Category - Blog

What is the coldest place on Earth? It is a high ridge in Antarctica on the East Antarctic Plateau where temperatures in several hollows can dip below minus 133.6 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 92 degrees Celsius) on a clear winter night. Scientists made the discovery while analyzing the most detailed global surface temperature maps to date, developed with data from remote sensing satellites including the new Landsat 8, a joint project of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Researchers analyzed 32 years’ worth of data from several satellite instruments. They found temperatures plummeted to record lows dozens of times in clusters of pockets near a high ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, two summits on the ice sheet known as the East Antarctic Plateau. The new record of minus 136 F (minus 93.2 C) was set Aug. 10, 2010.

That is several degrees colder than the previous low of minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 C), set in 1983 at the Russian Vostok Research Station in East Antarctica. The coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth is northeastern Siberia, where temperatures in the towns of Verkhoyansk and Oimekon dropped to a bone-chilling 90 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 67.8 C) in 1892 and 1933, respectively.

Qsl cards for ZM90DX have been mailed today and should appear in your mail boxes over the coming days. Please allow a few days due to the heavy Christmas mail causing a backlog.

All Cards received via post mail or OQRS have been mailed. Buro cards will follow in the next few weeks.

ZM90DX will be active until October 2014 as so plenty of time to catch them if you need a band slot or two!

If you still require a card then the fastest way to receive any Qsl Card I manage is to request them via M0OXO OQRS.

Qsl cards for SW5CC have been mailed today.

All Cards received via post mail or OQRS have been mailed. Buro cards will follow this week.

Rich (M5RIC) was be qrv between 23rd and 31st October as SW5CC from Rhodes Island, Greece IOTA EU-001.

If you still require a card then the fastest way to receive any Qsl Card I manage is to request them via M0OXO OQRS.

Astronomers have long known that some comets like it hot.  Several of the greatest comets in history have flown close to the sun, puffing themselves up with solar heat, before they became naked-eye wonders in the night sky.

Some comets like it hot, but Comet ISON was not one of them.

The much-anticipated flyby of the sun by Comet ISON on Boxing Day 2013 is over, and instead of becoming a Great Comet….

“Comet ISON fell apart,” reports Karl Battams of NASA’s Comet ISON Observing Campaign. “The fading remains are now invisible to the human eye.”

At first glance this might seem like a negative result, but Battams says “rather than mourn what we have lost, we should perhaps rejoice in what we have gained—some of the finest data in the history of cometary astronomy.”

Click image for You Tube story

From Cambridge University Wireless Society;

From Monday 2nd – Friday 6th December 2013, G3VFC, G3ZAY, M0BLF, M0VFC and M1BXF will be operating as ZD8UW from Green Mountain, Ascension Island.

We’ll be active on 40m-10m, mainly SSB and CW. (Being equatorial, there’s little point in taking the extra weight for 80m, I’m afraid.) There may also be some WSPR operation overnight. The best time for the path to the UK is likely to be in the mid-mornings on 17m and 15m, or the mid-afternoons on 12m and 15m. We’ll be operating with Elecraft K3s.

We won’t have internet access at the QTH, but logs should be uploaded roughly daily to Clublog. The logs will also go on LoTW once we’re back, but we can’t apply for the LoTW certificate in advance as we won’t be collecting the radio licence until we get to Ascension.

QSL will be via M0OXO. This is the same Callsigfn used in previous trips by CUWS but new Qsl Cards to be printed for 2013 Dxpedition.

Once Qsl Cards are printed, the fastest way to receive any Qsl Card I manage is to request them via M0OXO OQRS.

See also: Ascension Island (ZD8): 2009

From the Kiwi DX Group;

”Here’s a sneak peak at our QSL card and the first ones should be on their way to operators all over the ham world in a couple of weeks.”

See more info by visiting the special website at http://zm90dx.com/news/zm90dx-qsl-card-preview.html

Once Qsl Cards are printed, the fastest way to receive any Qsl Card I manage is to request them via M0OXO OQRS.

Special event station VK2013TDF is on air today until the 31st December 2013.

The event that takes place each year is organised around ”Kari’s Tour Of Freedom” Bike ride which aims to raise money for charity.

The Amateur Radio side of the event is run by the South Pacific Contest Club to raise awareness of the ride and the charity work surrounding it. More information can be found on this link www.tdf1000.org

Once Qsl Cards are printed, the fastest way to receive any Qsl Card I manage is to request them via M0OXO OQRS.

The International Space Station celebrated its 15th birthday yesterday, marking the day in 1998 when a Russian rocket lifted the first piece of what is now the largest manmade structure ever built in space. The station was built by the combined effort of five space agencies and is divided into two: the Russian Orbital Segment and the United States Orbital Segment, which is used by many countries. The station is used as a research laboratory conducting experiments in fields such as biology, physics and meteorology.

The launch of the module named Zarya (“Sunrise” in Russian) kicked off an unprecedented international undertaking to build the astronaut outpost one piece at a time. Five different space agencies representing 15 countries contributed to the project, and by 2000, rotating crews of spaceflyers were — and still are — living on the $100 billion International Space Station.

Today, the space station is about the size of a football field with roughly the same amount of livable space as a six-bedroom house. It ranks second only to the moon among bright objects in the night sky.

The module that started it all, Zarya, also known as the Functional Cargo Block (FGB), is mostly used for storage now. But initially it was intended to serve as a central node of orientation control, communications and electrical power as other parts of the space station were added, according to NASA.

The Photo shows the International Space Station backdropped by the blackness of space and Earth’s horizon as seen from Space Shuttle Discovery in March 2009.

Click here to take see a video of the history to date of the International Space Station.

Click the images to view movies