skies

A meteorologist has analyzed 30 years of Spanish skies to see if you should worry about not seeing the eclipse on August 12

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Can you imagine spending a fortune on a trip? to emptied Spain to enjoy a show that will only last a couple of minutes and at the moment of truth the clouds arrive and prevent you from seeing it? That will be what will happen this summer if we are unlucky enough that the skies in the totality zones of the August 12 eclipse become cloudy. Unfortunately, until 3 or 4 days before we will not know what will happen. Weather predictions cannot be made any further in advance, what more would we like. However, you can do an analysis of what has happened in previous years, right in that place and on that date of the year. The meteorologist Benito Fuentes has been in charge of doing it and we can see the results in your X account (formerly Twitter). 30 years of observations. The meteorologist has analyzed what happened on August 12 at 8:00 p.m. in the Spanish skies over the last 30 years. Although the totality of this year’s eclipse will be reached around 8:30 p.m., the eclipse itself will start at 7:30 p.m.. That’s why he chose 8:00 p.m. The bad thing is that in your analysis you can see that in some of the points of the totality strip, half of August 12 have had too many clouds to be able to see an eclipse with peace of mind. Not all clouds are the same. The meteorologist has paid special attention to medium and low cloudssince the high ones allow the passage of light, so that it could be seen when the eclipse “turn it off”. Just a little cloudy skies. Another important fact that the meteorologist clarifies is that, due to the time at which the eclipse will take place, quite close to sunset, a few poorly positioned clouds are enough to ruin the show. It is not necessary for the skies to be completely cloudy. He has used 35% cloud cover as a threshold from which to start worrying. Not all positions are equal. Precisely also because of the time close to sunset, the clouds that would spoil the eclipse are those that are towards the west, where the sun sets. A few clouds to the west would be much worse than a completely closed sky above our heads. Don’t panic. These data are not a prediction, far from it. Just because half of the August twelfths have been problematically cloudy in the last 30 years does not mean that this year will be cloudy as well. With the predictions that can be made in the previous days, it will be possible to recalculate to a certain extent. the place to observe the eclipse. It’s not worth worrying ahead of time. That little bit of mystery and uncertainty also makes what is to come very interesting. And the good thing is that, if we can’t see it, we can always go hunting for the other two components of the Iberian trio of eclipses. Image | Magnific/NASA In Xataka | A third of Spain will be completely dark for a minute or two. The astronomical event of the century is approaching

