Northern Ladle.  Quick astronomy lesson, here.  If you are in the northern hemisphere, particularly from the 35th parallel to the north pole, you can see the seven stars that make up the constellation or asterism we know as the Big Dipper.   In English we sometimes also refer to this as Ursa Major, though technically the familiar seven stars are just a part of that larger constellation.  In Japan, the same constellation is often referred to as Hokuto Shichisei, the Seven Stars of the Northern Ladle.  It can be seen further south, but parts of it may dip below the horizon during the autumn season. It is important for several reasons.  One is that it is made up of particularly bright stars, which you can generally see even when other stars may not be visible.  Second, its distinctive shape lends itself to being easy to find in the sky.  And finally, if you draw a line between two of the stars at the end of the “cup” of the ladle, you can follow that line to find Polaris or hokkyokusei, the north star, which means you know which direction is north- and once  you know that, you can use it to figure out any other direction.  And Polaris is less than a degree off of true north, making it even more accurate than most magnets, as the magnetic pole can be quite different, depending on its current position, and magnetic north changes over time as the magnetic field around the earth fluctuates. That said, this was not necessarily the case in ancient times.  Four thousand years ago, the star closest to true north would have been the star Thuban, in the constellation Draco, a star that most of us probably haven't heard of.  Polaris, in the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear, also known as the Little Dipper) apparently took over as the north star around 500 CE.  However, even before then, the mouth of the dipper could still be used to indicate north.  In fact, if you draw a line between two of the stars in the back of the constellation, then you also end up finding Thuban.  So even if the north star itself wasn't accurate, finding the dipper would still help you orient yourself, especially if you can find true north during the day and then compare that with the constellation at night. Which helps to understand why astronomy, or Tenmondou, was so important in the Onmyouryou.  Though it wasn't just a study of stars, but of the way of the heavens in general.  And the changes in the heavens, brings us to another important concept—the flow of energy across the seasons.  From the bright days of summer, filled with sunshine and yang energy, to the dark yin energy of winter's long, cold nights. It wasn't enough to just know what happened, and where, but when was also important. Obviously you need to know when to sow seeds, flood the fields, and harvest the rice.  Beyond that, though, you have other concepts, such as how the the day and hour of an event could be symbolically important. And of course, all of these had their own associations with various concepts of the flow of yin and yang energy. Now knowing the year, the month, and even the day is largely just a matter of counting.  But let's talk about something a little more tricky:  How do you know the hour? This brings us to the vignette at the top of the episode, about the clepsydra, or water clock, that Naka no Oe is said to have built. Now we talked about some of the fountains and similar things that have been discovered in the Asuka region back in episode 118.  One thing that they believe they also found evidence of is something called a water clock, which is, as its name suggests, a clock powered by water.  It is typically depicted as a series of three or more boxes or reservoirs that each hold an amount of water.  Water is placed in the top reservoir, and then a hole towards the bottom is unplugged and it is allowed to drain into the box beneath.  The hole is of a particular size, and thus the water flows at a constant rate, filling up the container below, which has a similar hole, etc. all the way to a reservoir at the very bottom.  The multiple boxes mean that the water level in the intermediate boxes stays relatively constant, resulting in relatively consistent pressure and flow rate.  The last reservoir has a measuring stick on a float, so that as the last box is filled with water, the measuring stick raises up.  Since it is rising at a constant rate, one can use that to tell how much time has passed, regardless of anything else.  Thus you can keep time even at night. There is a record of Naka no Oe making one in the fifth month of 660, and he would have another one built in 671, which we will discuss later.  It is interesting that both of these inventions appear twice in the narrative—once during the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenchi Tenno, and once during the previous reign, that of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tenno.  In this case it is said that 671 is the first time that the water clock, or roukoku, was actually used. From what I can tell, there is nothing that definitively indicates that the Mizuochi site in Asuka was definitely the site of Naka no Oe's water clock.  There isn't much in the Chronicles telling us what it was like or where, exactly, it was built, and there wasn't anything found at the site naming it as the location of the roukoku.  However, the site is in a prominent enough place, with channels for water and a pavilion of some sort.  They definitely found evidence of pipes, remnants of lacquered wood, and reservoirs for water, among other things, that suggest something to do with moving water happened in this area.  So it seems a very strong choice, as it all fits with theoretical archeological reconstructions. A water clock like this is excellent for keeping accurate time at all hours of the day.  However, it does have a slight problem in that anyone without a clock is still going to have to use the sun and similar heavenly cues to know what time it is.  So how do you let them know?  Well, it turns out that the continent had an answer for that as well, and instituted various systems of drums and bells to let people know the hour.  In fact, some of these practices continued, in one form or another, right up to the modern day—with or without a water clock.  After all, the key was to give the community some sense of the passing of time, but I doubt anyone was using it to time things more precisely than a general idea of an hour—though they did have the concept of their own minutes and seconds.  Which brings us to just how they saw time back then. The system of time that the Chronicles seems to use also came over from the continent, where there appear to have been several different methods for telling time prior to accurate clocks.  And while there was an idea of dividing the entire day into twelve segments, the time as it was announced was not always consistent with those twelve segments, or hours.  Rather, time was based around the key parts of the day.  So, for instance there was sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight.  And while noon and midnight remain exactly twelve hours apart, sunrise and sunset change with the seasons.  So if you call out sunrise, and then divide the time between sunrise and noon into equal segments of time, the size of those time segments change with the seasons.  On top of that, because of the tilt of the earth and our slightly irregular orbit around the sun, the sun appears to “move” across the sky faster or slower throughout the year, with a difference of about 30 minutes total between the extremes.  This isn't going to affect most people's daily lives, but would have been noticeable to those taking accurate measurements. In ancient Han, this appears to have been common in cities and towns, with a watch that would call out as they progressed on their rounds at set points in the day and night, relying largely on heavenly cues—which I suspect did not lead to the most accurate timekeeping, but it was sufficient for what most people needed.  The telling of time in this manner was partly to help with keeping track of the time of day, but was just as much an announcement that the watch was on duty and a warning to would-be criminals. Now a water clock was an excellent device for keeping track of a standard, absolute time, such as it were, but it required constant maintenance.  If you already have a watch calling out the time, perhaps they can also keep the water clock properly set, but you did have to have someone constantly filling it up and draining it at known points of the day.  Plus there was the problem that you only knew the time if you could check it, and this wasn't like a clock tower or something similar. And so in 671 it appears that Nak no Oe instituted the continental idea of drums and bells to announce the time to the people—or at least to those at the court.  We don't have a record of exactly how they were, used, but we can infer from other sources on the continent, and what we do know that some tradition of announcing the time with drums and bells continued to be employed in Japan until the Meiji era, though perhaps not without interruption:  Temples and the like had bell or drum towers, and as the day progressed they would beat out the time.  It was not, however, telling time as we might think of it, with one stroke at the first hour, two on the second, etc..  In fact, in many ways they counted backwards, and they only counted 12 hours, not our modern 24.  By the Edo period it seems that it was common practice to toll the bells nine times at noon and at midnight.  From there, they would count down, with 8 bells at roughly 2 o'clock, 7 bells at 4 o'clock, and 6 bells at 6 o'clock.  That would be another issue.  From 6 o'clock, the number of bells that would be tolled continued to decrease, so that at 8 o'clock it would be 5 bells, then 4 bells at 10 o'clock.  It would then jump back up to 9 and start over again. Why these numbers were used for the different hours we are not entirely sure, and I have no idea if these numbers were the same ones used back in the 7th century—though it does seem to match similar continental traditions.  Even the hours themselves were known by the twelve signs that came to be associated with the zodiac:  the hour of the rat, the hour of the ox, the hour of the tiger, etc.  Midnight fell in the middle of the hour of the rat, and noon fell in the middle of the hour of the horse, with each hour being almost exactly 2 hours by modern reckoning. There were other systems in use as well.  One divided the entire day up by 100 and then each of those divisions by another 10.  The key was whether or not it was an absolute or relative measurement. Something like the roukoku would indicate an absolute measurement.  After all, the fall of water from one reservoir to another was not affected by the change in seasons—at least as long as the water didn't freeze.  The flow was constant, as was the measurement of time. For those using other forms of reckoning, such as celestial phenomena or even a sundial, things might be a bit less accurate.  This was especially true when using concepts like “sunrise” and “sunset”.  Still, through observing the changes over the year, people eventually figured out charts and rules to help reconcile absolute forms of measurement with solar time.  There were other methods for telling time, as well.  Perhaps one of the more pleasant was the use of incense sticks.  By the time of the Tang dynasty, incense in stick form was relatively common, and it had been noticed that sticks of incense could burn at a fixed rate.  This meant that you could use incense sticks like candles were used in Europe, counting down how far they had burned to tell what time it was.  If you were really fancy, you could make a single stick out of different types of incense, so that as it hit a new hour, the scent would change, alerting you to the time through your olfactory senses. Speaking of time, we are coming to the end of ours for this episode.  We do have some more information on this on our website, Sengokudaimyo.com, and we'll have links to those sections of the website accompanying our blog. Next episode we will focus more on the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou, from his seat at Otsu no Miya. Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

