The Sky This Week from March 6 to 13 – Astronomy Magazine

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Friday, March 6A waxing Moon hangs out in Cancer the Crab all night. About 18 to its west is yellowish Pollux in Gemini, and nearly 4 farther is the whiter-hued Castor. The latter appears to the naked eye as a magnitude 1.6 star, but it is actually a six-star system. The two brightest stars, Castor A and B, can be separated with a small telescope.A third component, the dimmer Castor C, lies about 1.2' away.

Saturday, March 7Night owls can take a gander at one of the best globular clusters visible in the Northern Hemisphere. Messier 13, also known as the Hercules Cluster, rises above the horizon with its namesake constellation about 9 P.M. local time but is well poised for clearer viewing by midnight and into the early hours of the morning. This cluster of ancient stars circling our galaxy contains more than 100,000 members that combine to create its magnitude 5.8 glow.

Sunday, March 8Venus and Uranus lie just over 2 apart in the evening sky. You can use Venus to easily find the ice giant by using binoculars or a telescope to locate a pair of 7th-magnitude stars about 1.2 to the lower left of Venus. Travel twice that distance in the same direction to reach brighter Uranus, glowing at magnitude 5.9.

Neptune is in conjunction with the Sun at 8 A.M. EDT. However, its position means it is lost from view in the bright glare of our star. It will make its way back to visibility by the end of next month.

For most of the United States and Canada, daylight saving time begins at 2 A.M. local time this morning. Set your clocks ahead one hour.

Monday, March 9Venus passes 2 north of Uranus this morning at 11 A.M. EDT. The inferior planet will continue to move noticeably through Aries as March progresses, while the more distant ice giant moves only about 1 eastward during the month.

Mercury is stationary at 4 A.M. EDT. From here, it will move toward its greatest western elongation, which it will reach on the 23rd.

The Full Moon occurs at 1:48 P.M. EDT. This evening, our satellite rises in Virgo as the Sun is setting and will set in the morning around dawn. Full Moon is an excellent time to easily observe Luna with or without additional optical assistance; keep in mind that the Moon will appear especially bright through binoculars or a telescope. The Full Moon also washes out much of the sky, making this time best for observing planets and brighter stars, but poor for deep-sky objects such as galaxies and nebulae.

Tuesday, March 10The Moon reaches perigee, its closest point to Earth in its orbit, at 2:30 A.M. EDT. At that time, it will sit 221,905 miles (357,121 kilometers) from our planet.

When the Full Moon occurs at perigee, it is sometimes called a supermoon by the media. Although this is an evocative name, the Full Moon will only appear about 7 percent larger than average, which is difficult if not impossible for observers to discern.

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The Sky This Week from March 6 to 13 - Astronomy Magazine

The fifth force: Is there another fundamental force of nature? – Astronomy Magazine

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The four fundamental forces

Physics textbooks teach that there are four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

Were quite familiar with the first two forces. Gravity pins us to Earth and pulls us around the sun, while electromagnetism keeps the lights on. The other two forces are less obvious to us because they govern interactions at the tiniest scales. The strong force binds matter together, while the weak nuclear force describes the radioactive decay of atoms.

Each of these forces is carried by a kind of subatomic particle that physicists call a boson. For example, photons are the force particle in electromagnetism. Gluons carry the strong nuclear force. W and Z bosons are responsible for the weak nuclear force. Theres even a hypothetical boson for gravity called the graviton, though scientists havent proven its existence.

However, if you ask many theoretical physicists, theyll probably tell you we havent discovered all the forces of nature yet. Others are likely out there, just waiting to be discovered.For example, some suspect that discovering dark matter may reveal a weak new force.

And thats where the Hungarian group comes in. Without getting too lost in the details, the group shot protons at a thin sample of lithium-7, which then radioactively decayed into beryllium-8. As expected, this created pairs of positrons and electrons. However, the detectors also picked up excess decay signals that suggested the existence of a potential new and extremely weak particle. If it exists, the particle would weigh in at about 1/50 the mass of a proton. And because of its properties, it would be a boson a force-carrying particle.

But history is littered with reasons to be skeptical of new additions. In recent decades, other groups have also claimed to have found a fifth force, only to have their claims quietly fade away. Around the year 2000, one group proposed a new force, called quintessence, to explain the then-recent discovery of dark energy. In the 1980s, a group of physicists at MIT said theyd found a fifth force, dubbed hypercharge, that served as a kind of anti-gravity. Yet here we are with textbooks still teaching the same four fundamental forces we had decades ago.

That means the most likely explanation for the unexplained new signal is that theres something off with the Hungarian detectors setup. However, no one is disputing the data. The findings were peer-reviewed and published in the journal Physical Review Letters the same journal that published the discovery of gravitational waves. Even ideas in prestigious journals can sometimes be explained away as systematic error, but thats the way science works.

People are paying attention to see whether this is really a nuclear physics effect or whether its something systematic, Alves says. Its important to repeat those experiments ... to be able to test whether this is real or if its an artifact of the way theyre doing the experiment.

Quest to confirm

And thats precisely what her group hopes to do. Together with a small team, shes proposing to repeat the Hungarian experiment using equipment that already exists at Los Alamos. The national lab has been a leader in nuclear physics since the creation of the atomic bomb. And today, thousands of top physicists still work there on problems ranging from safeguarding and studying our nations nuclear arsenal, to pioneering quantum computers and observing pulsars.

As it turns out, they also have a detector nearly identical to the one used by the Hungarian team.

When you add all that together, Alves believes Los Alamos has exactly the right combination of facilities and expertise to repeat the experiment. Thats why her group quietly worked on their proposal for the last six months, and recently submitted a funding request for review. To gain approval, it will have to win out in an annual competition alongside other projects at the national lab.

In recent years, several other groups likewise have suggested theyll look for this force. But at the moment, Alves believes they're the main group in the U.S. working to confirm or refute the finding. If they cant gain approval, it may be years before a university or other group can secure both the funds and expertise to repeat the experiment with the same sort of parameters the Hungarians used.

As with all extraordinary claims, this potentially paradigm-shifting discovery will require extraordinary evidence before people accept it. So we may have to wait a while before we know whether the X17 particle and its potential fifth force will revolutionize physics, or take its place atop the dustbin of debunked and discarded discoveries.

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The fifth force: Is there another fundamental force of nature? - Astronomy Magazine

This gas-giant exoplanet has water-rich clouds. Here’s why it thrills astronomers. – Space.com

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Three teams of astronomers have been fascinated by an alien world known as K2-18b. But what's all the fuss about?

In September, two teams announced that they had found signs of liquid water in the planet's atmosphere a landmark discovery in the search for potentially habitable alien worlds. But the mere presence of water isn't the only condition necessary for life. Other conditions, like temperature and pressure, can also affect a planet's habitability. Now, a third team reports that the pressures of liquid water on the same world may be good for life to evolve another intriguing development for scientists.

"We recognized pretty early on that this is a very unique target," Bjrn Benneke, an astronomer at the University of Montreal, told Space.com. Benneke led one of the teams that announced the atmospheric analysis in the September 2019 study, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in December. He presented the findings in January at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Related: 7 ways to discover alien planets

Benneke and his colleagues used the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to study K2-18b a dozen times over a three-year period, to collect precise observations of its atmosphere.

Although scientists have studied exoplanet atmospheres before, those worlds have been larger than K2-18b, which is only about 2.6 times the size of Earth and 8.5 times its mass. The planet's small size made the observations especially challenging, requiring multiple detailed measurements that, combined, could provide a more in-depth probe of the world.

"Nothing like this has been done before," Benneke said.

K2-18b is 110 light-years away, in the constellation Leo, where it orbits a small but active type of star that can hurl bursts of radiation at orbiting planets. Although the star is smaller and dimmer than the sun, K2-18b's 33-day orbit means the planet receives roughly the same amount of energy from its star as Earth receives from the sun.

The star's small size makes it easier to detect details of a diminutive planet like K2-18b because observations of a planet depend on how much light it blocks as it passes in front of its star from Earth's perspective. A smaller planet blocks less light than a larger one, but a smaller star has less light to block, making that small signal somewhat easier to see. (The planet's orbit also helped scientists capture multiple passes across its star.)

In the Hubble and Spitzer observations, Benneke and his team found the signature of water in the exoplanet's atmosphere and not just any form of water. "Even more exciting, we discovered in the data that there's a cloud deck on the planet," Benneke said.

The clue was that starlight beaming through the atmosphere came to an abrupt stop at a certain altitude. Benneke and his colleagues used models to determine that the height was the perfect pressure and temperature for water to survive.

"The only plausible explanation is that these are liquid water clouds, very similar to what we have on Earth," Benneke said.

As the clouds fill with water droplets, they most likely create rainfall. But that rain would never touch the ground. Instead, it would fall until temperatures and pressures caused it to evaporate once again, the researchers said. Benneke compared rainfall on K2-18b to terrestrial virga, which occurs when high temperatures and pressures cause rain to evaporate before it reaches the ground.

Finding a similar weather pattern on an exoplanet is an intriguing prospect to Benneke.

"[K2-18b] is the coldest planet with [atmospheric] detection, the smallest planet, the least-massive planet," he said. "To me, it's the most exciting one."

Although K2-18b has the right conditions for Earth-like clouds to form, that doesn't make the planet itself Earth-like. Instead, it is classified as a sub-Neptune, a gas giant without a surface. NASA's Kepler spacecraft determined that sub-Neptunes are likely the most common type of exoplanets in the Milky Way, making up more than three-fourths of the planetary population.

Nonetheless, astronomers are having a difficult time understanding the relatively small gas giants, and that's one reason the K2-18b findings are so exciting. "We don't quite know what's going on with these planets," Benneke said. "It's probing this regime of planets that we have a very poor understanding of right now."

Sub-Neptunes have masses that fall somewhere between Earth and Neptune, and there's no analogue in the solar system. Understanding worlds like K2-18b can help improve scientists' knowledge of how planets grow and evolve. "If you want to understand planets as a whole, the diversity of planets, it's very critical that you understand the most common ones," Benneke said.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Facebook and on Twitter at @NolaTRedd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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This gas-giant exoplanet has water-rich clouds. Here's why it thrills astronomers. - Space.com

Get ready to explore the "Cosmos" with Neil deGrasse Tyson – Astronomy Magazine

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Hold on, a quick aside. When you say the word billion on the show, I feel like you think for a moment before you pronounce it. Were you careful in how you said the word billion, not to sound too much like Carl Sagan?

[laughs] You know, you can't step into a Sagan slot and not be conscious of the number billion. There were a couple of times I would punch it up a notch, almost as an homage, but otherwise not. I do remember a couple of times when I didn't think the editors would use those cuts where I went high on the intonation scale.

Sorry, back to our conversation. Many people who think about the future of humanity imagine us someday merging with computers. Does that seem credible to you?

No, not really. And I know I'm an outlier here. It doesn't feel credible because, you know, I have in my palm access to the internet. So you're saying, "Oh, now I'm going to wire that with a USB connection into my brainstem." How fast access am I going to want? Is it not fast enough to pull this phone out of my pocket? For me, the fact that it is right with me every day I leave the house, that doesn't leave me wanting this thing to be surgically connectedto get silicon surgically connected to my physiology.You dont crave more speed, more connection to information?

