Well let’s hope things remain good over the weekend.

After a very poor start to the day again the bands seem to have awoken this afternoon with some nice DX around lunchtime as the stations check their equipment prior to the ARRL DX Contest this weekend.

Here is a snippet so far, fingers crossed it stays this way at least this afternoon and weekend.

PZ5RO (new 10 & 12m CW),

PJ4/NK1Z (new 15m CW),

PJ4/WA1Z & V44KAI (both new 10m CW),

8P9CS (new 17m CW),

VR2OP and HC2/W7SE (both new 12m CW)

😉

In North America, for the first half of this year’s winter, the big news was warm temperatures and lack of snow. Ski resorts were covered in bare dirt, while January temperatures in southern California topped July highs!

Then, out of the blue, Europe got clobbered: Over the past two weeks, temperatures in Eastern Europe have nose-dived to -30 degrees Celsius (-22 degrees Fahrenheit). Blizzards and the bone-chilling cold have resulted in the deaths of over 550 people so far, with rooftop-high snow drifts trapping tens of thousands of villagers in their homes and cutting off access to entire towns. It has even snowed as far south as North Africa.

NASA climatologist Bill Patzert of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains what happened: “A couple of weeks ago, Mother Nature did an about face. The tight polar vortex that had bottled up the cold arctic air in the beginning of winter suddenly weakened. Cold air swept out of Siberia and invaded Europe and the Far East.” Now the vortex is weakening.

With “the AO (Click here for information about Arctic Oscillation) Index going negative,” as an expert or weather-nerd might put it, cold air escapes from that whirlpool and heads southward, resulting in the killing extremes now plaguing the other half of the planet.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found a cluster of young blue stars surrounding a mid-sized black hole called HLX-1.

The discovery suggests that the black hole formed in the core of a now-disintegrated dwarf galaxy. The findings have important implications for understanding the evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies.

Astronomers know how massive stars collapse to form small black holes a few times the mass of the Sun. However, it is not clear how supermassive black holes, which can have masses of millions or even billions of times the Sun’s, form in the cores of galaxies.

One idea is that supermassive black holes may build up through the merger of small and mid-sized black holes, a view supported by a new study using Hubble.

UX5UO Qsl Print is now issuing Blank Qsl Cards.

Demand has been such that these cards can be bought is very small batches of 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 pcs, no problem. If you are interested have a look here and scroll down the page for pricing and designs.

As usual if you are interested please contact M0OXO for more details.

These cards will be held in stock with M0OXO and can be issued within 24 hours from order.

Thanks to the PS5F Team for IOTA number 521 this morning from Santana de Foro, Brazil.

Signals weak and 4/4 at best but good ears on the ops. enabled me to log it successfully!

Imbituba is one of the most attractive beach destinations in Brazil. Best known as the home of Brazil’s Southern Right Whale Project and as a great place for surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing.

Imbituba has beautiful beaches ranging from a more urban atmosphere to rustic, pristine beaches. Central Praia da Vila (Village Beach), great for whale watching, bodyboarding and surfing. It faces two islands – Santana de Fora and Santana de Dentro. The latter can be reached on foot during low tides.

PLANETS TO VIEW: Venus is well up in the southwest after dusk, with Jupiter nearly south and high. Mars will be in the east by 9 p.m., and Saturn will be in the east by 1 a.m. Mercury is out of sight for now.

THE MOON becomes full Tuesday and will be extremely bright and high every night this week, making dark-sky stargazing difficult.

THIS WEEK: Despite the bright moonlight, there will be some interesting things to spot in the sky, especially tonight.

Look just below and right of the gibbous moon, and you’ll spot a very bright star. This is Procyon, the brighter half of the two-star constellation Canis Minor (the Pup or Little Dog).

Procyon forms an interesting quadrangle with Sirius (below and right), Betelgeuse (right and nearly even) and Rigel (beyond Betelgeuse and Sirius). This is the tightest concentration of stars of zero magnitude or brighter anywhere in the sky in either hemisphere.

Procyon is a yellow star like the sun, only larger. Like Sirius, it is a relative neighbor at about 11 light years away (Sirius is 8 light years away).  Betelgeuse and Rigel are 300 and 600 light years off respectively.

This is a Weather Watch issued by Metcheck at 08:47 on Friday 03rd February 2012.

Apart from the risk of some snow showers affecting parts of East Anglia and southeast England on Friday night, bringing a slight covering in places, the main risk of snow this weekend comes during Saturday and Sunday as an Atlantic weather front moves in from the west.

There is some uncertainty over how much snow may fall, but at the moment it looks like outbreaks of rain will move in across western areas of England and Wales during Saturday afternoon and evening, before spreading to central and eastern areas

Well done to my mate Keith (2E0KYI) on his successful pass of the Advanced Licence Examination held a few days ago. He fully deserves it and I am very pleased to hear the news this afternoon.

Well done matey, look forward to working M0KYI on the Bands!

Congratulations also to Ken (2E0SSQ) who also passed the Advanced exam, his new Callsign M0SSQ, well done Ken!