The names of the stars are a cultural mash-up. The names come from Greek, Latin, Arabic, and other cultures. And some names combine words from different languages. Two examples are the stars Tania Borealis and Tania Australis. “Tania” comes from an Arabic phrase that means “the second.” Borealis and Australis come from Latin, and mean northern and southern. Combined, the stars represent the second leap of the gazelle – a bit of skylore from Arabia. Skywatchers there saw three close pairs of stars as the leaps of a gazelle. All three pairs are at the edge of the modern constellation Ursa Major, the great bear. The “Tanias” are above the stars that form the outer edge of the dipper’s bowl. Tania Borealis is a single star that’s a good bit bigger, brighter, and heavier than the Sun. It’s at the end of the prime phase of life, so it’s undergoing big changes in its core. That’s causing its outer layers to begin to puff up to giant proportions. Tania Australis is a binary – two stars bound together by their mutual gravitational pull. One of the stars is similar to the Sun. The other is more than six times the Sun’s mass, and it’s already reached the “giant” phase of life. It’s puffed up to about 75 times the Sun’s diameter, and it shines about a thousand times brighter. So Tania Australis looks a bit more impressive than its northern cousin – the brighter half of the second leap of the gazelle. Script by Damond Benningfield

The United States Space Force (USSF) Space Systems Command's (SSC's) Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program office selected 12 vendors for $237 million spacecraft procurement through the Space Test Experiment Platform (STEP) 2.0. The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has awarded Ursa Major a $28.5 million contract for responsive space, hypersonic, and on-orbit propulsion. Lockheed Martin has completed assembly and testing of NASA's Orion Artemis II spacecraft, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest NASASpaceflight.com brings us the Space Traffic Report. Selected Reading Space Test Experiments Platform 2.0 To Bolster USSF Spacecraft Procurement AFRL awards Ursa Major $28.6M for hypersonics Lockheed Martin Completes Orion Development for Artemis II Mission to the Moon NASA Set to Fly South Korean CubeSat on Artemis II Test Flight New Polish Space Agency Chief Named After Abrupt Exit of Predecessor Aerospacelab Secures Groundbreaking Contract with JAXA through Mitsui Bussan Aerospace US space agency Nasa will not fund study on China's moon sample: American scientist Raft Awarded Another Space Force OTA to Advance Secure Data Transformations NASA's SPHEREx Space Telescope Begins Capturing Entire Sky T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Gröller was asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major with the University of Arizona 90 inch Bok telescope on Kitt Peak when he discovered a faint moving object surrounded by a tiny gas and dust cloud called a coma. May 19, 2028 comet C/2025 D1  (Groeller) reaches its closest point to the Sun some 14.1 times the Earth-Sun distance and thus sets the record for the comet which stays furtherest from the Sun.After rounding the Sun comet C/2025 D1 (Groeller) will head back into truly deep space perhaps never to return.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently worried about a world where only 30% of jobs become automated, leading to class tensions between the automated and non-automated. Instead, he predicts that nearly all jobs will be automated simultaneously, putting everyone "in the same boat." However, based on my experience spanning AI research (including first author papers at COLM / NeurIPS and attending MATS under Neel Nanda), robotics, and hands-on manufacturing (including machining prototype rocket engine parts for Blue Origin and Ursa Major), I see a different near-term future. Since the GPT-4 release, I've evaluated frontier models on a basic manufacturing task, which tests both visual perception and physical reasoning. While Gemini 2.5 Pro recently showed progress on the visual front, all models tested continue to fail significantly on physical reasoning. They still perform terribly overall. Because of this, I think that there will be an interim period where a significant [...] ---Outline:(01:28) The Evaluation(02:29) Visual Errors(04:03) Physical Reasoning Errors(06:09) Why do LLM's struggle with physical tasks?(07:37) Improving on physical tasks may be difficult(10:14) Potential Implications of Uneven Automation(11:48) Conclusion(12:24) Appendix(12:44) Visual Errors(14:36) Physical Reasoning Errors--- First published: April 14th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/r3NeiHAEWyToers4F/frontier-ai-models-still-fail-at-basic-physical-tasks-a --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman appeared at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Intelsat has become the first and only satellite operator to complete a satellite life-extension mission.  Sirius Space is collaborating with Ursa Major on the development of a medium-launch (ML) engine, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Oklahoma Lt Governor Matt Pinnell.  You can learn more about the Lt Governor on his website and more on the Aerospace States Association on this website. Selected Reading NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman supports a return to the moon, argues for a parallel path to Mars - CBS News Intelsat Completes Satellite Life-Extension Mission, Makes Space History  Ursa Major to expand partnership with Sirius Technologies  Sidus Space and Reflex Aerospace Sign MOU to Launch Joint Venture for Global Satellite Solutions Space ISAC LinkedIn Atlas V Kuiper 1 Karman Space & Defense Reports Full-Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spring is the time of year when the Big Dipper climbs higher into the northern sky, but the Big Dipper is not itself a constellation. It's only part of a much larger group called Ursa Major, the Great Bear. It also makes for a great guidepost to other stars and constellations!

Send us a textIn this episode of Friday Night Beers, Tom & Vince drink Ursa Major. This beer comes from Old Irving Brewing Co. in Chicago, IL. They drink it and somehow compare it to things like Zeus's affairs, constellations, the best bears of all-time, SNL 50, SNL legacy content and more. At the end, they rate this beer on a unique 1-5 scale. VINCE: 4.25 / 5 VincesTOM: 4.5 / 5 TomsInstagram: @friday.night.beersTwitter: @fnb_pod Threads: https://www.threads.net/@friday.night.beersEmail: friday.night.beerspodcast@gmail.com Theme music by Billy Hansa. Subscribe, rate and review the podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts!