Heres a related analogy. Air transportation, in its early decades, was about how fast can you fly to your destination, how to minimize the time you're on an airplane. So planes got faster and faster. We got to jets instead of propellers, and then we got the supersonic transport. Then things started pulling back. Why? Well we had the 747. Planes got larger, they had better food, they had more leg room. The seats were more comfortable. Today we have the internet on your flight, we have any movie you'd ever want to watch, we have music.

The idea that speed was so important that we would want it at all costs gave way to a different idea: I am comfortable in this environment, and in fact I can even catch up on things. I can binge on shows I didn't have time to watch at home. You can come off the plane in a better place than you were before you entered it. And so no one is trying to make planes faster today. In fact, they're slower than before. The typical speeds are 500 to 550 miles per hour, whereas when I was growing up, the speeds were 600 to 650 miles per hour.

So to say we're going to become one with artificial intelligence because we want the speed, I just don't see that happening.

A lot of people also dream that computer technology will bring us immortality. Thats a possible world they long for: We will upload our brains, and then we'll never die.

Well, I would ask, if you upload your brain, how do you know that's still you? I don't think we understand consciousness enough to assert that. We can say that's your knowledge. That thing, that entity has all the same knowledge that you have, but is that you? I don't know.

We know that an identical twin has identical DNA to you yet they are not you. You don't have their thoughts and they don't have your thoughts. So this notion of uploading your consciousnessI'm not going to pay close attention to it until we have a secure understanding of what consciousness is in the first place.

That's a whole other mysterious world, the mental world that is still barely being explored.

Right. Its a frontier perhaps as vast as the universe itself.

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Get ready to explore the "Cosmos" with Neil deGrasse Tyson - Astronomy Magazine

We asked astronomers: are we alone in the Universe? The answer was surprisingly consistent – The Conversation AU

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Are we alone in the Universe? The expert opinion on that, it turns out, is surprisingly consistent.

Is there other life in the Universe? I would say: probably, Daniel Zucker, Associate Professor of astronomy at Macquarie University, tells astrophysics student and The Conversations editorial intern Antonio Tarquinio on todays podcast episode.

I think that we will discover life outside of Earth in my lifetime. If not that, then in your lifetime, says his fellow Macquarie University colleague, Professor Orsola De Marco.

And Lee Spitler, a Senior Lecturer and astronomy researcher at the same institution, was similarly optimistic: I think theres a high likelihood that we are not alone in the Universe.

The big question, however, is what that life might look like.

Read more: The Dish in Parkes is scanning the southern Milky Way, searching for alien signals

Were also hearing from Danny C Price, project scientist for the Breakthrough Listen project scanning the southern skies for unusual patterns, on what the search for alien intelligence looks like in real life - and what its yielded so far.

Read more: 'The size, the grandeur, the peacefulness of being in the dark': what it's like to study space at Siding Spring Observatory

Everything you need to know about how to listen to a podcast is here.

Additional audio credits

Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from Elefant Traks.

Lucky Stars by Podington Bear, from Free Music Archive

Illumination by Kai Engel, from Free Music Archive

Podcast episode recorded and edited by Antonio Tarquinio.

Shutterstock

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We asked astronomers: are we alone in the Universe? The answer was surprisingly consistent - The Conversation AU

Dine Roundup: Wine dinners, Astronomy on Tap and more in Baton Rouge this week – 225 Baton Rouge

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Get your friends together for Friends trivia this Tuesday

Think you have the unagi to participate in Friends Trivia at Reginellis Pizzeria Tuesday, March 10? Well, get your gang of one to six people together as you compete for Reginellis gift cards. And as always, the best team name wins a free pitcher of NOLA Blonde. Could you be any more excited? If so, be sure to share plenty of food while youre at it, too, because we all know Joey doesnt share food!

Reginellis Pizzeria (Goodwood) is at 684 Jefferson Highway.

Head over to Bin 77 Bistro & SideBar as the restaurant features Single Vineyard wines of the Hartford Court Family Winery on Tuesday, March 10. Besides two flights of white and red wine, there will also be plenty of chef and sommelier boards, starting at 7 p.m., which will include various cheeses, charcuteries and cooked proteins to go with the wines.

To make a reservation, call Bin 77 at 763-2288.

Bin 77 Bistro & SideBar is at 10111 Perkins Rowe, Ste. 160.

Curious about whether or not Experiment 626 and Chewbacca could exist, and what their lives might be like? You and your kids can find out as Astronomy on Tap celebrates its second anniversary Wednesday, March 11. LSU grad student Rachel Malacek will talk about the possible adventures of Stitch (from Lilo and Stitch), and fellow grad student Aaron Ryan will discuss the life of Chewbacca.

There will be plenty of games, raffles, glow sticks and spaced-themed drinks for everyone, too.

The Varsity Theatre is at 3353 Highland Road.

Need to wine down? Join Rouj Creole Wednesday, March 11, as the new restaurant hosts another wine dinner. You can enjoy the chefs four-course meal, included with a Duckhorn wine pairing, 6:30-9:30 p.m.

To make a reservation, call Rouj at 614-2400.

Rouj Creole is at 7601 Bluebonnet Blvd., Ste 100.

Join Red Stick Spice Co. as its team teaches you how to demystify pantry staples with Middle Eastern foods Thursday, March 12. You can look forward to tahini cookies, roasted eggplant, pomegranate molasses and more, 6-8 p.m.

This class is available for those 16 and older. Tickets are available here.

Red Stick Spice Company is at 660 Jefferson Highway.

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Dine Roundup: Wine dinners, Astronomy on Tap and more in Baton Rouge this week - 225 Baton Rouge

Now Whats Going On With Betelgeuse? The Future Supernova Just Isnt That Cool, Say Astronomers – Forbes

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Observations of the star Betelgeuse taken by the ESOs Very Large Telescope in January and December ... [+] 2019, which show the stars substantial dimming.

Astronomers expect Betelgeuse to explode as a supernova within the next 100,000 years, when its core collapses. However, evidence is mounting that the stars dimming, which began in October, isnt necessarily a sign of an imminent explosion.

A new paperaccepted to Astrophysical Journal Letters and published on the preprint site arXiv entitled Betelgeuse Just Isn't That Cool: Effective Temperature Alone Cannot Explain the Recent Dimming of Betelgeuse by Emily Levesque, a UW associate professor of astronomy, andPhilip Massey, an astronomer with Lowell Observatory, suggests that Betelgeuse isnt dimming because its about to explode.

Its just dusty.

Astronomers have been on alert since late in 2019 when Betelgeusefound in the constellation of Orionbegan to visibly dim, eventually dropping to around 40% of its usual brightness before slightly brightening in recent weeks.

Could it be about to explode as a massive supernova?

Probably not. Levesque and Massey made optical spectrophotometry observations of Betelgeuse on February 14, 2020 at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, to calculate the average surface temperature of the red supergiant star. Their results indicate that Betelgeuse is significantly warmer than expected if the recent dimming were caused by a cooling of the stars surface.

This evidence suggests that Betelgeuse has probably sloughed off some material from its outer layers, something that is common with red supergiant stars. We see this all the time in red supergiants, and its a normal part of their life cycle, said Levesque. Red supergiants will occasionally shed material from their surfaces, which will condense around the star as dust. As it cools and dissipates, the dust grains will absorb some of the light heading toward us and block our view.

The first direct image of a star other than our sun, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. ... [+] Betelgeuse is an enormous star in the constellation Orion. This ultraviolet image shows a bright spot on the star that is 2000 degrees centigrade hotter than the rest of the surface. The picture on the right shows the constellation Orion, with Betelgeuse marked by a yellow cross. The star's size relative to the earth's orbit is also shown. (Photo by CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

How do you take a stars temperature?

The astronomers calculated Betelgeuses temperature by looking at the spectrum of light emanating from it. Emily and I had been in contact about Betelgeuse, and we both agreed that the obvious thing to do was to get a spectrum, said Massey. I already had observing time scheduled on the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope, and I knew if I played around for a bit I would be able to get a good spectrum despite Betelgeuse still being one of the brightest stars in the sky.

They looked for the telltale signs of light that had been absorbed by titanium oxide, which forms in the upper layers of large, relatively cool stars like Betelgeuse. By their calculations, Betelgeuses average surface temperature on February 14 was about 3,325 Celsius/6,017 Fahrenheit.

Thats only 50-100 Celsius cooler than calculated in 2004.

Orion rising behind the iconic Hoodoos on Highway 10 east of Drumheller, Alberta, near East Coulee, ... [+] on a moonless January night, with illumination by starlight and by a nearby yardlight providing some shadows and warmer illumination. Clouds are beginning to move in and are providing the natural star glows. (Photo by: Alan Dyer /VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Orion rising behind the iconic Hoodoos on Highway 10 east of Drumheller, Alberta, near East Coulee, ... [+] on a moonless January night, with illumination by starlight and by a nearby yardlight providing some shadows and warmer illumination. Clouds are beginning to move in and are providing the natural star glows. (Photo by: Alan Dyer /VW PICS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

So, not much has changedand dimming should be ruled-out. A comparison with our 2004 spectrum showed immediately that the temperature hadnt changed significantly, said Massey. We knew the answer had to be dust. The theory is that newly formed dust is absorbing some of Betelgeuses light. The other possibility is that huge convection cells within Betelgeuse had drawn hot material up to its surface, where it had cooled before falling back into the interior. A simple way to tell between these possibilities is to determine the effective surface temperature of Betelgeuse, said Massey.

However, if youre hoping to see Betelgeuse go supernova and shine brightly day and night for weeks or months, keep looking. Red supergiants are very dynamic stars, said Levesque. The more we can learn about their normal behaviortemperature fluctuations, dust, convection cellsthe better we can understand them and recognize when something truly unique, like a supernova, might happen.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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Now Whats Going On With Betelgeuse? The Future Supernova Just Isnt That Cool, Say Astronomers - Forbes

The rover formally known as Mars 2020 – Astronomy Magazine

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Now, it seems that every time scientists make a new discovery about Mars, the conversation quickly shifts to: When are we going to go there and see for ourselves? With the upcoming Mars 2020 mission, scientists are finally taking the first steps toward exploring the Red Planet in person.

Planned for launch between July 17 and August 5, Mars 2020 will embark on a roughly seven-month journey to the Red Planet, arriving February 18, 2021. And once engineers confirm its landed safe and sound, Mars 2020 will set to work achieving its four main objectives.

Theres plenty of overlap between Mars 2020s goals and those of previous rovers, but Mars 2020 still has a unique agenda. Namely, Mars 2020 will seek signs of past life by searching for sites that were once habitable; hunt for evidence of ancient microbes at those sites by studying rocks known to preserve life; collect and store rock cores for a future sample return mission; and help scientists prepare for the hurdles human explorers will face on Mars, partly by testing a method for pulling oxygen out of thin air.

But first, the newly named rover has to get to the Red Planet.

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The rover formally known as Mars 2020 - Astronomy Magazine

Heather Couper obituary – The Guardian

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The astronomer and broadcaster Heather Couper, who has died aged 70 after a short illness, helped, with her passion for the subject, to redefine the way her science was presented on television.

