The universe is expanding. But what happens when it stops? Will we have enough time to find our neighbors before it all starts over again? property= description.

How do you look back over your life and divide it up? Maybe by decades, cultural moments, or geopolitical events. For radio amateurs with older callsigns there’s a temptation to do so by solar cycles, as the roughly 11-year period of the Sun’s activity had a huge effect on radio propagation through the charge it creates in the upper atmosphere. We’re now in solar cycle 25, numbered since the 18th century when the science of solar observation began, and as never before we’re surrounded by information from experts such as [Dr. Tamitha Skov], the so-called [Space Weather Woman]. When she says something is on the way we listen, so a recent Tweet predicting a direct hit from a solar storm with a good probability of auroras in lower latitudes is very much worth sharing.

We must extend our commiserations to readers in equatorial climes and ever through the lower half of the USA, southern Europe, the Middle East, India, Japan, and China. You won’t see the aurora we’ll catch in Europe along with our friends in New Zealand, Canada, Russia, and northern USA. But even then to those of us at moderate latitudes an aurora is a pretty rare event, so we’re hoping for clear skies on the 2nd of February and would advise you to look out too if you’re in the likely zone even if they won’t be quite as impressive as those in our header picture. Meanwhile radio amateurs everywhere don’t have to see pretty lights in the sky to reap the benefits in terms of propagation, so happy DX hunting! The Tweet is embedded below the break, so you can play the timeline for yourselves.

Direct Hit! NASA, NOAA & MetOffice predictions agree the #solarstorm launched Jan 29 will hit Earth by early Feb 2! This one is slow so expect #aurora only as far south as Netherlands, north USA, & up to north New Zealand & Tasmania. #GPS & HF #radio issues on Earth’s nightside! pic.twitter.com/Uua1LGMgJR

The space industry will contribute more to China’s growth as a whole.

New technology could let us study the interstellar object and determine what it is and where it came from.

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In October 2017, the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua passed through our Solar System, leaving a lot of questions in its wake.

Thu, Feb 17 at 7 PM PST.

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GUEST SPEAKER:

Heidi Hammel, Vice President for Science, The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)

VIRTUAL ASTRONOMY TALK:

During the late 1980s, our understanding of the local ice giants — Uranus and Neptune — was revolutionized by detailed images taken by the Voyager spacecraft. However, those images were static: brief snapshots in time of complex and dynamic systems. Recently, our knowledge of these giant planets has undergone striking new advances. In this talk, Dr. Hammel will bring you up to date on these planets, discussing her results from the Hubble Space Telescope program, imaging from Keck Observatory’s telescopes, and other observations. She will also discuss her team’s plans to use the just-launched James Webb Space Telescope for ice giant studies.

https://youtu.be/ji5hM9xnpO4

Fri, Feb 4 at 11:30 AM PST.

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Talk by Prof Giles Hammond, University of Glasgow. Join us in person at the Augustine United Church or online via our YouTube channel.

In this talk I will describe work that has been undertaken to renovate a 20 Grubb – Parsons telescope at University of Glasgow. I will begin with a brief history of the company, charting some of the telescope this company built for international observatories. I will then describe the Glasgow 20, which had a sister telescope in Edinburgh. The renovation required a complete rebuild of the RA and Dec clock drive, in addition to re-aluminising the mirrors. I will finish with some images/observations from the instrument.

A joint probe mission of ESA and Roscosmos captured a giant tree stump from the Martian surface. One of the probes on Mars recently captured a strange image on the planet’s surface.