The party meet up with Bruce to learn what his decision will be. As the party returns to the Ursa Major, they continue to try and figure out what methods can be used to stop Rhea and The Hegemony.TranscriptThank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a 1up Podcast Network Production.Be sure to leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify.Intro and Outro by Dustin CarpenterBackground Music by TabletopAudio.com and used under an attribution non-commercial license from creative commons.The tracks used include “Star Freighter” and “Distilled: Cooperage”.Additional background music provided through a royalty free license purchased through Humble Bundle.Tracks used include “Confliction Catharsis” and “I Don't Want to Do This Without You”We'll be back on March 1st with our next episode.See you out there, Beyond the Furthest Stars! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Big Bear is more than just the Big Dipper. The dipper outlines the body and tail of Ursa Major, the big bear. But the constellation covers much more territory. Some fainter stars outline the bear’s legs and head. But it’s the stars of the dipper that we most notice – not only because they’re fairly bright, but because they form an easy-to-see pattern. The dipper is an “asterism” – a group of stars that forms a discernible pattern, but that doesn’t form a whole constellation. An asterism can be part of a constellation, as the dipper is, or it can incorporate stars from two or more constellations. A couple of examples are in good view this evening. A small one is the Circlet of Pisces – five stars that outline the head of one of the fish of Pisces. The stars aren’t that bright, but they form a compact pattern, making the circlet easier to pick out. And it has a bright pointer: It’s close to the lower right of Venus, the “evening star.” On the other end of the spectrum is the Winter Hexagon or Winter Circle. It is outlined by seven stars – most of them among the brightest in the night sky. The pattern spans more than six times the width of your fist held at arm’s length. It ranges from Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, which is low in the southeast at nightfall, to yellow-orange Capella high in the east. It incorporates stars from six constellations – the largest of all the well-known asterisms. Script by Damond Benningfield

Thales Alenia Space lands a €862mn contract to develop Europe's first lunar cargo vehicle. The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission agree to partner on European Quantum Communication Infrastructure. The first of the two Airbus-built SpainSat satellites, SpainSat NG-I, successfully launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest is Chris Spagnoletti, Chief Product Officer at Ursa Major. You can connect with Chris on LinkedIn, and find out more about Ursa Major.  Selected Reading ESA's first lunar lander to be built by Thales Alenia Space-led consortium ESA and European Commission to build quantum-secure space communications network Airbus-built SpainSat NG-I satellite successfully launched NASA, Partners to Welcome Fourth Axiom Space Mission to Space Station L3Harris Technologies Reports Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2024 Results, Initiates 2025 Guidance U.S. Space Force Rapid Capabilities Office selects companies for tech accelerator - SpaceNews SiriusXM's SXM-9 Satellite Completes In-Orbit Testing and Begins Service- Business Wire Sidus Space Receives FCC Approval for Space-to-Space Data Relay Capability for LizzieSat ™ - Business Wire NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life's Ingredients T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 45 - Murdock and Marvel: 1997 Part 2 We've got a pretty quiet week in comic terms, partly because everything has gone completely to the dogs, and there is a lot less happening than there was a few years ago.  Still, I was surprised to find that 1997 had some pretty great things going on under the surface!  This is part 2 of the podcast. that will feature the year in Daredevil, the Spotlight story and the Takeaway for 1997.   The Year in Daredevil  Appearances: Daredevil #360-370, Daredevil #-1, Adventures of Spider-Man #10, Bug #1, Code of Honor #2-4, Punisher #17-18, Venom: On Trial #1-3, Marvel Valentine Special #1, Silver Surfer #128, Essential Spider-Man #2, Electra #-1, Ka-Zar #5 and 8, Uncanny Origins #13, Elektra #10-11 and 13, Marvel Heroes & Legends 1997 #1, Spider-Man El Hombre Arana #30, Spider-Man Unlimited #18, Thunderbolts #8 along with Daredevil/Batman, Untold Tales of Spider-Man '97, Kingpin, Origin of Marvel Comics Revised Edition and Son of Origins of the Marvel Comics Revised Edition graphic novels  Writing: Karl Kesel (#360-364), Joe Kelly (#365-370 and #-1)  Pencils: Cary Nord (#360-362, 364-365), Gene Colan (#363, -1, 366-368, 370), Ariel Olivetti (#369)  Inks: Matt Ryan (#360-362, 364-365, -1), Cam Smith and Paul Neary (#363), Al Williamson (#366), Bud LaRosa (#367-368, 370), Pier Brito (#369)  The year begins with Daredevil taking on the Absorbing Man as he tries to take down NYC with no Avengers to stop him. While that's going on, we learn why Foggy was so keen on partnering with Rosalind Sharpe – she's his biological mother.  And it's Sharpe who thinks Foggy and the firm need to play up Foggy's “best bud” status with Daredevil – which leads to work for the firm as Molten Man (Mark Raxton) seeks help with break-ins at Osborne Chemicals. Daredevil is reunited with the Black Widow as the pair take down the Grey Gargoyle.  We learn a bit about Rosalind's Sharpe's past after Daredevil saves her from an armed man in the firm's lobby then follow's her to visit the gangster responsible.   Next we get a multi-book story involving a new villainous, Insomnia – he's try to keep Daredevil and the rest of New York up at night. We eventually learn she's working for Mr Fear – who himself is causing trouble by enlisting a friend of Molten Man to release a gas during a Osborn Chemicals boardroom meeting which causes Raxton to freak out and start tearing the place apart.  Before we can get a resolution to Mr Fear, we get a Flashback issue of Daredevil (Daredevil #-1) in which Jack Murdock is taking his son Matt to college. This story, from writer Joe Kelly and art by Gene Colan and Matt Ryan is a lot of fun and will be our spotlight story of the week.  Returning back to present time, Daredevil must, once again, deal with Mr Fear's plotting – this time on Ryker's Island when Fear releases a gas to start a prison riot. Daredevil must then take on new and improved Gladiator. (what happened to fear???)  The year ends with a multi-book storyline called “widow's Kiss” that starts with Daredevil helping a firm client who's facing a hostile takeover by the Russians – only to have to tangle Omega Red. Black Widow comes to the aid of Daredevil only to then shoot him herself. She tries then save DD by bring him to Karen for help, before returning to meet with a Russian general we eventually learn she's trying to take down. Despite just being shot, Daredevil goes after Widow and gets the pair captured. The story ends Daredevil escapes and convinces Ursa Major and Vanguard that they are being used by the General – and that he's being running experiments on Vanguards sister – Darkstar.  One other secondary story that ran through much of the year involves Foggy and Liz Osborne. Rosalind Sharpe isn't pleased with their relationship and continually tries to undermine it – with other women. In the final book of the year Foggy and Liz's attempt to have a romantic evening together is derailed when he receives a constant stream of phone calls from other women.  This Week's Spotlight: Daredevil #-1 July 1997 “A Time to Say Farewell”  Recap Why We Picked This Story Daredevil Rapid Fire Questions The Takeaway Marvel messed up more than their own fortunes with their unwise expansions.  Questions or comments We'd love to hear from you!  Email us at questions@comicsovertime.com or find us on Twitter @comicsoftime. ------------------ THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING CREATORS AND RESOURCES  Music: Our theme music is by the very talented Lesfm.  You can find more about them and their music at https://pixabay.com/users/lesfm-22579021/.  The Grand Comics Database: Dan uses custom queries against a downloadable copy of the GCD to construct his publisher, title and creator charts.  Comichron: Our source for comic book sales data.  The American Comic Book Chronicles: Published by TwoMorrows, these volumes provide an excellent analysis of American comics through the years.  Because these volumes break down comic history by year and decade they are a great place to get a basic orientation on what is happening across the comic industry at a particular point in time. 

