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AstroCal – January 2023

       Happy New Year – here is a small and slightly late Christmas present:  As of January 1, we have now regained 6 percent of our lost daylight hours.  We won’t really notice the ‘extra daylight’ for a couple of weeks, but rest assured, the Sun is inching higher in the sky each day and […]

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FTV: Apollo 17

           Fifty years ago this month, Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt made the last manned landing on the Moon while Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans kept vigil in Lunar orbit.  The mission itself took place December 7-19, 1972, but was the culmination of President John F. Kennedy’s bold statement that the United […]

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AstroCal – December 2022

       For the first time in many months, ALL of the planets will be visible in December’s night sky.  Venus and Mercury will begin the month deep in the Sun’s glare, but all the rest will start the month spread across the night sky.  Naked-eye planets (that can be seen without the need of binoculars […]

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From the Vaults: VOA – a special on line commentary

       VOICE OF AMERICA BEGINS ROHINGYA LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING – A Commentary by VOA Director Amanda Bennett:  “Voice of America has launched its first radio program in Rohingya, the language of more than 800,000 refugees who fled Myanmar and are living in camps across the border in Bangladesh.      Many international organizations are working to provide the […]

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From the Vaults: Who’s Next

     In 1999, the Wachowskis siblings launched a little multi-part film franchise called The Matrix.  Although I have yet to see the fourth installment, the whole series revolves around the original film’s basic tenets.  According to Wiki, “The Matrix depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside a simulated reality called The Matrix.  […]

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FTV: American Railroads

            Like most of the tales told by Simon Winchester in his book The Men Who United The States – America’s Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible (2013 – HarperCollins), the story of American railroads does not begin with trains.  One has to go back a little further in […]

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