She made her name with two series in particular, The Planets (1985) and The Stars (1988), both on Channel 4. In these programmes, rather than presenting from a TV studio, Couper took viewers inside the observatories that shaped the subject she loved. Her scripts were often laced with tales of stargazers from the past, and this historical context, presented from a personal point of view, showed the process of the science, and humanised it.

Couper was a pioneer for women in science both on and off screen. In 1984 she was elected the first female president of the British Astronomical Association. In 1993 she became the first female professor of astronomy at Gresham College, London, a position that had been held only by men since its inception in 1597.

Her success with The Planets and The Stars led to her founding the television production company Pioneer Productions in 1988 with her lifelong collaborator, Nigel Henbest, and the director of The Stars, Stuart Carter. A year later the company produced The Neptune Encounter, a documentary about that years flypast of the eighth planet in the solar system by Nasas Voyager 2 spacecraft.

Couper wrote dozens of books, mostly with Henbest, including three popular titles for children: Black Holes (1996), Big Bang (1997), and Is Anybody Out There? (1998). Her recent publications include The Universe Explained: A Cosmic Q&A (2018) and the 2020 edition of Philips Stargazing Month-by-Month Guide to the Night Sky. The pair also wrote a monthly astronomy column for the Independent from 1987 until early this year.

Couper had been captivated by space from a young age. She was born in Wallasey, Cheshire, to Anita (nee Taylor), a historian, and George Couper, a pilot. The family eventually settled in west London. As a child, Heather would sit up at night staring into the sky. On one occasion, when she was aged around eight, she saw a green shooting star, but her parents did not believe that such a thing could exist. She was vindicated the next day by a newspaper story on the star, and resolved to be an astronomer.

Aged 16, she wrote to the astronomer and TV personality Patrick Moore asking if her gender was a barrier to a career in astronomy. She received a letter back from him saying that being a girl was no problem at all. However, on leaving St Marys girls grammar school in Northwood, Middlesex, Couper initially abandoned that aspiration to become a management trainee at Topshop.

After two years she realised that she was not suited to a career in retail, and in 1969 became a research assistant at Cambridge observatory, while taking maths A-level at night school. She became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1970.

She then studied astronomy and physics at the University of Leicester, where she met Henbest. They became platonic companions for life, later (in 1985) forming the business partnership Hencoup Enterprises. Couper graduated in 1973 and began a PhD at Linacre College, Oxford. However, her drive to popularise her subject had taken hold, and she left after 18 months to begin giving talks at local societies and evening classes.

From 1977 onwards she gave regular lectures at the Old Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and in 1978 was invited to appear on Moores show The Sky at Night. This led to her presenting a childrens astronomy series, Heavens Above (1981), for Yorkshire TV.

Couper was also a skilled radio broadcaster. She presented the BBC World Services astronomy magazine programme Seeing Stars (1994-2000) and Britains Space Race (2007) on Radio 4. The following year, also for Radio 4, she wrote and narrated Cosmic Quest, a history of astronomy over 30 15-minute episodes.

I worked with Heather when we were both guest lecturers in China for the 2009 total solar eclipse. Her ability to captivate an audience from the moment she took the microphone was extraordinary.

She was a member of the Millennium Commission (the body responsible for the distribution of funds raised by the National Lottery) from its inception in 1993 until its disbandment in 2009. Coupers science background was unique among the commissioners and she became the subjects chief advocate, with science and environment centres around the UK, such as the National Space Centre in Leicester, benefiting. She was appointed CBE in 2007. In 1999 an asteroid, 3922 Heather, was named after her.

Beyond astronomy, Coupers interests were the countryside, church architecture and classical music. She and Henbest lived first in Greenwich, and then in the Chiltern Hills. He survives her.

Heather Anita Couper, astronomer, writer and broadcaster, born 2 June 1949; died 19 February 2020

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Heather Couper obituary - The Guardian

Heres how to see that huge asteroid thatll safely pass Earth in April – EarthSky

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Orbit of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. It requires 3 years and 8 months to orbit the sun onc. It gets nearly as far from the sun as Jupiter (about 5 times Earths distance from the sun). Image via NASA/ JPL.

Have you heard the buzz about a big very big asteroid thatll pass close in April? We have! No, it wont hit our planet. In fact, it wont have any effects on Earth. Still, excitement is building among both professional and amateur astronomers about the upcoming flybyof asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 the biggest asteroid due to fly by Earth this year coming closest on April 29, 2020. This space rock is probably at least a mile wide (1.8 km) and maybe 2 1/2 times that big (4.1 km). Closest approach is April 29 around 5:56 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (09:56 UTC; translate UTC to your time). Professional observatories are already pointing their telescopes at the huge space rock. Amateur astronomers with smaller telescopes will have an opportunity to see it as a slow-moving star very soon; if thats you, we give charts and tips for observers at the bottom of this post that should help.

No access to a telescope? No problem. The Virtual Telescope Project in Rome will host a free, online public viewing of the asteroid on April 28, 2020.

Lets make absolutely clear that theres no chance of a collision between this asteroid and Earth. Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass at some 4 million miles (6 million km), or about 16 times the Earth-moon distance. Its true the object is classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. The Center for Near Earth Objects defines such an object as one that comes as close to Earth as:

0.05 AU or less [about 19.5 lunar distances] and an absolute magnitude of 22.0 or less

In other words, such objects are reasonably close and reasonably big. And do we need to say there are a bunch of objects like this? Wikipedia lists 22 of the largest here. Recent decades have revealed more and more asteroids orbiting the sun, as the video below from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows:

None of the 22 Potentially Hazardous Asteroids listed by Wikipedia is known to be on a collision course with Earth in the foreseeble future. In fact, none of the asteroids in the video above is known to be on a collision course. Likewise, asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 isnt on a collision course with Earth, not anytime soon. The orbit of this asteroid is well known for at least the next 200 years. Its closest approach to Earth in this century and the next will happen in 2079, when itll swoop to within about a million miles of Earth (still about four times farther away than the moon). That 2079 sweep past Earth will still be a big deal. Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is the largest known of all large Near-Earth Objects thatll pass less than five times the Earth-moon distance over the next two centuries!

Astronomers at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico will study asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 from April 8 to 24, 2020, as the space rock travels through space at19,461 miles per hour(31,320 km/h).

The high resolution radar images that will be obtained from Arecibo should provide scientists a better estimate of the space rocks size and shape.

Astronomers with reasonably sized telescopes are already capturing images of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. This March 6, 2020, image of the asteroid comes from a single 30-second exposure, remotely taken with Elena, a 17-inch robotic telescope. At the imaging time, (52768) 1998 OR2 was at about 22 million miles (36 million km) from Earth. At its closest in late April, itll be about 4 million miles (6.4 million km) away. Image via Gianluca Masi/ Virtual Telescope Project.

How to see asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 with a small telescope

During its April 2020 pass, this asteroid will at no time be bright enough to view with the unaided eye. However, its estimated to reach a visual magnitude of around 10 to 11, which means observers with at least 6-inch or 8-inch telescopes (the number indicates the size of the primary mirror) will see the asteroid (very slowly) moving in front of the stars!

Sky enthusiasts can initially use a wide-angle (32mm or 35mm) eyepiece to point the telescope to a reference star in the asteroids path (charts below). After being assured that the instrument is pointing at the correct patch of the sky, a 26mm or 27mm eyepiece is recommended to detect the asteroids slow motion. You will want to note the star field, and watch for the object that moves over a period of about 10 to 15 minutes. Yes, thatll be the space rock.

This illustration shows the location of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on the night of April 24, 2020 around 11:45 p.m. central time. As seen from central U.S., facing west, southwest. Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.

On April 24, 2020 at 11:45 p.m. central time, observers using small computerized telescopes can point their instruments at these reference stars, to observe asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2. Compare the views 10 or 15 minutes later to detect an apparent star that has changed position. Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.

There will be closer approaches of asteroids in the future, including Apophis, which although smaller will pass very close to Earth in 2029. Another, larger space rock 2 miles (3 km) wide designated as asteroid (415029) 2011 UL21 will pass slightly farther than (52768) 1998 OR2 in June 2024.

But the upcoming flyby in April 2020 of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is the most significant close approach of an asteroid until 2027, as another huge asteroid known as (4953) 1990 MU will safely pass by Earth at 12 lunar distances.

Astronomers first discovered asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 onJuly 24, 1998,from Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii.

Have a Go-To Telescope? Point your instrument at star HIP 48674 on April 25, 2020 at 10 p.m. central time to find the huge asteroid, which will appear as a slow-moving star. To see its movement, compare the views over about 10 to 15 minutes. Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.

Location of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 on the night of April 27, 2020. The space rock passes close to star HIP 50745 around 9:15 p.m. central time. Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.

Location of asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 around the nights of closest approach (April 28-29, 2020). Facing south, as seen from the central U.S. Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.

Showtime! On April 29, 2020, around its closest approach to Earth, asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass close to galaxy NGC 3463 and star HIP 53416. Around 9:30 p.m. CT, point your small computerized telescope to these reference objects. Compare the views 10 to 15 minutes later to detect the apparent star that changed position. Thats the asteroid. Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.

On April 30, 2020 at 9:30 p.m. asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 is located close to stars HIP 54875 and 55201. Use a GoTo telescope to locate these reference stars to be able to locate the slow moving asteroid. Illustration by Eddie Irizarry using Stellarium.

Bottom line: The huge asteroid known as (52768) 1998 OR2 will pass closest to Earth on April 29, 2020. Observers peering through telescopes will see it as a slow-moving star. Charts, tips plus how to watch online here.

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Heres how to see that huge asteroid thatll safely pass Earth in April - EarthSky

Astronomers Without Borders – The Planetary Society

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One people, one sky. That motto belongs to Astronomers Without Borders. Its founder and retired leader, Mike Simmons, recently brought a guest to Planetary Society headquarters. Olayinka Fagbemiro is with the Nigerian space agency and also heads Astronomers Without Borders in her nation. Emily Lakdawalla tells us about four exciting planetary science missions that are currently competing for selection by NASA. Bruce Betts tells us about the search for 100 earths even as he asks us to find a citizen of Middle Earth in space.

A Planetary Radio t-shirt from the Planetary Society store AND a Planetary Society r-r-r-rubber asteroid.

The winner will be revealed next week.

Which NASA Ranger mission imaged Mare Tranquillitatis, the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon?

Ranger 8 successfully imaged the Moons Sea of Tranquility in 1965 before being smashed to bitsintentionally.

Mat Kaplan: [00:00:00] Turning young African eyes toward the cosmos, this week on Planetary Radio.

Welcome. I'm Mat Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Mike Simmons stopped by the other day, the founder and just-retired leader of Astronomers Without Borders brought along a very special guest. He'll introduce us to Olayinka Fagbemiro of the Nigerian Space Agency. Olayinka is also National Coordinator for Astronomers Without Borders Nigeria. Together they'll tell us that the night's sky unites all of humanity.