is being played in the skies of Atacama and the Andes

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The scene took place in the middle of the Cold War, when several British astronomers detected a periodic signal from a radio telescope so strange and precise that they came to name it internally. as “LGM-1”: Little Green Men, “little green men.” For weeks, some scientists even seriously contemplated the possibility that it was an artificial message coming from space… until they discovered that they had just found the first pulsar in history. The new space race passes through South America. The rivalry between the United States and China is no longer played only in Taiwan, the Pacific or the chip industry. I counted the weekend the new york times which is also moving toward some of the clearest skies on the planet, in places like Atacama, the Argentine Andes or Patagonia. What for decades were simple astronomical projects shared between universities has been transformed into a field of strategic competition. Washington suspects that part of Chinese space infrastructure in South America can be used not only to observe deep space, but also to track satellites, support military communications or expand Beijing’s technological capacity in the Western Hemisphere. The consequence is a kind of new Cold War where antennas, radio telescopes and space stations begin to be seen as top-level geopolitical assets. The radio telescope that was frozen. The most obvious case is in the Argentine province of San Juan. Over there remains paralyzed a gigantic Chinese radio telescope that was going to become the largest in South America. Officially, the project had scientific purposes: to study radio waves from space and collaborate with Argentine astronomers. But Washington began to press to Buenos Aires for fear that the system could be used to track US satellites or reinforce Chinese space capabilities. The important detail is that this pressure began under Biden and continued with Trumpshowing that concern is already part of the American strategic consensus. Today, the antenna remains disassembled and part of its components are still blocked in Argentine customs. Atacama and the value of clean skies. The dispute has a lot to do with geography. Chile and Argentina have some of the best skies of the planet for space observation thanks to its altitude, dryness and absence of light pollution. That is why they have been attracting European telescopes for decades, Americans and asians. However, the arrival of Chinese projects changed the political balance around these observatories. In Chile, a Chinese complex of one hundred telescopes in Atacama ended up blocked after strong diplomatic pressure from Washington. Officially, the project would serve to monitor asteroids and cosmic phenomena, but the United States feared that the infrastructure would have much broader strategic applications. The road built to the observatory is still there, although the complex never got up. The fear of “dual use”. The real core of the problem is the “dual use” concept. Many civilian space technologies can be easily adapted to military or intelligence roles. A radio telescope capable of capturing weak signals from distant galaxies can also help monitor satellites or orbital communications. That fear explains why Washington views any Chinese space infrastructure outside Asia with increasing distrust. Beijing holds that its projects are purely scientific and accuses Washington of trying to contain its technological expansion. But for the United States, allowing China to gain strategic positions in Latin America means accept a presence potentially permanent technology in a region historically considered sensitive to American security. The shadow of the Chinese base. Impossible to ignore it. The Chinese space station built in Neuquén in 2015 It remains the great precedent that conditions everything else. The facility operates on land donated free of charge for fifty years and is managed by organizations linked to the Chinese space program. Officially it is a civilian base for space exploration, but in the United States there has always been suspicion of possible military or intelligence uses. That enormous antenna erected in the middle of Patagonia became for many American sectors the symbol of how China was beginning to consolidate a strategic presence in the Western Hemisphere through investments, infrastructure and technological cooperation. Scientists caught up in geopolitics. It is the other leg of the situation. One of the most striking aspects is how this rivalry has ended up directly affecting to scientists and universities. Astronomers accustomed to collaborating internationally suddenly found themselves caught up in debates about national security, espionage, and strategic competition. Some Argentine researchers were even invited by the United States to specific programs on risks associated with civil space infrastructures. For many, the feeling is that space has ceased to be relatively neutral terrain and has become part of the confrontation between powers. Cold War looking at the sky. If you also want, what is happening in South America reflects a much deeper change in the global competition between the United States and China. The rivalry no longer depends only on military bases or aircraft carriers. It is also played in data networks, submarine cables, artificial intelligence, space stations and astronomical observatories. Thus, under the skies of the Atacama or the Andes, a silent battle for technological control and strategic access to space. And precisely therein lies the paradox: because they are telescopes designed to observe the universe that have ended up becoming pieces of a new terrestrial Cold War. Image | x, Casa Rosada (Argentina Presidency of the Nation) In Xataka | The US is doing everything to drown China. China has already achieved that 35% of its chip machines are its own In Xataka | The US’s problem in the AI ​​and humanoid race is not China: it is all of Asia and it is greatly disadvantaged

Chile has one of the most valuable skies on Earth. Renewables are putting it on the ropes

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Chile has a diamond of 105,000 km². The Atacama Desert is one of the most important in the world due to its extreme aridity. That is why it is key to study the adaptability of fauna and flora to very harsh conditions of drought and salinity, but it is also a gem for space observation and renewable energies. But there are mixtures that do not work, and Atacama is the example of how one of the best natural laboratories for the energy transition and one of the best places to look at the universe They don’t combine well. Spoiler: the astronomers have won. For now. The Atacama battery. It is not the first time that two disciplines collide in the Atacama Desert. Due to its conditions, this desert has become in the country’s renewable battery. Not only solar energy projects are triumphing, but also wind turbine parks. And as important as this: one of its salt flats hides one of the most important lithium reserves in the world. This is vital to build batteries for the energy transition of cars, for example, but the price is being too high: we are destroying biodiversity. In parallel to this battle, another has been fought: that of a huge renewable energy project to create green hydrogen that came into conflict with one of the most important observatories in the world: the Paranal Observatory of the European Astral Observatory. The threat of INNA. The American AES Corporation, together with the Chilean subsidiary AES Andes, was preparing the construction of a photovoltaic park of more than 3,000 hectares, wind turbines and refining facilities to produce green hydrogen and ammonia. He green hydrogen It is one of the pending energy accounts and it is positive, but there was a problem: it would be only 10 kilometers from the observatory. Astronomers shouted in the sky pointing that the microvibrations of the installation, the dust and, above all, the light pollution would disturb the daily work in facilities that are located in a privileged location, precisely because they are in the middle of nowhere. This facility is of global importance because it houses the Very Large Telescope (one of the most powerful in the world) and will have both the Extremely Large Telescope such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory. The thing about telescope names is one thing. Scientists working at the observatory They agreed to sign an open letter in which they pointed out that the construction of the facilities would seriously endanger the missions that were carried out there, describing the program as “an imminent threat” to humanity’s ability to investigate the cosmos. Victory. After months of fighting, the astronomers won. It was at the beginning of this year when AES Andes advertisement that he would abandon the project, noting that he would focus on other facilities, but mentioning that INNA was “fully compatible with the activities of the region.” It was no longer a fight just for the Paranal Observatory due because there are about 30 astronomical sites in the area, many of them internationaland its importance is what it is because, apart from zero light pollution, it is estimated that there are more than 300 nights each year without rain or clouds that interfere with scientific work. Yes, but. The problem is that one thing is the interests of astronomers and researchers of the universe and another is the priority of energy companies… and even of the country itself. Researchers point out that there is increasing pressure to convert the Atacama Desert into that aforementioned ‘stack’ of Chile, and INNA has not been the only threat that the observatories have experienced. In 1955, a major solar station operated by the Smithsonian Institution of the United States was forced to close due to mining expansion in the area. Unda-Sanzana, director of the Astronomy Center at the University of Antofagasta, points out that “we have had 70 years to learn from history and avoid repeating those same mistakes,” lamenting how close they have come to reliving the situation. And the problem is that things they haven’t changed too much. This victory has been suffered, but astronomers point out that Chilean sky preservation laws remain lax and outdated, so this should be remedied instead of fighting each battle individually. Image | G. Hüdepohl/ESO In Xataka | The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on the planet. And right there a bunch of “crazies” are trying to get water out of the fog.