Ізраїльський військовий оглядач Ігаль Левін в ефірі Radio NV про реакцію Азербайджана на збитий Росією літак, зупинку рейсів авіакомпанії El Al до Москви до весни, вибухи на російському танкері Ursa Major у Середземному морі, відповідальність ВС РФ за злочини у Сирії, підготовку ЗСУ до війни без американської зброї, панування дронів у повітрі та скандал навколо OSINT-ресурсу Deep StateВедучий – Олексій ТарасовВсі інтерв'ю експерта можна переглянути на його авторському YouTube каналі ► https://bit.ly/Yigal-Levin-YouTube , військову аналітику на його каналі у Телеграмі  ► https://bit.ly/Yigal-Levin-Telegram 

Die Eigentümerfirma eines im Mittelmeer gesunkenen russischen Frachtschiffs vermutet einen „Terrorangriff“ als Ursache des Vorfalls. Es habe drei Explosionen an Bord gegeben, bevor die „Ursa Major“ gesunken sei, erklärte Oboronlogistika.

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But questions have been asked whether the cargo vessel, which was under US sanctions, was heading for the Syrian coast, on a voyage to recover military supplies left by Russian forces in Syria when Bashar al-Assad fell. A maritime security and sanctions expert talks to us about how Russia's commercial fleet operates under swingeing sanctions. Also, World Business Report looks back on a year of strikes by doctors from around the world. We hear from medics in Kenya, India and the UK to find out more about why they felt they had to withdraw their labour

Also, we hear from a health academic, who worked with United Healthcare boss Brian Thompson, shot dead in Manhattan three weeks ago, about healthcare in the US. We'll be talking too with doctors from three continents who each had something in common in 2024: they all went out on strike. What are the challenges facing the health sectors in Kenya, India and the UK? And the Ursa Major, the Russian ship which sunk in the western Mediterranean this week. Where was it going and what was it carrying?

Episode Summary: In this episode, Heather “Lucky” Penney explores space launch operations, infrastructure, and technologies with Brad Appel, the Chief Technology Officer of Ursa Major, and Mitchell Institute's Charles Galbreath. Today, all U.S. military operations rely on space capabilities and effects delivered from the on-orbit architecture. Assured access to space and robust launch infrastructure are foundational for mission success—especially given growing demand and the realities of a burgeoning threat environment. Launch operations remain a technically challenging mission and must not be taken for granted. Factors like confidence, capacity, cadence, and cost are hugely important for future launch solutions. Credits: Host: Heather “Lucky” Penney, Senior Resident Fellow, The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Producer: Shane Thin  Executive Producer: Douglas Birkey Guest: Charles Galbreath, Senior Resident Fellow for Space Studies, The Mitchell Institute Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence (MI-SPACE) Guest: Brad Appel, Chief Technology Officer, Ursa Major Papers and images listed on our site, here! Links: Subscribe to our Youtube Channel: https://bit.ly/3GbA5Of Website: https://mitchellaerospacepower.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MitchellStudies Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mitchell.Institute.Aerospace LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3nzBisb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mitchellstudies/ #MitchellStudies #AerospaceAdvantage #space Thank you for your continued support!

What makes Third Eye Blind a standout band from the 90s era? Join Matt and Samer as we reminisce about the unforgettable impact of their music, exploring why their debut album remains a top contender among the best of its time. Alongside Samer's all-time favorite track, "Narcolepsy," we weave tales from the band's history, spotlighting Stephen Jenkins as the constant force behind their evolving sound. Venture into the deeper, sometimes darker, corners of Third Eye Blind's discography with us as we shine a light on their second album, "Blue." With tracks like "Never Let You Go" and "Wounded," the band masterfully intertwines upbeat melodies with poignant themes of heartbreak and recovery. We explore how their innovative use of spoken word elements paved the way for future bands, such as Imagine Dragons, to tackle heavy topics while maintaining a captivating alt-rock vibe. The journey doesn't stop there. As we move through the band's later albums, from "Ursa Major" to "Dopamine," we witness their artistic growth and adaptability. The band's storytelling matures with each album, capturing deeper narratives and personal themes, like the rumored breakup with Charlize Theron in "Say It." From the ethereal vibes of "We Are Drugs" to the empowering sounds of "Screamer," featuring Alexis Krauss, Third Eye Blind shows us why they remain a relevant force in today's music scene. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1MHiQQ9ySBy9tykI4Uvs2m?si=4a726dc99adf4856https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/super-awesome-intro-to-third-eye-blind/pl.u-d2b0MoltLKN0YEA1. Narcolepsy2. How's It Going To Be3. Motorcycle Drive By4. Never Let You Go5. Wounded6. Blinded (When I See You)7. Dao of St Paul8. Say It9. Something In You10. Queen of Daydreams11. Screamer (featuring Alexis Krauss)12. The Dying Blood Support the showVisit us at https://www.superawesomemix.com to learn more about our app, our merchandise, our cards, and more!

Galaxien sind voller Sterne. Das stimmt - aber es auch gibt Galaxien, die so gut wie gar keine Sterne enthalten. Wie man sich das vorstellen muss und was wir von ihnen lernen können, erfahrt ihr in der neuen Folge der Sternengeschichten. Wer den Podcast finanziell unterstützen möchte, kann das hier tun: Mit PayPal (https://www.paypal.me/florianfreistetter), Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/sternengeschichten) oder Steady (https://steadyhq.com/sternengeschichten)