Four new missions have made it to the next step in the long road toward selection by NASA. Emily Lakdawalla will introduce them to us. And Bruce Betts brings back his favorite game, Where in the Solar System, with a tip of the hobbits hat to Middle Earth. It's almost here. The new expanded [00:01:00] version of The Downlink will premiere on Friday, March 6th. You'll see it at planetory.org/downlink, which is also where you can be one of the first to sign up for the newsletter.

Here's a sampling of the space headlines Jason Davis collected for the most recent addition. The largest unnamed world in our solar neighborhood now has an official moniker. It's Gonggong, named after a Chinese water god. Gonggong may be a bit larger than Pluto's companion, Charon. The body's discoverers asked The Planetary Society to help with the public selection process. Gonggong won by a 2:1 margin, and the name has been accepted by the International Astronomical Union.

JPL engineers are making more aggressive attempts to get Insight Lander's probe, known as the mole, to get a grip. The instrument is still stuck at the surface of Mars. Now the spacecraft's scoop will press on the mole as it attempts to hammer itself. [00:02:00] Meanwhile, scientists has published results of the first 10 months of data from Insight's seismometer. It found 174 marsquakes. More than 20 of these had magnitudes of greater than three, which I can tell you, growing up in L.A., is enough to shake you up. More to come, no doubt.

The Juno mission has achieved one of its major goals by determining that water makes up about one quarter of 1% of Jupiter's atmosphere. That's three times as much as Galileo's atmospheric probe found when it plunged into the giant world back in 1995. Scientists have long suspected that the probe was simply unlucky enough to enter a- an unusually dry spot.

And NASA has acknowledged that the first liftoff of the Space Launch System, that giant rocket at the core of the agency's Artemis program, will be delayed to sometime in 2021. NASA still says it can return humans to the Moon's surface by [00:03:00] 2024.

Emily Lakdawalla is The Planetary Society's solar system specialist. Emily, great to get you back on to, uh, talk about these four brand-new Discovery program candidates. Could this be the year that Venus finally gets a little more love?

Emily Lakdawalla: It could be. I mean, Venus has been visited by a couple of missions, but by NASA for an awfully long time. In fact, it's so long ago, it was before I was even a graduate student. I was working on Magellan data for my grad program. And that's the last time NASA got any up-close and personal data. So I'm so excited to see two Venus misio- missions in this Discovery down selection, and I think the community is really, really hoping that- that one of them will get picked.

Mat Kaplan: All right. Remind us, first of all, where are these Discovery missions in- in the entire spectrum of NASA's, uh, planetary science missions.

Emily Lakdawalla: Well, Discovery is the lowest-cost program of NASA missions. There's three basic classes of NASA missions. There's Discovery, New Frontiers, and Flagship. [00:04:00] Discovery missions cost around $500 million. New Frontiers are about a billion. And then Flagship are like 2 billion and up. They're supposed to fly the most often. They're supposed to push the envelope, in one way or another, either with the type of instrument that they're using, a type of measurement they're trying to perform, the way they operate, the kind of, uh, propulsion they use, you know, one of those things. It's designed to be rapidly-developed missions that help NASA prove new technologies that they could later go on to use on some of their bigger missions.

Mat Kaplan: Insight on Mars is one of these, right?

Emily Lakdawalla: Insight is one of those. It's not the best example, actually, because, uh, of the way that that year's selection worked. But there have been some really spectacular missions that- that tested really new stuff. Like Dawn going to Ceres and Vesta. We had Messenger at Mercury, which was a fabulous mission. There's a huge number, uh, the Discovery program has really been quite successful over time. The hope is that they'll actually be able to pick two out of the four. They'll pick at least one, but people [00:05:00] really are pulling for two.

Mat Kaplan: And they did pick two in last round, right? Those two, uh, asteroid missions?

Emily Lakdawalla: That's right. There's Lucy and Psyche. Lucy is a mission that's going to explore a bunch of, um, centaurs and, uh, Trojans. These are rather distant small bodies. They tend to be ... They orbit around, uh, Jupiter's distance from the sun. And so it'd be the first kind of mission to go to multiple objects like that. And then Psyche's a really fun one. It goes to an all-metal asteroid. So those will be very cool. And I think, because both of those were asteroid missions, people were not surprised that the four mission down selected in this round, not one of them is proposed for an asteroid.

Mat Kaplan: I can't wait for, uh, the Psyche, in particular, 'cause it's gonna be so interesting to finally see one of those metal, uh, monsters up close. But take us through these, uh, four, uh, candidates that are, that are still competing in this round.

Emily Lakdawalla: Well, we'll talk about the Venus missions first, since, uh, since you mentioned those already. There's two. One's called DAVINCI+, um, the other one's called VERITAS. Both of them were [00:06:00] actually in the final round the last Discovery selection that wound up with two asteroid missions, which is one the reasons I think that people are really fairly sure that at least one of these will go forward. They're quite different missions. DAVINCI is- is one that will penetrate the atmosphere, is studying the- the qualities of the atmosphere on the way down. It's basically an atmospheric probe. It will take cameras, uh, as it's descending. But it's not designed to last a long time.

The VERITAS mission is a- a radar mission, which is, in a way, like Magellan, but it's specifically focused on topography, which I can tell you, as a person who studied Venus once, it is so necessary. The modern kinda renaissance of Mars exploration began with Mars Global Surveyor, which got the first really good topographic map of Mars, that formed the basis of all the rest of the Mars orbital work that's been done for the following 25 years. This mission stands a chance to do the same thing, to develop the topographic map that will the basis of everything we do on Venus for decades. So, [laughs], as you can probably, I'm a [00:07:00] little bit biased.

Mat Kaplan: [laughs].

Emily Lakdawalla: I love my Venus radar. I think topography's so necessary, and I've known Sue [Smecker 00:07:05], who's the, uh, principal investigator, for a long time, ever since I was a grad student. And I- I would dearly love to see her be in charge for a mission like this. She's lovely.

Mat Kaplan: Now, what about the other two? They're going much further out.

Emily Lakdawalla: Yeah. So the other two missions are pretty exciting. They're outer planets' missions, and uh, one of them has been proposed before, and that's Io Volcano Observer, which is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a spacecraft that's designed to orbit Jupiter and, um, observe the volcanos on Io. It's designed to try to figure out how, uh, all the massive tidal forces that are operating in- in orbit around Jupiter, between Jupiter tugging on Io, and- and Europa and Ganymede also, how that generates the heat that's coming out of Io's interior. Just how much heat is coming out of it, and try to understand better what the volcanism is doing on Jupiter's innermost and very volcanic moon.

Mat Kaplan: Can we assume that it would also have a- a camera onboard, so that we could get [00:08:00] really up close to those, uh, magnificent volcanos?

Emily Lakdawalla: It absolutely would. There's no question. As I've, as I've said before with Juno, it would be a crime to go to Jupiter and not have a camera onboard. This one, I'm sure, would have a- a nice, uh, infrared camera, near infrared, because Io's volcanos are so hot that you can map them, uh, by their heat alone. And so you would be studying at both in like regular visual images, and also in infrared wavelengths, where they'd be illuminated by their own heat. So you'd be able image them both in day and at night, to see the heat that's coming out of the volcanos.

Mat Kaplan: I would only add that it seems like a crime to go anywhere without a camera.

Emily Lakdawalla: [laughs].

Mat Kaplan: [laughs]. All right. How about this last one, the fourth, and- and the one that, uh, will be going the furthest, if it's funded?

Emily Lakdawalla: That's right. So Trident, uh, is a flyby of Triton, which is the largest moon of Neptune, the only actually big moon of Neptune, and likely a captured Kuiper Belt object. It's even larger than Pluto, and is otherwise very Pluto-like in its composition and characteristics. It also orbits [00:09:00] Neptune backwards, so it's probably a captured object. It probably didn't start out its existence there. We know that it has active geysers. Uh, it's just an opportunity to go by, map it, look for changes that have happened since Voyager 2 flew past, um, try to understand the particles and the environment around it.

And you know, Voyager 2, as cool as the flyby of the Neptune system was, it was a spacecraft that was really not designed to operate and get great pictures of things so far from the sun. So this would be the first really good flyby of Triton. Plus they'd also, obviously, get some good close-up views of Neptune. They'd fly past some small bodies along the way, probably, and do some great science, the way that New Horizons is doing science on small bodies in the outer solar system. And it has the distinction of being the only one in the list that doesn't have an acronym for it's name. [laughs].

Mat Kaplan: [laughs]. I don't know if it gets points for that or not. How soon might we be hearing the decision from NASA as to which of these, hopefully two of them at least, [00:10:00] uh, will be headed for space?

Emily Lakdawalla: Well, first the four teams are being given some time to do some further work to try to nail down the costs and the challenges involved in the mission. They can spend a little money, um, trying to develop some of the necessary technologies forward a little bit. And then they, uh, will give big reports to, uh, NASA about their progress. NASA will visit them and see how well-prepared they are to actually operate a mission. And then they'll make a down-selection in 2021.

I don't know exactly when it will be yet, and we don't know how many it will be yet. It will be at least one. Could be two. And um, [laughs], who knows? I guess, well, as long as we're being optimistic we can hope for three. Probably not gonna happen-

Mat Kaplan: [laughs].

Emily Lakdawalla: ... but uh, it would be nice.

Mat Kaplan: Well, we'll hope for quality and quantity-

Emily Lakdawalla: Thank you.

Mat Kaplan: ... in this round of, uh, the- the- the- the Discovery program. Oh, one more question. How soon after they are chosen might we actually see some of these head toward their destinations?

Emily Lakdawalla: Well, it doesn't take all that ... It shouldn't take all that long to develop a Discovery mission. Usually [00:11:00] it's, it's just, uh, somewhere around four or five years to launch. And then, of course, how long it takes to get data depends upon how long a cruise they have. It's very quick to get to Venus, so we could be, as you know, maybe five months after launch y- you'll be at Venus, and already set up and starting to acquire preliminary data.

But getting to other places, like orbiting Jupiter, and flying past, uh, Neptune, take a long time. When you do planetary science, especially if you're an outer planetary scientist, you need to be really patient, and be willing to accept the fact that you might be starting a project and launching, and then handing it over to a former graduate student to operate once it's in flight.

Mat Kaplan: Emily, I'm glad to still be playing the long game with you here in planetary science. Lots, uh, to look forward to, and I'm sure we'll talk again soon. Thanks very much.

Emily Lakdawalla: You're welcome, Mat.

Mat Kaplan: That's our solar system specialist, Emily Lakdawalla, of The Planetary Society.

Mike Simmons discovered our universal fascination with the sky when he started sharing astronomical wonders decades ago. It [00:12:00] led him to found Astronomers Without Borders, or AWB, where their motto is, One People, One Sky. There's hardly a portion of our planet that Mike has not visited, encouraging scientific wonder and curiosity wherever he goes.

Olayinka Fagbemiro is a kindred spirit. She is Assistant Chief Scientific Officer for Planning, Policy and Research at the National Space Research and Development Agency in Nigeria. She also leads the agency's space education outreach unit, so it's easy to see why Olayinka would also embrace the AWB mission. She's had remarkable success as AWB's national coordinator in Nigeria. In addition, she serves as the public relations and education officer for the African Astronomical Society.