After months without flying, the DGT’s Pegasus return to the skies. And they are already hunting offenders

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Since entering service in 2013, Pegasus helicopters have become one of the systems with which the DGT monitors the roads. Apart from controlling the speed of traffic, the cameras are so powerful that they allow them to distinguish whether we look at the cell phone while driving either we don’t wear the seatbelt. Due to maintenance and contract issues, the nine Pegasus they stopped flying for almost two months. 51 million euros later, they are back on the roads. AND they are already catching to drivers who circulate as if the highways were circuits. The Pegasus of the DGT return From September 1 to October 25, the nine Pegasus of the General Directorate of Traffic were grounded. They did so due to the expiration of the maintenance contract they had up to that point and, as no company interested in occupying that position for the maintenance of the helicopters had presented itself, the deadlines forced them to leave the service. Failing that, drones with similar capabilities were responsible for monitoring from the air, but a few weeks ago an agreement was reached to renew this maintenance, as well as an improvement in some components, such as recording systems. With everything in order, the DGT has as aim double annual flight hoursgoing from the 2,750 hours registered so far to 5,500. It is already bearing fruit. The video on these lines was caught on November 1, one of the key dates in mobility in Spain, and we can see how a driver without a seat belt reaches a peak of 217 kilometers per hour on a Malaga highway. The ‘prize’ is a 600 euro fine and six license points for going at that speed, as well as another 200 euros for going without a seat belt. He hasn’t been the only one caught doing 200 km/h recently. In total, The investment will be 51 million euros until 2028 for this road control from the air, but it could reach up to 80 million if the contract is extended for another 22 months. And you may be wondering how they work: They are helicopters Eurocopter AS-355 Ecureuil 2 and AS 350 armed with the MX-15 radar that detects speeding at 300 meters high and up to a kilometer away. They have GPS positioning to have exact coordinates. Using a laser rangefinder, they measure distances and record the position of the vehicle every three seconds. They also calculate the average speed of the vehicle. In the case of a violation, recording begins and the fine is sent electronically. Pegasus has shortcomings, such as it cannot record the license plate well in adverse conditions or at night, but The Mossos d’Esquadra have another lookout in the skies: Falcó. It operates in a similar way to the Pegasus, but with the advantage that it allows the license plate to be read both at night and in the rain. Precisely, one of the problems of the Pegasus is that some of its technologies have become outdated, but with the new maintenance and technological update plans, they want to catch up. But hey, in the end, the easiest way to avoid being hunted by these helicopters is to pay attention to both the signs and common sense. Images | DGT Magazine In Xataka | Very effective and practically undetectable: how the DGT’s “invisible radars” work

A new threat has arrived in the skies of Europe. They are not drones or fighters, and the order is to shoot before you ask