The team rests up as they get visited by Dertonomis who has news about the ego feast. The revelation of the Night General being Maria, Frank's ex wife, comes to light and furthers the celestial investigation. Then the team makes their way down a new, dangerous path. Instagram (where all our animations are): www.instagram.com/wwditb @wwditb on social media. wwditb.bigcartel.com for merchandise. Kevin & Thomas' show ‘Oops All Segments' on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oops-all-segments/id1651866023 Sound/Music Notes: Recap Theme by Liam Berry www.liamberry.ca "Lone Harvest" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Comfortable Mystery" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Blue Feather" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Measured Paces" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Gypsy Shoegazer No Voices" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Industrial Revolution" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Shores of Avalon" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Medusa" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Dragon and Toast" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Tempting Secrets" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Today, the Spotlight shines On Christian McBride, a musician, recording artist, prolific composer, arranger, producer, cultural curator, dedicated educator, and mentor.Christian has been called the hardest-working person in jazz, and based on what I just rattled off, that might be underselling it. From his early days in Philadelphia soaking up the sounds of Philly Soul to sharing stages with legends like Ray Brown and Chick Corea, Christian has become a bridge between jazz's rich history and its vibrant future.These days, you'll find him leading his new band, Ursa Major, hosting NPR's Jazz Night in America, mentoring the next generation of musicians, and somehow finding time to work on a new big band album featuring twelve different vocalists. He's also preparing for an upcoming funk tribute show with none other than George Clinton and Savion Glover at NJPAC.Whether laying down the groove with Inside Straight, his Big Band, or any other celebrated ensemble, Christian brings an irresistible combination of soul, swing, and storytelling to everything he touches. Today, we'll explore his journey from Philly to the world stage, his passion for record collecting, and why he believes being uncomfortable might be the best way to grow as a musician.Quick note: this conversation occurred when our baseball teams were still in contention. One had a better outcome than the other, and neither made it all the way…–Dig DeeperVisit Christian McBride at christianmcbride.comListen to Christian McBride on Qobuz, Bandcamp, or your streaming platform of choiceFollow Christian McBride on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTubeTribute to Funk!The curious mind—and hard work—of bassist Christian McBrideJazz House Kids | School For JazzDig into this episode's complete show notes at spotlightonpodcast.com–• Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with a friend! You can also rate Spotlight On ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.• Subscribe! Be the first to check out each new episode of Spotlight On in your podcast app of choice.• Looking for more? Visit spotlightonpodcast.com for bonus content, web-only interviews + features, and the Spotlight On email newsletter. You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Mastodon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, the Spotlight shines On Christian McBride, a musician, recording artist, prolific composer, arranger, producer, cultural curator, dedicated educator, and mentor.Christian has been called the hardest-working person in jazz, and based on what I just rattled off, that might be underselling it. From his early days in Philadelphia soaking up the sounds of Philly Soul to sharing stages with legends like Ray Brown and Chick Corea, Christian has become a bridge between jazz's rich history and its vibrant future.These days, you'll find him leading his new band, Ursa Major, hosting NPR's Jazz Night in America, mentoring the next generation of musicians, and somehow finding time to work on a new big band album featuring twelve different vocalists. He's also preparing for an upcoming funk tribute show with none other than George Clinton and Savion Glover at NJPAC.Whether laying down the groove with Inside Straight, his Big Band, or any other celebrated ensemble, Christian brings an irresistible combination of soul, swing, and storytelling to everything he touches. Today, we'll explore his journey from Philly to the world stage, his passion for record collecting, and why he believes being uncomfortable might be the best way to grow as a musician.Quick note: this conversation occurred when our baseball teams were still in contention. One had a better outcome than the other, and neither made it all the way…–Dig DeeperVisit Christian McBride at christianmcbride.comListen to Christian McBride on Qobuz, Bandcamp, or your streaming platform of choiceFollow Christian McBride on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTubeTribute to Funk!The curious mind—and hard work—of bassist Christian McBrideJazz House Kids | School For JazzDig into this episode's complete show notes at spotlightonpodcast.com–• Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with a friend! You can also rate Spotlight On ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts.• Subscribe! Be the first to check out each new episode of Spotlight On in your podcast app of choice.• Looking for more? Visit spotlightonpodcast.com for bonus content, web-only interviews + features, and the Spotlight On email newsletter. You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Mastodon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

La constellation de la Grande Ourse (ou Ursa Major en latin) tire son nom de la mythologie et de l'interprétation des formes dans le ciel par les anciennes civilisations. Origine mythologique du nom :Le nom de la Grande Ourse provient en grande partie de la mythologie grecque. Voici l'un des récits les plus connus associés à cette constellation : 1. Le mythe de Callisto : Selon la mythologie grecque, Callisto était une belle nymphe, servante de la déesse Artémis. Zeus, le roi des dieux, tomba amoureux de Callisto et ils eurent un fils nommé Arcas. Cependant, la femme de Zeus, Héra, jalouse, transforma Callisto en une ourse pour la punir. Des années plus tard, Arcas, devenu chasseur, rencontra par hasard sa mère sous forme d'ourse et, sans la reconnaître, s'apprêtait à la tuer. Zeus intervint pour éviter le drame : il transforma Arcas en un ourson et plaça les deux dans le ciel, formant ainsi les constellations de la Grande Ourse (Callisto) et de la Petite Ourse (Arcas). 2. Autres versions et légendes : La forme de la Grande Ourse a également été associée à des ours dans d'autres cultures anciennes, comme les Amérindiens, les Celtes et les peuples nordiques. Bien que la légende grecque soit la plus célèbre en Europe, la figure d'un grand ours traversant le ciel est universelle dans de nombreuses mythologies. Origine de la forme :La forme de la Grande Ourse dans le ciel est facilement identifiable à cause de son ensemble d'étoiles brillantes, qui dessinent une sorte de "chariot" ou de "casserole". Le nom "Ourse" (ours) n'est pas forcément lié à une ressemblance directe avec un ours, mais davantage à l'interprétation culturelle de la forme de la constellation, inspirée par ces mythes. Autres noms dans différentes cultures :- "La Casserole" en France et dans d'autres cultures, en raison de la forme évidente de l'astérisme principal (qui fait partie de la Grande Ourse).- Les Amérindiens voyaient également une forme d'ours, mais avec des interprétations différentes concernant les étoiles environnantes, qui représentaient souvent des chasseurs poursuivant l'animal. En résumé, la Grande Ourse s'appelle ainsi en raison des récits mythologiques, notamment grecs, qui associaient cette forme dans le ciel à l'histoire d'une ourse placée parmi les étoiles par les dieux. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Ursa Major secured a $12.5 million contract from the U.S. Navy for the development of 3D-printed solid-fuel rocket engines, bringing the total investment to $25 million. This funding marks the first publicly announced allocation from the Department of Defense's Office of Strategic Capital since its inception in 2022. The startup aims to address limitations in the defense sector's capacity to manufacture solid rocket motors amidst ongoing conflicts. Ursa Major's 3D printing technology facilitates the production of rocket motors in less than a month, significantly faster than traditional methods that can take over a year. Founded in 2015, Ursa Major has previously engaged with government projects, including a contract for hypersonic launch engine development with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.Learn more on this news visit us at: https://greyjournal.net/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this interview, I chat with Gill Paul about Scandalous Women, how she decided to write about these two women and why she paired them together, what surprised her the most when writing this one, her fascinating research, the changes these authors made in the publishing industry, and much more. Gill's recommended reads are: Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie The Last Light Over Oslo by Alix Rickloff The Women by Kristin Hannah Looking for some great summer reads? Check out my Summer Reading Guide Preview or my complete printable 12-page 2024 Summer Reading Guide with 45 new titles vetted by me that will provide great entertainment this summer. Want to know which new titles are publishing in May - October of 2024? Check out our second Literary Lookbook which contains a comprehensive but not exhaustive list all in one place so you can plan ahead.     Scandalous Women can be purchased at my Bookshop storefront.      Connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Threads.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ursa Major is having a change of the guard. Founder Joe Laurienti is passing the CEO title onto former Maxar CEO Dan Jablonsky. With the change to take effect next week, Morgan Brennan sits down with Laurienti and Jablonsky to layout the transition, the propulsion startup's gameplan going forward, and what it all means for growth.

Ursa Major is having a change of the guard. Founder Joe Laurienti is passing the CEO title onto former Maxar CEO Dan Jablonsky. With the change to take effect next week, Morgan Brennan sits down with Laurienti and Jablonsky to layout the transition, the propulsion startup's gameplan going forward, and what it all means for growth.