Mike called the other day to ask if he could bring Olayinka to The Planetary Society's Pasadena headquarters, as she continued an [00:13:00] astronomy-focused tour of California and the United States. We were thrilled to oblige, especially because I couldn't wait to share Mike and Olayinka's stories with you.

Mike Simmons, always a pleasure to talk to you on Planetary Radio, and it is great to see you here. You've never been to, uh, this headquarters for The Planetary Society before.

Mike Simmons: No, this is the first time in this particular building. I was at the original one, which is a great old Pasadena house.

Mat Kaplan: I miss it.

Mike Simmons: [laughs]. Yeah. And the other one, uh, short-term. This is the first time I've stopped by here.

Mat Kaplan: Well, I'm glad you made it, and I'm especially glad, because you brought the special guest who is sitting next to you right now. Would you please introduce her?

Mike Simmons: Well, this is Olayinka Fagbemiro, from Nigeria. And Olayinka, uh, works for the space agency there. But of more interest to me is that she created and runs, uh, Astronomers Without Borders Nigeria, does fantastic things in the country to introduce astronomy and science to some very special [00:14:00] people. So, uh, it- it's wonderful to have her here visiting us for the first time.

Mat Kaplan: I suspect that most of our audience will know that you were Astronomers Without Borders for many years. You founded the organization.

Mike Simmons: Yes.

Mat Kaplan: And you've moved on. You're doing other exciting now. Obviously, that had to do with why you crossed paths. But how did you end up meeting each other and- and get to know each other?

Mike Simmons: Olayinka reminded me just the other day that, actually, we met at a conference. And I meet a lot of people. I hear from people in other countries all the time. And I always write back, because you never know. She was somebody who went back, inspired by the idea, and created something really incredible. And it's great to be able to do that as a part of Astronomers Without Borders. But really, people are doing outreach and education in astronomy, in STEM fields, all around the world. And to be able to give somebody, uh, uh, some inspiration to do it as a part of the network of people around the world is- is [00:15:00] fantastic.

Mat Kaplan: Olayinka, welcome to The Planetary Society. I ... It looked like you enjoyed the tour.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yes, thank you so much. Um, it's a pleasure being here. And I'm particularly, um, excited to be at this place. I love the tour that- that you have, an amazing space, and I'm glad to be here. Thank you.

Mat Kaplan: We like it very much, and I- I'm glad that you've had a good time as we showed you around.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: You got a- a nice, uh, introduction to LightSail from Bruce Betts, our Chief Scientist.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah, yeah. It's really great, because that's, um, the first time, uh, hearing about this particular project, and I think it's amazing. I would let it go back home and share with my network and- and see what more we can learn and inspire little kids about- about that. I think it would be a great, um, topic to discuss.

Mat Kaplan: [French 00:15:50]. We hope so, anyway. I- I certainly agree with you. It was only two or three days ago that Mike let me know that you were in town, and he wondered if you'd be [00:16:00] able to stop by. And of course, we love visitors. I was intrigued immediately, because he talked about your role with Astronomers Without Borders in Nigeria, but he also said that you have a day job. You work with ... Is it the N-?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: The Nigerian Space Agency?

Mat Kaplan: Yes, yeah.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yes, yes. Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: Tell me about that.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: When I left university in the year 2004, I started a job with the Nigerian Space Agency in the year 2007, as an outreach and an education officer for- for space education. I've been there ever since. And along the line I- I got involved some other projects, and um, and Astronomers Without Border, like, um, universe awareness. And it's been awesome, like having a day job, and then having the time to do this other very important work. I- I think it's, it's a great thing for me, because I get, eh, the chance to inspire little ones. We're trying to raise the [00:17:00] next generation of space scientists, and- and- and STEM guys in Africa.

Also, I'm the Public and, um, Education Officer for Ash- ... African Astronomical society. What I do in Nigeria, I- I do by extension across Africa, African Astronomical Society is, um, an organization with a very big, um, reach to African countries. I think about 40 plus-

Mat Kaplan: Hmm.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: ... African countries are- are- are part of AfAS. One of the major things we're trying to do is first create awareness about astronomy across Africa. Astronomy is not really so much developed in Africa as it is in- in the, in the US and, or Europe. So one of the major work we're trying to do is to create the awareness, get many young people involved in astronomy. We're trying to see [00:18:00] a way of getting more people in the career part of astronomy, and also to use astronomy as a means of teaching STEM, science, technology, engineering and mathematics-

Mat Kaplan: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Olayinka Fagbemiro: ... across Africa. These are some of the many things that we do as- as AfAS.

Mat Kaplan: My guess is that your day job with the Nigerian space agency probably keeps you pretty busy are- are they happy to have you involved with all these other activities like AWB?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yes, they- they- they are. And, um, I think, uh, I've got a very good support in the Nigerian space agency because Nigeria has a pretty big country with a population of almost 200 million people and young people are most 30% to 40% of this population. So this space agency is happy to have as many extra hands as possible in reaching out to- to this large population of young [00:19:00] people. And because my role in the Nigerian Space Agency, it's pretty much like an extension of what I do with AWB, Space Education Outreach.

Mat Kaplan: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Olayinka Fagbemiro: I personally had the Space Education Outreach of the agency and also we have this new space museum. We have a lot of young kids coming around almost on daily basis, which I- i coordinate as well. So it's, it's almost like there are no demarcations between what I do as- as Nigerian Space Agency and what I do as AWB.

Mat Kaplan: That's great. Is that space museum, is that the one you showed us the video of a little bit that was in a refugee camp or is that separate?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: No, that- that was, um, a project of AWB. It- it was a project about having an astronomy hub for kids in the internally displaced peoples camp. Uh, so in Nigeria because of the problem of [00:20:00] the insurgency that we, we've got going on, uh, around the Northern part of Nigeria.

Mat Kaplan: Boko Haram?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Boko Haram, yes. So we have a lot of displaced people from across the region, uh, affected by- by the insurgency. So we have of course people with young children in these camps. A few years back we thought these kids should also have a feel of what space and astronomy and all those funs could be. So we- we- we- we started a project of establishing an astronomy hub for- for these IDP guys. And, um, with the support of Office of Astronomy for Development Cape town, we were able to have the first one, which was a project that was targeted at this young kids who are mostly out of school.

And then we also had to bring in some counselors because we- we needed them [00:21:00] to become ... many of these guys are traumatized. Many of them were-

Mat Kaplan: Of course.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: ... displaced from their homes. Many of them have one or both parents killed due to the insurgency. And so they are basically not in the right frame of mind to- to even learn. So we had to bring in some- some counselors and- and we went ahead and made this, um, solar powered astronomy hub, which has smart TVs and internet connectivity with a lot of materials and- and videos and, um-

Mat Kaplan: It's beautiful little facility-

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah, it is.

Mat Kaplan: ... from what I could see in the video.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah, it is. It is small, but it's also very effective because we have some people managing the project and what we do is, because we have a lot of kids in this camp, we- we have almost 300, um, young- young people. So we, we've been able to [00:22:00] look for a way to make all of them at least once in a week have access to this hub.

Mat Kaplan: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah, so we have like a timetable of, okay, so you're go in maybe every Wednesday or every Monday and- and use the computer, use the smart TV, you know, just have fun. We have a lot of posters on astronomy and it's been cool.

Mat Kaplan: I'll be back in moments with Olayinka Fagbemiro, the middle of Astronomers Without Borders. Nigeria and AWB founder, Mike Simmons.

Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Yale astronomer, Debra Fischer. I've spent the last 20 years of my professional life searching for other worlds. Now I've taken on the 100 Earth's project. We want to discover 100 earth-sized exoplanets circling nearby stars. It won't be easy. With your help, the Planetary Society will fund a key component of an exquisitely precise spectrometer. You can learn more and join the search a planetary.org/100earths. Thanks.

Mat Kaplan: [00:23:00] Welcome back to Planetary Radio. How many children are among the displaced in- in Nigeria? Do you, do you know roughly?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Maybe not the displaced, but- but the latest, um, UNICEF statistics says they're 13.2 million out of school kids in Nigeria.

Mat Kaplan: Wow, out of school?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yes.

Link:

Astronomers Without Borders - The Planetary Society

What is the gegenschein? | Astronomy Essentials – EarthSky

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See the faint concentration of light toward the center of this image? Thats the elusive gegenschein aka the counterglow a diffuse spot visible in the darkest of skies, centered at the point directly opposite the sun. Sunlight reflecting on interplanetary dust causes it. Image via Project Nightflight.

Article and most photos by Erwin Matys and Karoline Mrazek of Project Nightflight, whose mission is to promote the conservation of the starry sky as environmental resource.

The suns counterglow or gegenschein is kind of a stargazers legend. Every amateur astronomer has heard about it, only a few of them have actually seen it, and even fewer were lucky enough to capture an image of this dim and ghostlike apparition. As a fellow observer put it:

The gegenschein is certainly not a GoTo object.

Matter of fact, it isnt an object at all. But lets start from the beginning.

What exactly is the gegenschein?

It is widely known that the space between the planets isnt empty. The plane of the solar system is filled with an enormous disk of small dust particles with sizes ranging from less than 1/1000 millimeter up to 1 millimeter. It is less commonly known that this interplanetary dust cloud is a highly dynamic structure. In contrast to conventional wisdom, it is not an aeon-old leftover from the solar systems formation. That primordial dust is long gone. Todays interplanetary dust is in an astronomical sense of speaking very young, only millions of years old. Most of the particles originate from quite recent incidents, like asteroid collisions.

This is not the gegenschein. The picture shows the zodiacal light, which is closely related to the gegenschein. Here imaged from a rural site, the zodiacal light is a cone of light extending from the sun along the ecliptic, visible after dusk and before dawn. The gegenschein stems from the same dust cloud, but is always opposite the sun, for example, highest in the sky at midnight. The gegenschein is much harder to detect or photograph than the zodiacal light. Image via Project Nightflight.

Exposed to various forces, the particles do not remain in stationary orbits but inhabit the disk in ever-changing motion. The smallest particles (less than 1/1000 millimeter) are swiftly blown out of the solar system by the solar wind. The larger particles dont survive very long either. They tend to collide with larger bodies or slowly spiral into the inner solar system where they fall into the sun.

Nevertheless, the supply of interplanetary dust particles is constantly replenished by the above-mentioned asteroid collisions and the erosion of comets. So, the interplanetary dust cloud of the solar system is not a static formation but a dynamic structure consisting of quite young components.

For an observer on Earth, this dynamic dust cloud is mainly visible in the form of the zodiacal light. After dusk and before dawn it extends as a cone of light from the sun along the ecliptic path. Often called the false dawn, the zodiacal light is quite bright and can be seen from any observing site that doesnt suffer from severe light pollution, especially when the ecliptic is high in the sky. For Northern Hemisphere observers, this is the case in the evening sky during spring and in the morning sky during autumn.

The morning and evening zodiacal light are the two areas of the interplanetary dust disk where sunlight gets forward scattered to earth, resulting in the bright silvery light cones. The interplanetary dust disk is also visible along the rest of the ecliptic path, where it is called the zodiacal band. Unlike the zodiacal light, however, these sections are very hard to detect since they have an extremely low surface brightness. But at the point directly opposite the sun the geometry again works in our favor and enhances the visibility of the interplanetary dust. This is the area of the gegenschein.