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For weeks now, the European sky has has converted in a silent front of hybrid war: brief incursions, weak signals, ambiguous trajectories and objects that, without carrying clear flags, force airport closures, diversions of trade routes and military responses that consume resources and erode civil normality. The pattern is repeated from the Baltics to Central Europe and seems designed to measure the NATO reflexes. Now something else has arrived, and it’s not drones or fighter jets. Balloon waves. Lithuania has announced that will bring down any balloon that crosses from Belarus after detecting in one go 66 night intrusions and chain closures of Vilnius airport. The government described the phenomenon as hybrid attack and activated the closure of the eastern border, initially temporary but set to become indefinite, with minimal exceptions for diplomats and EU citizens in transit. The decision marks a turning point on NATO’s eastern flank, where violations of airspace by drones, balloons and Russian aircraft are increasing. have become recurring in recent weeks, from Estonia and Poland to Denmark, Norway and Germany, fueling the impression of a sustained campaign of provocations calibrated to measure reflexes, saturate defenses and erode political tolerance at the cost of deterrence. Nature and sign. The balloons (some weighing more than 50 kilos, also used for tobacco smuggling) are interpreted not only as a criminal economy but also as a cheap instrument. psychological warfare and technical rehearsal: they stretch the “gray zone” five kilometers inward, force airport closures, degrade logistics, strain the civil and military decision chain and expose the friction of activating rules of engagement against targets no classic military sign. Lithuania will involve NASAMS, RBS-70, Avengers and MANPADS in neutralization, despite stocks depleted by transfers to Ukraine and the intrinsic difficulty of shooting down balloons with low radar signature and low kinetic energy. The political message is deliberate: any permeability (even if it seems marginal) will be treated as a strategic precedent. Escalation in NATO. We said it at the beginning, the episode arrives after penetrations of Su-30, Il-78 and MiG-31 in the Baltics, and after the recording of swarms of drones over Poland, Denmark, Munich or the Baltic, with more than 170 flights disrupted in one week in Vilnius and almost 14,000 passengers affected. Reiteration converts the episodic in pattern: state actors exploit loopholes in regulations (civil balloons, meteorological assumptions, smuggling) to degrade the continuity of European civil aviation and test the elasticity of ROE and allied cohesion without crossing explicit thresholds of article 5. Lithuania, in fact, studies consultations under article 4and has hinted that the closure could extend to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, raising the economic-logistical vector of the pulse. Hybrid war as a framework. Vilnius is clearand describes the phenomenon as a psychological operation aimed at disrupting daily life, testing NATO-EU synchrony and normalizing aggression (of low lethality, of course) as noise permanent. The background signal (at no point is Moscow explicitly named) fits into the repertoire hybrid warfare: discreet sabotage, information manipulation, low signal intrusion, erosion of trust and critical infrastructure, in conjunction with the war in Ukraine and under the plausible protection of Belarus. Plus: the closure of borders is accompanied by tougher criminal penalties against smuggling and coordination with Poland and Latvia to shield the eastern edge as a strategic unit, given the calculation that firmness, the earlier, will define how much the enemy will dare later. Image | LITHUANIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE In Xataka | Europe has decided to take action against Moscow’s hybrid war. So Germany has started hunting for Russian drones In Xataka | The Spanish invention that simplifies the hunt for Europe’s biggest threat: how to detect the arrival of drones in a matter of seconds

The highest rocket in the world again crossed the skies after the disaster

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Starship needs to get out of the bump. After A long streak of explosionsSpacex looks for a clean flight that allane the way to the new rocket generation. Booster 16 and Ship 37 are already stacked on the launch platform for the tenth flight. This will be the Penultimate Mission of Current Design Before moving on to the third generation starship. Date and time of launch. If everything goes as planned, the takeoff will take place this Sunday, August 24, in an afternoon schedule that will allow observing the reentry of the ship over the Indian Ocean in broad daylight. The launch window for the Starship’s tenth flight It opens this Sunday at 18:30 CDT, local time of Starbase, Texas. In other cities: Madrid, Spain (CEST, UTC+2): Monday, August 25 at 01:30 Mexico City, Mexico (CST, UTC – 6): Sunday, August 24 at 5:30 p.m. Buenos Aires, Argentina (Art, UTC-3): Sunday, August 24 at 8:30 p.m. Bogotá, Colombia (COT, UTC-5): Sunday, August 24 at 6:30 p.m. Lima, Peru (Pet, UTC-5): Sunday, August 24 at 6:30 p.m. Santiago, Chile (CLT, UTC-4): Sunday, August 24 at 7:30 p.m. Caracas, Venezuela (Vet, UTC-4): Sunday, August 24 at 7:30 p.m. How to see the live flight. As usual, Spacex will broadcast the launch Through its website and of Your official account in X. The broadcast will begin approximately 30 minutes before takeoff. For the most enthusiastic, YouTube channels like Nasaspaceflight and Everyday Astronaut They will offer live coverage with their own cameras from the vicinity of Starbase. In Spanish, the coverage of Space border, Mission control, Manuel Mazzanti either Spacexstormamong others. A streak that must end. This tenth attempt comes after a few months complicated for Spacex. The company has lost Four consecutive shipsturning each launch into An invaluable data source to improve its design, but also in a reminder of the complexity involved in building the highest and most powerful rocket in the world. Flight 9, which took place on May 27, ended with the loss of both stages. Booster 14, In his second flightdisintegrated during an experimental landing maneuver, subject to an angle of attack that is too aggressive that its structure did not support. Shortly after, Ship 35 reached the scheduled speed to put out its engines, but suffered a leak in the pressurization system that prevented him from completing his goals and condemned it to turn without control. As if that were not enough, the ship that had to star in this tenth flight, the Ship 36, violently exploded at the test base on June 18 during a fuel load. The culprit, according to Spacex, was a secondary nitrogen tank with structural damage that were overlooked. With this history, the pressure on the new prototypes is maximum. A flight full of experiments. Far from being conservative, Spacex has designed an ambitious mission to continue taking the vehicle to the limit and demonstrating that previous failures are solved. The Super Heavy propeller will not be caught by the tower. Instead, it will go to the Gulf of Mexico for controlled amelution while performing complex tests. Booster 16 will repeat the controlled turn that was already tested on flight 9 to save fuel in the return maneuver, after the separation of stages. But this time, it will intentionally deactivate one of the three central landing engines to test whether a backup engine can take over. The test will end with the propeller making a stationary flight on the ocean using only two engines before falling into the water. The ship 37, meanwhile, has the mission of finally fulfilling the objectives that its predecessors did not achieve. He will try for the first time to open your load gate in space to display eight Starlink satellite models. He will tasta again the redempted of a Raptor engine to perform a controlled orbit outlet. And will fly without some thermal tiles to stress vulnerable areas. In addition, it will test new materials for thermal shield, such as metal tiles (one of them with active refrigeration), and a more aggressive reentry profile. The penultimate test before the redesign. This tenth flight is not one more. It is, together with the eleventh, the last opportunity for Spacex to collect data from the current rocket design before making the jump the Starship 3. This new version, which we have already seen components, promises a deep redesign with larger and more robust fins, and a greater structural capacity. A success on flight 10 would be a fundamental moral and technical impulse for the program, demonstrating that the rapid Iteration of Spacex works and that the path to a totally reusable launch system, although full of explosions, continues to advance. Whatever happens, the show is guaranteed. Image | Spacex In Xataka | Spacex has asked Mexico to stop invading its property and returns the starship pieces that fell into the country