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org Today's 2 topics: - My Catalina Sky Survey Teammate Brian Africano discovered his 4th comet while asteroid hunting in the constellation of Ursa Major with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona. Observers with small telescopes equipped with electronic cameras are able to track Brian's 4th comet as it comes to near the orbit of Mars before it retreats into the cold dark region of our solar system not to return until 3000 AD. - A large fireball meteor which exploded over Cuba produced a number of interesting results.   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 of The Localist, Duquette Johnston, founder of Club Duquette, discusses the evolution of his business from a brick-and-mortar store to an online community-focused brand, emphasizing the importance of personal connections and authentic customer engagement. He reflects on the challenges and transformations brought about by the pandemic, his vision for hyper-focusing on small businesses and the vital role of community building and trust.   Mentioned in this episode: Club Duquette Website: https://clubduquette.co/ Club Duquette Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clubduquette Communicating Vessels and Jeffrey Cain: https://communicatingvessels.com/communicating-vessels/ Clayton Chambers Spr.ezza newsletter: https://www.instagram.com/spr.ezza/?hl=en Great Bear Wax: https://burnbear.com/ Beverly Hills Juice: https://beverlyhillsjuice.com/ Creative Visualization book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/creative-visualization-use-the-power-of-your-imagination-to-create-what-you-want-in-your-life-shakti-gawain/7348612?ean=9781608684649 Buy Yourself the F*ing Lilies: https://bookshop.org/p/books/buy-yourself-the-f-cking-lilies-and-other-rituals-to-fix-your-life-from-someone-who-s-been-there-tara-schuster/12072763?ean=9780525509905 Frank and Pardis Stitt: https://stittrestaurantgroup.com/ Nine Orchard Hotel: https://nineorchard.com/ Human Design: https://www.ouiwegirl.com/astrology/your-guide-to-human-design Jungmaven: https://jungmaven.com/pages/about-us Ursa Major: https://www.ursamajorvt.com/?tw_source=google&tw_adid=677089607905&tw_campaign=19729963162&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw4MSzBhC8ARIsAPFOuyW6QQG-Y0RQhfnGssCMI4U7S0j4lmYnrgQdBqD6Oj6PQW2Ei5EmZCIaAoUREALw_wcB Stan Ray: https://www.stanray.com/ Rugged and Fancy: https://ruggedandfancy.com/ Evan Kinori: https://evankinori.com/  

Send me a text message to let me know if you're enjoying the show! Welcome back sleepy heads! Tonight we have a super sleepy bedtime story by Beatrix Potter called "The Tale of Samuel Whiskers". This slow storytelling is sleep inducing because the story's pace gradually slows down which helps reduce stimulation and promotes restful sleep. This sleepy narration makes the perfect bedtime companion to gently guide you into a peaceful sleep.  With the first round of slow reading, you will enjoy the storytelling at a comfortable pace, perfect for the initial relaxation. With the second round of reading the pace slows down, easing you further down into a tranquil state. And finally, the third and last round of reading, you will experience the slowest rendition, ideal for falling deep into sleep. So go ahead and press play, close your eyes, and let the gentle world of Samuel Whiskers carry you all the way to dreamland. Sweet dreams and happy listening!Your friend,Joanne Attributions1. Intro music 'Painting the Horizon' by Deep Inside via Epidemic Sound2. Narration music 'Ursa Major' by Deep Inside via Epidemic SoundBecome a Drift Off Premium member today and receive: intro free listening to all episodes NO ADS or sponsorship announcements access 2 monthly bonus episodes get early access and listen first to upcoming episodes exclusive access to full length audiobooks for your enjoyment and relaxation *You can subscribe via Apple Podcasts OR using the link driftoff.supercast.comFeel free to drop by on the podcast website to learn more about it!https://www.driftoffpodcast.com Content Warning Disclaimer: This podcast is a sleep aid for adults. Most stories may be family friendly, however, adult supervision is required! We recommend that parents/guardians listen to the full episode first to decide whether or not the story is appropriate for their young listener. Safety Disclaimer: Podcast content is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to be a replacement for medical, psychological or professional counselling. Only listen when you can relax safely.

Im Mai sinkt die Sonne nachts nur noch relativ knapp unter den Horizont. In Norddeutschland beginnt langsam die Zeit, in der es überhaupt nicht mehr richtig dunkel wird: Die Abenddämmerung geht fast direkt in die Morgendämmerung über. Und trotzdem gibt es auch jetzt am Nachthimmel Spannendes zu sehen. In dieser Podcast Folge erklärt Franziska Konitzer, was bringt der Sternenhimmel im Mai und: wie findet man sich am Nachthimmel zurecht? (00:01:36) Einstimmung (00:01:45) Was sind die typischen Sternbilder des Frühlings? (00:02:22) Großer Wagen, Ursa Major, großer Bär, größere Bärin (00:03:14) Der Löwe Leo (00:04:05) Jungfrau (00:04:40) Welche Planeten sind im Mai zu sehen? (00:05:12) Mai Aquariden, Sternschnuppen-Regen, viele Wünsche frei dank des Halleyschen Kometen (00:07:40) Wie kann man sich am Himmel orientieren? Großer Wagen, kleiner Wagen, Nordstern

If you look straight up as the sky gets dark this evening, you won't see much of anything. The region that's high overhead is populated by some especially faint stars and constellations. But there's a ring of brighter stars around it. The point directly overhead is called the zenith. And most of the time, unless you're lying on a blanket and just watching the stars, you're not likely to pay it much attention. It's just too uncomfortable to tilt your head back that much. Instead, most of us look at what's closer to eye level. Sometimes, it's worth looking up there. Tonight really isn't one of those times. The constellations near the zenith at nightfall include Leo Minor, the little lion; Lynx, a constellation so faint that you need the eyes of a cat to see it; and the part of Ursa Major that includes the feet and legs of the great bear, which are faint. And there's an almost-full Moon in the sky, which overpowers dimmer stars. But if you look a little below the zenith, the view is more impressive. High in the south, for example, there's Regulus, the bright heart of Leo, the big lion. And about the same height in the west, you'll find Pollux and Castor, the “twin” stars of Gemini. Finally, in the northeast, you'll find perhaps the most famous star pattern of all: the Big Dipper. Its stars outline the body and tail of Ursa Major. They're the easy-to-spot parts of the great bear, standing high in the sky — just not at the zenith. Script by Damond Benningfield