But why does the gegenschein glow brighter than the rest of the zodiacal band? Looking at the interplanetary dust disk from Earth, the section at the antisolar point is illuminated from directly behind our heads. This results in an increase in brightness that is called the opposition effect. The opposition effect is a frequent phenomenon for solar system bodies. For example, the moon shows a significant peak in brightness around full moon, i.e. at its opposition. Another example are Saturns rings in the days around opposition, when they brighten drastically.

The main reason for this brightening during opposition is shadow hiding, meaning that all particles are fully illuminated. This opposition effect can even be experienced here on Earth during daylight if you are outdoors and look at the ground in front of you. If the ground is sufficiently coarse, you will see a brightening around the shadow of your head. To document this phenomenon, we made the photo below, which shows the opposition effect on volcanic gravel.

This is like the gegenschein. For this photo, a small action cam was positioned on a tripod looking down on volcanic gravel on La Palma island. The insert shows some of the gravels with a size of several millimeters and their rough surface structure. Around the cameras shadow the opposition effect results in an obvious brightening. The glow pictured here is similar to the glow of the gegenschein on the night sky. Image via Project Nightflight.

Interestingly, the brightening around the cameras shadow had an apparent diameter of 10 degrees, which is about the same size as the diameter of the gegenschein in the night sky. Next time you walk on a rough surface in sunlight, give it a try and look for this terrestrial version of the counterglow.

To sum it up, the gegenschein is not an object. It is a play of light on the solar systems interplanetary dust disk. The section of the dust at the antisolar point is squarely illuminated, which results in a brightness enhancement due to shadow hiding. This so-called opposition effect can be encountered at many occasions, but with the gegenschein it makes its most ghostlike and outlandish appearance. This is probably the reason why it is such a prized trophy among amateur astronomers.

How we captured the gegenschein

From our observing and photography sessions at dark-sky sites, the gegenschein was a familiar companion. Out under the stars, sooner or later one of us would mention: Mmh, the gegenschein is quite obvious tonight, followed by the typical reply: Yep, bright and shiny! This short dialogue would indicate that our eyes had reached full dark adaptation and our night vision was at maximum capacity. We often talked about making an image of our good old dark-sky companion, the gegenschein. But for some reason it never came to it. Other projects were in the way, on other occasions the position in the sky was not right, or the atmospheres transparency was just not good enough.

But on the night from October 30 to 31, 2019, we finally did give it a go. On October 30 we were already several days on an imaging excursion on La Palma island. During daytime the annoying Calima weather pattern had finally stopped and skies were again as deep blue and transparent as they can be on this beautiful stars island. Accommodated in a solitary finca far away from inhabited areas and about 800 meters (2,600 feet) above sea level we had the perfect conditions for photographing the gegenschein. Around midnight, when the counterglow culminates, our instruments registered a sky brightness of 21.4 magnitudes per square arcsecond in the zenith. This is so dark that Sirius noticeably brightened the landscape when it rose behind a mountain ridge later that night. The gegenschein itself was pretty obvious to the unaided eye. Below the constellation Aries, directly on the ecliptic path, a distinct glow about 10 degrees across marked the antisolar point. The very faint zodiacal band crossing the whole sky was visible too, almost looking like an artificial marking of the ecliptic. Under these conditions, shooting the gegenschein was an easy task.

For those interested in the technical details: we made 23 unfiltered exposures of 4 minutes with a 16mm lens @f/5.6 on a Baader-modified 1100D Canon DSLR. For sky tracking we used a purely mechanical device, the Mini Track LX2. This innovative device is a frequent companion on our imaging excursions. For those interested in more details, we provide a thorough review of the Mini Track LX2 for download on our website. The total weight of our imaging gear was less than 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds), including camera and tripod. The 23 individual exposures of the gegenschein were later calibrated, registered and stacked with DeepSkyStacker. Processing of the final image was done in Photoshop, where we applied substantial contrast enhancement.

How you can see the gegenschein

If you never encountered the gegenschein yourself, dont expect it to be as prominent as in the photograph at the top of this post. We applied heavy contrast enhancement to the image to make the counterglow, its shape, and its size better visible. To our human eyes, even under the best conditions the gegenschein is an elusive and dim glow. On several occasions we compared the visual brightness of the counterglow and sections of the Milky Way. We always found it to be about as bright as the dimmest parts of the winter Milky Way. The stretch of the Milky Way that approximates the counterglows brightness best is the section between the star Mirfak and the asterism called the Kids next to Capella. That is, very dim. Any bright object in its vicinity (e.g. Jupiter or Mars at opposition) makes it hard to observe.

Aside from being slightly brighter in the middle and fading out uniformly in all directions the gegenschein shows no structure at all. It has a roundish form, circular or elliptical, measuring approximately 10 degrees across. That is about the size of a fist stretched out at arms length.

Drawing of the gegenschein as seen on November 23, 2019, from a dark-sky observing site in Lower Austria. On this night the antisolar point was between the 2 star clusters of the Hyades and Pleiades. The drawing gives a realistic impression of what to expect when looking for the counterglow. Image via Project Nightflight.

If you want to hunt down the elusive gegenschein yourself, the tips below might come handy:

First of all, check the position: Before you begin searching for the gegenschein in the night sky you should check its current position. The map below helps you to determine where to look for it. It also shows you whether the counterglow is detectable at all, because its visibility highly depends on its position against the starry background. In June, July and December it is completely invisible, because it is in front of the Milky Way. Other obstacles can be the bright planets Mars and Jupiter. When one of them is near opposition, it is in the same region of the sky as the counterglow and may outshine it. Some planetarium programs or stargazing apps might also be useful tools to determine the position of the gegenschein. If the software provides an option to display the center of the earths shadow this will show you the current antisolar point.

View larger. | This map gives you an idea where to look for the gegenschein in front of the starry background. The scale at the bottom indicates the constellations that culminate at your local midnight on a given date. This also approximates where you can find the gegenschein on the dotted line of the ecliptic. For example, at the end of March it will glow in the constellation Virgo. Image via Project Nightflight.

Look for it at maximum height above the horizon: The gegenschein is always highest above the horizon around local midnight, so that is the best time of the night to give an observation a try. There should also be no moon above the horizon. But thats not all. Like the sun itself, the antisolar point too has different culmination heights during the course of the year. For observers in the Northern Hemisphere the antisolar point has its highest culmination at the winter solstice around December 21. Sadly, during December the gegenschein is in front of the Winter Milky Way and therefore invisible. So, the best months to see the gegenschein from northern latitudes are November and January. For Southern Hemisphere observers, the largest culmination height of the antisolar point happens at summer solstice around June 21. For southerners too, the Milky Way is in the way. Again, one should look before or after the solstice, in this case during May or August.

View larger. | Only if all of the conditions listed in this diagram are true, you have a valid chance of actually detecting the gegenschein. Image via Project Nightflight.

Try from the best observing location you have access to: The gegenschein cannot be seen from light-polluted sites. Even moderate light pollution diminishes the counterglows contrast way too much. Based on our observations, the absolute minimum to detect the gegenschein is a sky brightness of 21.0 mag/arcsecond2 in the zenith. But this applies only if you are already quite familiar with the gegenschein and know exactly what and where to look for. For first-time observers we recommend a site with a sky brightness of 21.2 mag/arcsecond2 in the zenith or better. These conditions can only be found far away from cities or other inhabited areas. Observing sites in the mountains especially qualify because of the reduced air mass at higher altitudes above sea level.

Wait for favorable weather conditions: Even if you observe from a dark-sky location, the average clear sky might not be good enough for seeing the gegenschein. What you really want is a night sky with exceptionally high transparency. This will only be the case if the air mass above your observing site is as dry as possible. To get an idea of the current situation at your location, you can use a website that provides weather forecasts for astronomical observations (e.g. 7timer.info). Sites like this display data about humidity at all tropospheric layers. Another condition for high transparency would be that the air is clean, i.e. free of dust. At mid-latitudes, the necessary conditions of dry and clean air often can be found after the passage of a cold front or a trough.

Expand your observing skills: Given you have good eyesight in the dark and you already have some observing experience, there are several observing techniques you need to master for the gegenschein. First of all, you need to learn how to become truly dark adapted. This might put your patience to a test, since your eyes need at least 3/4 of an hour to fully adjust to the dark. So, no smartphones or other handheld devices during this time. You should only use very dim red lights if you dont want to ruin your night vision. A second technique you might need for seeing the gegenschein is averted vision. With averted vision, you do not look directly at an object but a little off to the side, while continuing to concentrate on the object. This way you are using peripheral vision which is more sensitive to low light levels than the center of the eye. Some observers report that this technique makes a big difference for them and it might help you too. In any case, hunting down the gegenschein will improve your observing skills a lot. Besides, it makes a highly interesting project and sooner or later you too will be able to put that prized stargazers trophy on your shelf.

About Project Nightflight: Our mission is the starry sky. We internationally promote the conservation of the starry sky as environmental resource.To support this goal, we work together closely with our sponsors and international news media. We provide news portals, nature related websites, books, magazines and newspapers with high resolution images of the unspoiled night sky, catching stories about the magic of the starry sky, useful tips for stargazing and astrophotography and informative articles on light pollution prevention. With our images and stories, which are frequently published by major print and online news media, we raise awareness for the need to keep light pollution at bay. Our team is based in Vienna, Austria, and consists of experienced, world-wide active astrophotographers who work on a volunteer basis. Most of our active members are marketing or communication professionals. If you want to learn more about our organization please download the Project Nightflight profile.

Bottom line: The gegenschein isnt an object. Its a play of light on the solar systems interplanetary dust disk. The gegenschein lies at the antisolar point, the point exactly opposite the sun. At this point, sunlight squarely illuminates the dust that moves between the planets. In this way, the gegenschein is related to the zodiacal light, which also stems from sunlight reflecting from dust between the planets. But the gegenschein is much more elusive than the zodiacal light. Its a diffuse patch in the night sky, which moves directly opposite the sun.

Via Project Nightflight

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What is the gegenschein? | Astronomy Essentials - EarthSky

The legal needs of local news: What we learned from the Local Legal Initiative proposal process – Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

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Executive Summary

In 2019, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press announced its Local Legal Initiative, an ambitious expansion of its legal services to provide direct, targeted legal support for local enterprise and investigative reporting in five jurisdictions across the country. Made possible by generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Local Legal Initiative, or LLI, expects to add a Reporters Committee attorney in Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee in 2020.

The attorneys we hire in these states will be fully integrated members of the Reporters Committees existing legal team. Their presence on the ground in local communities will help our attorneys based in Washington, D.C., target legal issues in those jurisdictions in a systematic way while, at the same time, continuing to represent journalists across the country.

To identify the five local news ecosystems to launch the LLI, the Reporters Committee wanted to hear directly from journalists, news organizations, and other stakeholders around the country about where they see the greatest need for support for local journalism. We put out a request for proposals asking respondents to tell us about the biggest legal challenges reporters face in their communities, as well as how additional legal support would enable them to pursue more local enterprise and investigative stories. We sought collaborative proposals that demonstrated a clear need for pro bono legal services, and included for-profit and nonprofit newsrooms, state press associations, and freedom-of-information organizations.