Dupplected skies in almost all of Spain

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Friday night We will have the rare opportunity to see The seven planets of the Solar System in the night sky at the same time. Actually our ability to see them will depend on several factors such as light pollution and that we have a telescope (or potent prismatic) to be able to see the farthest, Uranus and Neptune planets. It will also depend on the time you do in our area. Overcast night. The meteorology will not accompany those who want to take advantage of Friday night to see the alignment of the planets, at least if they are fulfilled The forecasts that advance the State Meteorology Agency (AEMET). According to Aemet in Your prediction For Friday, “the presence of A Southwest storm From the Peninsula it will leave a predominance of cloudy or covered skies, with weak rainfall affecting most of the southern peninsular, Cantabrian and Pyrenean environment. ” The areas where we find the greatest possibility of clear skies are in the northwest peninsular and in some areas of the Cantabrian coast. Galicia, León and the Basque Country will be the autonomous communities where more probabilities are to be able to enjoy this astronomical event. And the islands? Visibility will also be something better in the Balearic Islands. According to Aemet’s forecast, little cloudy skies could be seen or with cloudy intervals. In the Canary Islands, on the other hand, the agency explains that “the tail of a front associated with Borrasca will leave cloudy skies or covered with rainfall in the north of the islands tending to send, and cloudy intervals in the rest.” A persistent storm. The situation will last to Saturday, when cloudy or covered skies will also predominate. The responsible storm Of all this, installed in the peninsular south, it will also leave rainfall and even snow in some mountain ranges of the country. In summary, the weather will make it difficult to see Friday’s planetary parade, at least from Spain. It is the big problem that this astronomical event occurs in the middle of winter. How to see alignment. Having a clear sky on our heads is not the only requirement to see planetary alignment in all its splendor. We must also ensure that light pollution does not spoil the show. For this we must get away from the big cities. It can also help us close our eyes before looking at the sky to “get used to” our eyes into the dark. To identify the planets we can Help us from different applications that allow us to distinguish them from each other and from the stars that illuminate the night sky. Not everyone equally. Not all planets will be visible with the same ease. Five of the seven planets that will be visible on Friday night can be seen with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, due to their relative proximity or by their enormous size can be seen without the need for binoculars or telescopes. A pair of binoculars, however, can help us look at details such as Saturn’s rings or moons that accompany Jupiter. We will also need to be worth an optical tool if we want to see the two remaining planets, Uranus and Neptune. In Xataka | In the fourteenth century, the “small ice age” caught Europe totally off guard: this is how they managed to endure the cold Image | Aemet / ECMWF

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