Rocket Lab has been awarded a $14.49 million task order by the US Space Force to launch a dedicated Electron mission for the military branch. Ursa Major has signed a contract with the Naval Energetics Systems and Technologies Program (NEST) to develop and hot fire test a prototype solid rocket motor for the US Navy's Standard Missile program. The US Space Command and the Swedish Air Force signed a Space Situational Awareness sharing agreement, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guests today are Jeff Kratz, Vice President of AWS Worldwide Public Sector Sales, Tim Sylvester, Field CTO at Effectual, and Jerry Meleski, SVP of Product and Technology at HawkEye 360. You can learn more about AWS Aerospace and Satellite on their website.  Selected Reading U.S. Space Force Awards Rocket Lab Launch Contract for Space Test Program (STP)-S30- Business Wire Ursa Major Signs Contract With U.S. Navy For Next Gen Solid Rocket Motors For Standard Missile USSPACECOM and Sweden sign a Space Situational Awareness sharing agreement Spacefarer & CubeRover Joint Lunar Rover Demonstration on Griffin-1 | Astrobotic Japanese Astronaut Koichi Wakata Joins Axiom Space Stoke Space Names Retired U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. John E. Shaw to Board of Directors, Paul Croci as Chief Financial Officer Voyager Space Names Neeraj Gupta Chief Strategy Officer T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A team of astronomers has used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to survey the starburst galaxy Messier 82 (M82). Located 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, this galaxy is relatively compact in size but hosts a frenzy of star formation activity. For comparison, M82 is sprouting new stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way galaxy.Led by Alberto Bolatto at the University of Maryland, College Park, the team directed Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument toward the starburst galaxy's center, attaining a closer look at the physical conditions that foster the formation of new stars.“M82 has garnered a variety of observations over the years because it can be considered as the prototypical starburst galaxy,” said Bolatto, lead author of the study. “Both NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have observed this target. With Webb's size and resolution, we can look at this star-forming galaxy and see all of this beautiful, new detail.”Star formation continues to maintain a sense of mystery because it is shrouded by curtains of dust and gas, creating an obstacle in observing this process. Fortunately, Webb's ability to peer in the infrared is an asset in navigating these murky conditions. Additionally, these NIRCam images of the very center of the starburst were obtained using an instrument mode that prevented the very bright source from overwhelming the detector.While dark brown tendrils of heavy dust are threaded throughout M82's glowing white core even in this infrared view, Webb's NIRCam has revealed a level of detail that has historically been obscured. Looking closer toward the center, small specks depicted in green denote concentrated areas of iron, most of which are supernova remnants. Small patches that appear red signify regions where molecular hydrogen is being lit up by a nearby young star's radiation.“This image shows the power of Webb,” said Rebecca Levy, second author of the study at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Every single white dot in this image is either a star or a star cluster. We can start to distinguish all of these tiny point sources, which enables us to acquire an accurate count of all the star clusters in this galaxy.”Looking at M82 in slightly longer infrared wavelengths, clumpy tendrils represented in red can be seen extending above and below the galaxy's plane. These gaseous streamers are a galactic wind rushing out from the core of the starburst.One area of focus for this research team was understanding how this galactic wind, which is caused by the rapid rate of star formation and subsequent supernovae, is being launched and influencing its surrounding environment. By resolving a central section of M82, scientists could examine where the wind originates, and gain insight on how hot and cold components interact within the wind.Webb's NIRCam instrument was well-suited to trace the structure of the galactic wind via emission from sooty chemical molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs can be considered as very small dust grains that survive in cooler temperatures but are destroyed in hot conditions.Much to the team's surprise, Webb's view of the PAH emission highlights the galactic wind's fine structure – an aspect previously unknown. Depicted as red filaments, the emission extends away from the central region where the heart of star formation is located. Another unanticipated find was the similar structure between the PAH emission and that of hot, ionized gas.“It was unexpected to see the PAH emission resemble ionized gas,” said Bolatto. “PAHs are not supposed to live very long when exposed to such a strong radiation field, so perhaps they are being replenished all the time. It challenges our theories and shows us that further investigation is required.”Webb's observations of M82 in near-infrared light spur further questions about star formation, some of which the team hopes to answer with additional data gathered with Webb, including that of another starburst galaxy. Two other papers from this team characterizing the stellar clusters and correlations among wind components of M82 are almost finalized.In the near future, the team will have spectroscopic observations of M82 from Webb ready for their analysis, as well as complementary large-scale images of the galaxy and wind. Spectral data will help astronomers determine accurate ages for the star clusters and provide a sense of timing for how long each phase of star formation lasts in a starburst galaxy environment. On a broader scale, inspecting the activity in galaxies like M82 can deepen astronomers' understanding of the early universe.“Webb's observation of M82, a target closer to us, is a reminder that the telescope excels at studying galaxies at all distances,” said Bolatto. “In addition to looking at young, high-redshift galaxies, we can look at targets closer to home to gather insight into the processes that are happening here – events that also occurred in the early universe.”

The UK Space Agency is offering Up to £60 million for proposals that will help boost the UK's satellite communications sector. NASA has chosen the first science instruments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the Moon during Artemis III. China launched a Long March-6 rocket, carrying an environmental monitoring satellite called Yunhai-3 02, and more.  Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Brad Appel, Chief Technology Officer at Ursa Major. You can connect with Brad on LinkedIn and learn more about Ursa Major on their website. Selected Reading C-LEO programme kicks off with £60 million for satellite constellation ideas - GOV.UK Polaris And Aero Challenge Group Sign Strategic Cooperation And Investment Agreement Joint Statement of the Second Meeting of the U.S.-France Comprehensive Dialogue on Space - United States Department of State NASA Selects First Lunar Instruments for Artemis Astronaut Deployment Systems, Technologies, and Emerging Capabilities Broad Agency Announcement Sidus Space Reports Full Year 2023 Financial Results and Provides Business Update China launches new satellite for environmental monitoring - CGTN ULA Delta-4 Heavy NROL-70 | Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex Governor Abbott Launches Texas Space Commission Send robots into space rather than people, says Britain's Astronomer Royal-  Reuters The Next Generation of Cancer Drugs Will Be Made in Space- WIRED Order Up: High School Students Compete to Launch Their Food into Space with NASA HUNCH Culinary Competition T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Big Dipper is on the move. Not just its nightly circle around the North Star. And not even its shifting position from month to month. The stars themselves are moving through the Milky Way Galaxy. And most of them are moving together. The stars of the Big Dipper are in Ursa Major, the great bear. The constellation has given its name to a widely spread group of stars that appear to move together — the Ursa Major Moving Group. It consists of a few dozen stars in all. Its core is in Ursa Major, but it also includes stars in several other constellations. The stars in the group all move through space in the same direction, at about the same speed. They're all roughly the same distance from Earth — about 80 light-years. They all appear to be about the same age — roughly half a billion years. And they have similar chemical compositions. That doesn't mean that all the suspected members really do belong to the group. But there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that they do. Members of the group may have been born together — from the same giant cloud of gas and dust. The gravity of the rest of the galaxy pulled them away from each other — leaving a long ribbon of stars that move through the galaxy together. The Big Dipper is in the northeast at nightfall, with the handle below the bowl. Only two of its stars are not members of the Ursa Major Moving Group: the stars at the end of the handle and the outer edge of the bowl. Script by Damond Benningfield

Welcome to another episode of Professional Book Girl! This week Kayla is answering bookish questions and then providing read-a-likes. The February Book Club pick is The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. Send your review to professionalbookgirlpod@gmail.com by 2/25 to be included in the book club episode. The book club episode will be out on 2/29. On this episode, Kayla talks about: Daisy Jones by Taylor Jenkins Reid Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie  Stone Cold Fox by Rachel Koller Croft The Social Climber by Amanda Pellegrino Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate  The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline  The Last Housewife by Ashley Winstead  Pretty Girls by Karen Slaughter  Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson Secret Wife of Aaron Burr by Susan Holloway Scott As always, the reviews are spoiler-free. Thank you for listening!  Buy the books Kayla covered here: https://bookshop.org/shop/professionalbookgirl Follow Professional Book Girl on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/professionalbookgirl/ Follow Kayla on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kayreadwhat/Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@professionalbookgirlpod