In all, we received 45 proposals representing more than 30 states, territories, and regions. More than 240 organizations, newsrooms and individuals submitted or signed on to a proposal for a Reporters Committee attorney in their jurisdiction.

The results showed an extensive need for pro bono legal help across the country, but they also highlight clear opportunities for the Reporters Committee and others who are committed to building support for local journalism.

Heres what we learned from the proposals:

The proposals we received reflect a widespread need for legal support for local journalism in states and communities across the country, and we faced a difficult decision in selecting only five jurisdictions to launch the LLI. Ultimately, we selected our first five states Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee with the goal of growing the program beyond those jurisdictions in the coming years, though the Reporters Committee will continue to provide legal services and resources for journalists and news organizations nationwide from our headquarters in Washington, D.C.

This report quotes extensively from proposals sent to us from states and regions all over the United States, not just the five we selected to launch this program. By quoting their applications and sharing what we learned throughout this process, we hope to illuminate some of the clear legal obstacles that journalists and news organizations face each and every day.

Introduction

In 2017, a bidding war with significant economic implications was in full swing and the public was in the dark.

As local governments around the nation engaged in a high-profile contest to become the home to Amazons second headquarters, news organizations submitted public records requests seeking information about the tax breaks and other incentives public officials were offering one of the worlds most valuable companies.

In many cases, however, those requests were met with secrecy. For example, local governments in Colorado withheld their proposals from multiple news organizations, blocking important, timely reporting on major economic development proposals that had the potential to transform their communities for decades. The same was true in Pennsylvania, where government leaders went to court in an effort to shield their bids even after the states Office of Open Records ruled that they should be released to the public.

Newsroom leaders in both states cited government secrecy surrounding local and state governments pursuit of Amazon as one reason why they sought a Reporters Committee attorney through our new Local Legal Initiative, which we announced one year ago after a generous investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. But it wasnt the only reason: They also described other important stories that have gone untold, including reporting on political corruption and the opioid crisis, because government officials blocked them from accessing crucial data and documents.

Across the country, local newsrooms trying to investigate everything from law enforcement and the environment to education and poverty have met a similar fate. While journalists are digging into consequential issues like affordable housing, police officer misconduct, and climate change, they are routinely being stymied by a culture of secrecy that is pervasive in local and state governments.

These are just a few of the things we learned from reporters and news organizations after we asked, as part of our Local Legal Initiative, where they see the greatest needs for legal support.

What we learned about the legal needs of local news

The proposals made clear that, in order to pursue local enterprise and investigative journalism, newsrooms need a dedicated attorney to help journalists and news organizations defend their rights to gather and report the news, gain access to public records and court proceedings, and hold state and local government agencies and officials accountable.

That sentiment was echoed by more than 240 organizations, news outlets, and individuals that submitted or signed on to a proposal seeking a Reporters Committee attorney. In all, we received 45 proposals representing more than 30 states, territories, and regions across the country.

While we recently announced that we plan to launch the Local Legal Initiative this year in Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, the need for local pro bono legal services stretches far beyond these five states.

Collectively, the proposals described the impressive enterprise and investigative journalism at all types of news organizations nationwide from legacy newspapers to public media outlets to nonprofit newsrooms reporting on under-covered communities but they also painted a picture of elected officials frequently thwarting important local reporting, especially by denying access to public records and public meetings.

The Local Legal Initiative proposals revealed how these officials have grown emboldened in their efforts to hide their actions from the public, confident that the local watchdogs facing plummeting revenues and shrinking staff are losing their bite.

While local accountability journalism has been boosted in recent years thanks to major philanthropic investments in nonprofit news and the establishment of innovative reporting partnerships, the challenges local news organizations face are daunting. In addition to financial hardships, they must battle rampant misinformation, polarization, and a deluge of anti-media attacks that seek to undermine meaningful, factual reporting that is foundational to a functioning democracy.

The proposals we received show that local news organizations are hungry to produce enterprise and investigative journalism, but they need strong, on-the-ground legal support in order to hold the people in power in their communities accountable, said Reporters Committee Executive Director Bruce Brown. We are proud to offer legal services at no cost to news organizations through our new Local Legal Initiative. And thanks to this proposal process, the attorneys we hire now have a roadmap to helping local journalists as they continue to produce groundbreaking, consequential reporting in the public interest.

Buyouts, layoffs, and dwindling resources

Most of the applications the Reporters Committee received confirmed a hard truth about local journalism today: Newsrooms are finding it increasingly difficult to fund the legal battles frequently required to support investigative reporting at the local and state level.

In making their case for a Reporters Committee attorney, more than 86 percent of the Local Legal Initiative proposals specifically mentioned the financial hardships faced by local newsrooms. Some applicants said that news organizations cant afford to spend limited resources to fight government officials and agencies for data and documents.

Citing recent newsroom mergers and layoffs, a proposal from Massachusetts said community news organizations in the state are now covering larger areas with fewer resources and are facing more barriers and costs to obtain public records.

In Oregon, even the states most dogged reporters wont pursue certain stories because they know getting necessary records will be too time-consuming or expensive to justify, another proposal said. Agencies understand this dynamic and exploit it.

Its certainly no secret that many local newsrooms are struggling. Over the past 15 years, more than one in five local newspapers have shut down. For the ones that have survived, a combination of falling advertising revenues and dwindling subscriptions has resulted in buyouts and layoffs the collective toll so severe that researchers at the University of North Carolina have dubbed many downsized newsrooms ghost newspapers.

As purse strings have tightened, news organizations have been forced to cut budgets intended to fight for public records that help them tell critical stories in the public interest. Even newsrooms that can afford legal counsel often have to make difficult decisions about which battles they can take on. In fact, more than two-thirds of editors who responded to a 2016 Knight Foundation study said that the news industry was less able to pursue legal activity around First Amendment issues than it was a decade prior.

Foundation-funded initiatives and nonprofits like Report for America and the American Journalism Project, as well as the Marshall Project and ProPublicas Local Reporting Network have gone a long way toward keeping local enterprise and investigative journalism alive in these difficult times. So have the many creative reporting partnerships and collaborations that have allowed newsrooms even longtime competitors to share resources and pursue watchdog journalism.

Still, despite these important investments and partnerships, its clear from the applications we received that the success of local investigative journalism in many ways depends on whether newsrooms have the strong, sustained legal support they need to stand up to public officials and fight government agencies in court.

As an applicant from Ohio put it, Only when journalists pose a credible threat of litigation do public officials begin to obey the law.

The fight for access to public records, meetings

Anyone who follows journalism closely is well aware that reporters are frequently frustrated by government entities that delay and deny their public records requests. But the Local Legal Initiative applications revealed the extent to which they are stifling accountability journalism at the local level.

Almost all of the 45 proposals indicated that access to public records is a major issue. Frequent complaints included extensive delays, excessive processing fees, overuse of exemptions, and problems related to the release of large datasets.

More than half of the proposals specifically highlighted issues accessing law enforcement records, while others mentioned problems accessing records on the opioid crisis, child welfare and state prisons, among others.

Limited access to records has hampered the ability of news organizations to fully document police shootings, biased policing, bullying and harassment of students of color, inmate complaints and municipal corruption, an applicant from Vermont told the Reporters Committee. Restricted access to documents has obscured information about test scores, pesticide use and critically important accountability investigations of state waste, abuse and corruption.

Some proposals said that officials who block public records requests are essentially daring journalists to file a lawsuit, knowing its unlikely to happen. Thats especially true in states that have no administrative appeals process, meaning that members of the press and the public must challenge records request denials in court.

One applicant said that having an attorney to fight against wholesale records denials would be a godsend locally and statewide.

In addition to issues obtaining public records, about one-third of Local Legal Initiative proposals also cited problems accessing public meetings, court records, and court proceedings. News organizations in some states noted how they have been shut out of closed-door meetings that should be open to the public, while others mentioned that judges sometimes seal court dockets and close courtrooms, leaving journalists unable to report on the judicial system.

A proposal from New Jersey specifically mentioned how the mayor of Newark barred journalists from attending a public meeting about the high levels of lead in the citys water. Another proposal from Texas said that reporters and attorneys were being prevented from observing court proceedings in tent cities near the border with Mexico. And applicants in a handful of states specifically highlighted access issues in tribal communities.

In one recent instance, a proposal from Alaska said, a journalist seeking to report on sexual violence in a remote community was barred, in writing, from visiting the village by the communitys Alaska Native corporation and tribal council.

Some applicants stressed that the need to access public records and meetings is arguably greatest in communities of color. News organizations ability to substantively report on the often systemic issues affecting those communities is frequently hampered by public officials and agencies that prefer to operate in secret.

A proposal submitted by organizations in Delaware, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., specifically mentioned that having the support of a local Reporters Committee attorney would help them cover housing issues in vulnerable neighborhoods along the eastern shore of Maryland.

Investigations into senior housing, rent control, mold and maintenance issues, and section 8 issues would be especially meaningful particularly because currently the agency ignores requests and stonewalls reporters, the proposal stated.

A RCFP attorney would greatly enrich our coverage into immigration services, public health departments and local police agencies, among many others, that deal directly with under-served communities in our region, a proposal from California said.

In Tennessee, an applicant noted that additional legal support would help journalists there fight for access to internal investigations into schools and their employees. We could take a deeper look at issues such as how qualified teachers are in under-served communities and other disparities that we suspect exist but cant get access to the records to prove it.

The need for training, education, and defense

While access issues were cited most frequently in Local Legal Initiative applications, proposals mentioned a variety of other ways in which an attorney could help improve local journalism and hold officials accountable: by offering training and education; pre-publication legal review; and defensive support.

About one-third of applicants identified a need for increased training and education. One state press association said reporters would benefit from training on access and defamation issues, while a state press association in a different state noted that many judges could use training on the same topics.

Another proposal suggested an attorney could lead regional workshops to teach members of the press and the public about their rights and responsibilities.

Such training and evangelizing could embolden small or startup news organizations to undertake more ambitious and possibly litigious projects, the applicant wrote. It could empower ordinary citizens to gain access to and knowledge about institutions in their communities, an antidote to the alienation all too many Americans currently feel.

Media law workshops would be particularly valuable in todays age of misinformation and fake news. For example, a recent survey by PBS Newshour, NPR, and Marist found that 59 percent of Americans said it was hard to tell the difference between what is fact and what is misleading information.

All news organizations have faced intense pressure in recent years because of a profound cultural shift surrounding alleged fake news, one applicant from California told the Reporters Committee. We need resources to push back and educate our sources, particularly in local government, about the publics rights under the First Amendment.

About one-fifth of the proposals mentioned the need to have an attorney review investigative stories before publication to make sure they are legally sound. Such pre-publication consultations often give journalists the confidence to pursue important investigative stories without fear of facing a lawsuit.

An attorney will know where the minefields are when reporting on sensitive topics, an applicant from Wisconsin wrote.

Free legal counsel would allow reporters to conduct more aggressive investigations without fear of reprisals masked as lawsuits, a proposal from New Jersey added.