We're taking a tour of the Northern night sky to identify the North Star and get to know the nearby constellations that circle it, also known as the Circumpolar Constellations. I'll also share the Greek story of Ursa Major and introduce you to how other cultures saw this group of stars. Visit NightSkyTourist.com/86 for more information about this episode. CHECK OUT THESE LINKS FROM EPISODE 86: Full Moon Fitness Walk: https://nightskytourist.com/events/  Episode 82- Andromeda's Star Story from the Greeks: https://nightskytourist.com/82/  “Winter Stargazing Guide” by Night Sky Tourist: https://nightskytourist.com/winter-stargazing-guide/  Rate Night Sky Tourist with 5 stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. THANK YOU! FOLLOW NIGHT SKY TOURIST ON SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NightSkyTourist  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nightskytourist/  SPREAD THE WORD Help us reach more people by subscribing to the podcast, leaving a review, and sharing it with others. GET TO KNOW US MORE Visit NightSkyTourist.com to read our great blog articles, check out our resource page, and sign up for our newsletters. Our monthly newsletter has content that is exclusive for subscribers. SHARE YOUR QUESTION We want to hear your questions. They could even become part of a future Q&A. Record your question in a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to us at Hello@NightSkyTourist.com. COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS Email us at Hello@NightSkyTourist.com.

In which Colossus has had a rough time of it; the X-Men are at their best in bar fights; Bronze-age Wolverine was a jerk; Ursa Major deserves more page space; kids dig Nightcrawler; and we imagine an X-Men newspaper comic strip.

The U.S. defense industry has found itself straddling the line of simultaneous developments challenges. On one hand the innovation is lurching forward with technology like AI and hypersonics leading a new weapons revolution, while on the other hand we need a defense industry capable of supplying enough 1980s Stinger Missiles to support allies fighting right now. Host Marshall Kosloff is joined by Ursa Major CEO, Joe Laurienti, to discuss what the modern day Arsenal of Democracy needs to be success now, and in the coming conflicts. 

Venture capital is creeping back into the space sector, with Ursa Major raising $138 million in Series D and D-1 rounds. Capital from the likes of RTX Ventures, BlackRock, Explorer 1 Fund & more will help the rocket propulsion startup to produce engines for rocket launches, hypersonic vehicles – and enable expansion into a new defense-focused market. Founder & CEO Joe Laurienti joins Morgan Brennan to discuss defense tech, the case for 3-D printed rocket engines, and more from the Reagan National Defense Forum.

In this episode, Kelly and I chat about standout debut novels. Kelly's selections: Lucky Girl by Irene Muchemi Ndirtu How To Be Remembered by Michael Thompson  Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley Last Summer On State Street by Toya Wolfe  Shadows Of Pecan Hollow by Caroline Frost  Landslide by Susan Conley  Raft of Stars by Andrew J. Graff  Shiner by Amy Jo Burns  A Place For Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes  2024 preview: Northwoods by Amy Pease  Cindy's selections: Banyan Moon by Thao Thai  The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell  The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page  The Local by Joey Hartstone Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivenor Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden  Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman  Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour   Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie  2024 preview:  The Husbands by Holly Gramazio and The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill Want to know which new titles are publishing in January - May of 2024? Check out the new Literary Lookbook which contains a comprehensive but not exhaustive list all in one place so you can plan ahead. Join my Patreon group to support the podcast.  Other ways to support the podcast can be found here.     Connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Threads.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you look long enough and hard enough, you're bound to find an interesting pattern of stars in the night sky. Stargazers have logged all kinds of circles, rectangles, and many other patterns. One of those is known as Kemble's Cascade. It's a lineup of about 20 stars. They're not actually related to each other — they just happen to line up that way in the sky. There's a big variation in the brightness of the stars. But the whole string is visible with good binoculars on a dark, moonless night. Such a pattern is known as an asterism. It's not a constellation, but it is a group of stars that form a pattern. The most famous asterism is the Big Dipper — the body and tail of Ursa Major, the great bear. Kemble's Cascade was discovered in 1980, by Father Lucien Kemble, a Franciscan friar and a well-known amateur astronomer in his homeland of Canada. He found the array of stars using a pair of binoculars. He then sent a letter to a columnist at Sky & Telescope magazine, describing the alignment as “a beautiful cascade of faint stars.” One end of it stops near the faint star cluster NGC 1502. The writer published a story about it, and named it Kemble's Cascade in the friar's honor. Kemble's Cascade is in Camelopardalis, the giraffe. The faint constellation is fairly low in the northeast at nightfall. Kemble's Cascade is arrayed beneath a triangle of faint stars that outlines the giraffe's body.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

The stars appear to rotate in the sky, raising the question of how birds can use stars to navigate during migration. Ornithologist Stephen Emlen brought Indigo Buntings to a planetarium, tracking their movements as the simulated night sky changed above them. The buntings oriented themselves using star patterns that appear to rotate the least — especially the North Star, Ursa Major and Cassiopeia.More info and transcript at BirdNote.org. Want more BirdNote? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Sign up for BirdNote+ to get ad-free listening and other perks. BirdNote is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible gift makes these shows possible.

This week Melanie shares some of P's suggestions for container planting, and I recap how I spent most of this past weekend painting Alex's bathroom. Plus, we discuss some early college football predictions and break down everything we've been reading lately - along with a movie that Melanie recently saw and loved.  I apparently had an issue with my microphone gain being turned up way too high, so prepare yourself for some really high quality audio (it's fine to roll your eyes, and thank you for your continued patience with our sound challenges). Also, it's my turn for Five Favorites.  Enjoy, everybody!  - Join Us on Patreon  - Our Amazon Shop - 2023 Graduation Gift Guide Show Notes: - Judy Blume Forever on Amazon Prime - Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - the book - Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - the movie - Songs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie - Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin  - Happy Place by Emily Henry - The Unsinkable Greta James by Elizabeth E. Smith - Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld - Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano - Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus - Sports Illustrated 2023 pre-season college football poll - another 2023 pre-season college football prediction - Drunk Elephant Rosi Glow drops - Aerie oversized boyfriend tees (THE BEST) - Third Love kinetic adjustable sports bra - puffer crossbody purse - Old Navy pull-on chino shorts (5-inch inseam) Sponsors: - Rothys (use this link for $20 off your first purchase) - Stamps (use this link for a four-week trial, free postage, and a free digital scale) - Green Chef (use code BIGBOO60 to get 60% off plus free shipping) - Helix (use this link for 20% off your mattress order and two free pillows)

Joe Laurienti, a former SpaceX and Blue Origin engineer, launched Ursa Major in 2015 with the idea that 3D printing could revolutionize the production of rocket engines.The timing was right: Russia had invaded Crimea the previous year. American sanctions and strained political relationships threatened the supply of Russian rocket engines, which the U.S. had relied on for space missions since the end of the Cold War. American companies like Ursa Major have now begun providing rocket engines for both government and private space endeavors. This week on How I Built This Lab, Joe talks with Guy about the journey of launching and scaling a multimillion dollar aerospace company. Plus, how Joe has dealt with the infamous “startup valley of death” and how Ursa Major's engines are helping the U.S. catch up to Russia and China in the development of hypersonic weapons. This episode was produced by Chris Maccini and edited by John Isabella, with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was Maggie Luthar.You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.