But the fear of such lawsuits is real. While fewer than one-tenth of the proposals received by the Reporters Committee mentioned the need for defensive support, such as fighting subpoenas or responding to demand letters or libel suits, the ones that did revealed just how risky investigative reporting can be at the local level.

Fear of the defense cost for a libel complaint, a long court case or multiple lawsuits has a tremendous chilling effect on enterprise and investigative reporting, an applicant from West Virginia told the Reporters Committee, calling it an expense most news operations cant bear.

A press association proposal from Nevada cited the troubling case of local journalist Barbara Ellestad, who was served with six subpoenas in three different courts in response to her reporting on a local water district. The reporter was forced to spend $27,000 of her own money to fight orders asking her to turn over notes, documents and recordings, among other reporting materials.

All six of the subpoenas were eventually quashed, but the press association wrote in its application that Ellestad was served with yet another subpoena last June. When the Reporters Committee learned during the proposal process that Ellestad could no longer afford to defend herself against the continued threats, we quickly connected her with a Las Vegas media attorney who is now representing her pro bono.

As the press association stated in its application, the cases against Ellestad illustrate how vulnerable reporters can be without legal support.

Her cases describe the kind of run-of-the-mill pressure tactics power brokers and their aggressive lawyers employ in Nevada to make reporters disappear, the proposal said. Theyre less likely to disappear, of course, if they have the kind of pro bono legal support that can defend their reporting.

Conclusion

Local newsrooms pursuing vital enterprise and investigative reporting about issues affecting their communities face a variety of challenges, particularly around access to information. Confronting dwindling revenues, many newsrooms no longer have the resources to pay for legal services meaning records request denials go uncontested, governments avoid scrutiny, and the public is left in the dark.

It also means that historically under-served communities and voices are more often missing from coverage.

The Local Legal Initiative aims to change that by providing direct legal services in places where we, at the Reporters Committee, and our partners in each of those places, which will include lawyers in the private bar as well as law school clinics, can meet those needs. While we are launching this program in Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, we hope to expand it in the coming years, and the information weve received throughout this process will help inform those next steps.

Beyond these five states, Reporters Committee attorneys will continue to provide legal services and resources for journalists and news organizations across the country from our home base in Washington, D.C., as we have done for the past 50 years.

The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on Twitter or Instagram.

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The legal needs of local news: What we learned from the Local Legal Initiative proposal process - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Ro Khanna introduce bill to reform Espionage Act – Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

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This week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Or.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Cal.) introduced what is only the second proposal to reform the federal Espionage Act since that law was enacted in 1917.

The Espionage Act read literally permits the government to prosecute anyone who discloses government secrets to others not authorized to receive them (including persons who have never agreed to protect government secrets as part of their work). It is the main federal law used to prosecute national security media leaks.

The Wyden-Khanna bill focuses on journalists and news organizations. It would make only modest improvements to the sections of the law that permit the government to prosecute journalistic sources who have agreed to protect secrets. But it also comes at a time when press freedom advocates fear that the chance of something that has until now been thought unlikely the prosecution of a journalist for publishing government secrets is significantly higher than in the past.

As detailed in the Reporters Committees comprehensive survey of federal news media leak cases throughout history, there has been a dramatic uptick in just the last decade in cases involving national security reporting.

Prior to 2009, the government had successfully prosecuted only one source under the Espionage Act, a naval analyst charged with leaking photographs of Soviet ships. President Bill Clinton pardoned that man, Samuel Loring Morison, in 2001 precisely because his case was so unusual. Never before had a journalistic source been prosecuted successfully as a spy.

That changed with investigations started under President George W. Bush, which led to prosecutions under President Barack Obama. Obama brought 10 cases against journalistic sources and one against a Navy contractor accused in part of sending classified documents to a public archive. These include a number of high-profile cases, including the Chelsea Manning court martial and the still-pending Espionage Act indictment of Edward Snowden.

That trend continues under President Donald Trump. To date, his administration has brought charges in eight journalistic source cases and in one that involves the public disclosure of classified information, that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Assange case is particularly concerning because prosecutors were able to secure an indictment against Assange under the Espionage Act based in part on the sole act of publishing government secrets. This is the first time in American history where the government has deployed this legal theory, and there is nothing in the text of the Espionage Act stopping the Justice Department from using the same theory against a member of the press.

How would the Wyden-Khanna bill narrow the Espionage Act?

The bill introduced this week would make two primary changes to the law.

Before detailing these reforms, its helpful to understand a basic concept in criminal law. Generally speaking, there are two different types of crimes. First, there are completed crimes that is, crimes that one has performed oneself (think pulling the trigger in a shooting). A defendant in these completed crimes is charged as the principal.

Second, there are incomplete crimes, like conspiracy, acting as an accomplice, aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, and failing to report a crime. In other words, these are cases where one hasnt pulled the trigger, but where the defendant, say, buys the gun or lets the shooter hide out on their property.

Under the literal text of the current Espionage Act, even individuals who dont have a security clearance and havent promised to keep government secrets can be charged as a principal. The applicable section of the Espionage Act covers anyone who has access to national defense information, and who communicates, delivers, [or] transmits that information to someone not entitled to receive it. The Justice Department has consistently and repeatedly taken the position that communicates or transmits includes the act of publication.

The Wyden-Khanna bill would effectively eliminate this provision and would prohibit cases charging anyone other than individuals who have authorized access to classified material and who have signed a non-disclosure agreement. In other words, members of the general public, including journalists, could no longer be charged under the law as a principal as if they had pulled the trigger.

The bill preserves liability for agents of a foreign power as defined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The specific definition is complicated, but the basic concept is that individuals who are acting at the direction of a foreign power and who are assisting someone who has signed a secrecy agreement are much more likely to be engaged in what we would all consider traditional espionage, and should therefore be easier to charge with an incomplete crime.

For non-foreign agents who havent signed a secrecy agreement, the Wyden-Khanna bill would significantly narrow the potential scope of liability for those who havent themselves pulled the trigger, which is particularly important for journalists. Under current law, there is a significant concern that a national security reporter interacting with a source in a story involving the disclosure of classified information even if eminently newsworthy and in the public interest could be charged as a conspirator or abettor of the disclosure.

Conspiracy can be thought of as a meeting of the minds where two or more people agree to do the bad thing. If I contract out a hit, Im a conspirator, and I can be charged the same as the person who pulls the trigger. Abetting is even broader, and the word abet can encompass just encouraging someone to pull the trigger.

In the context of national security journalism, there is a significant concern that the act of soliciting, receiving, and agreeing to publish government secrets could be the basis of a conspiracy or abetting charge against a journalist.

Thats the basic theory behind most of the Assange charges: that Assange abetted Mannings violation of the Espionage Act by encouraging the leak and agreeing to publish the material. (The indictment prominently quotes Assange as saying curious eyes never run dry when Manning suggested there might not be more material to pull.) It was also the argument the FBI made in a 2011 search warrant for a national security reporters emails in a leak investigation.

The Wyden-Khanna bill would significantly limit the governments ability to charge a national security reporter under this theory.

First, it would require that the defendant directly and materially aid or pay for the commission of the underlying offense by the person who signed a non-disclosure agreement. Granted, the language here could be tighter. It should be read to require participation in the underlying acquisition of the classified information, like giving a source a key or a password. Nevertheless, even in its current form, it would be a significant improvement over current law.

Second, it would require that the defendant act with the specific intent to harm the national security of the United States or benefit any foreign government to the detriment of the United States.

Again, although this language could still be subject to misuse against, say, a columnist critical of U.S. foreign policy, it would significantly limit the scope of existing law and require prosecutors to introduce evidence at trial that the defendant was motivated to harm U.S. national security. National security reporting on newsworthy stories in the public interest particularly stories that reveal improper government actions would almost certainly not meet this intent standard.

Finally, the reform bill includes a provision that clarifies that direct and material aid cannot include counseling, education, or other speech activity or the provision of electronic communications services to the public, which is likely meant to protect news organizations that provide services like SecureDrop for the anonymous collection of potentially classified information.

But doesnt the First Amendment already protect journalists?

There is an argument that the bill actually authorizes a new crime that was until now hypothetical and potentially unconstitutional. In other words, its still up in the air as to whether the public disclosure of information in the public interest by someone who hasnt promised to protect secrets can constitutionally violate the spying laws. By passing this law, the argument follows, Congress is confirming to a court that it believes such activity can be punished under the First Amendment.

This concern should not be discounted, but there are a couple of responses.

One, every court that has addressed whether the existing Espionage Act can constitutionally apply to journalistic sources has found that it can. The arguments in that context are similar to the arguments one would advance in defense of a journalist. Things are, in other words, already quite grim under existing law.

Two, a constitutional challenge would still be available even under the Wyden-Khanna bills reforms. If an aggressive prosecutor attempted to try an opinion writer who merely expressed ideological disagreement with some specific U.S. foreign policy position or action while reporting on classified information, any defendant could still bring an as-applied challenge to the reformed Espionage Act. All laws have to comply with the First Amendment.

While it is true that the fact Congress has spoken on the issue could make a judge more likely to reject an as-applied challenge, the state of the law is so bad and the uptick in journalistic source cases over the last decade so concerning that the improvements proposed in the Wyden-Khanna bill are worth that risk.

Finally, contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom, there is no guarantee that a constitutional challenge to the post-publication punishment of a news organization for disclosing government secrets will succeed. The Pentagon Papers case, for instance, only held that the government cant restrain the publication of secrets, but at least five judges signaled they would uphold the post-publication punishment of a journalist for reporting secrets.

Additionally, the other line of cases news organizations would point to, which hold that a journalist who lawfully acquires information can publish that information without fear of prosecution, even if it has been unlawfully acquired by a source, have never addressed whether that rule applies to the Espionage Act. The most recent Supreme Court case on the question, Bartnicki v. Vopper, dealt only with whether a radio talk show host could be sued for broadcasting an illegally wiretapped conversation.

In sum, the concern that passing reform legislation could be counterproductive is valid, but, on balance, the Wyden-Khanna bill would probably result in stronger protections for journalists than currently exist even under the First Amendment.

What happens if the bill gets worse as it moves through Congress?

Many First Amendment advocates who work in this area have long feared that opening up the Espionage Act could actually make the law worse because national security hawks in both parties could seek to expressly criminalize the public disclosure of government secrets, much like the Official Secrets Act in the United Kingdom.

This concern is, again, well taken. As introduced, the Wyden-Khanna bill would significantly protect journalists from being treated as spies for reporting newsworthy government secrets. Were it amended in a way that would make existing law worse (or significantly decrease the viability of a First Amendment defense), press advocates would almost certainly oppose the bill. But the need for greater protections in this area is pressing and the bill would, if passed in its current form, make the world a better place.

The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on Twitter or Instagram.

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Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Ro Khanna introduce bill to reform Espionage Act - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

A Mississippi Woman Gave Diet Advice Without a License. The State Threatened To Throw Her in Jail. – Reason

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Mississippi Department of Health officials threatened to turn Donna Harris' eight-week weight loss challenge into six months behind bars, but now the state stands accused of putting the First Amendment on a diet.

Harris, a personal trainer and fitness expert, has run a Facebook page since 2018 dedicated to encouraging healthy eating habits. Earlier this year, she launched a small side business, offering one-on-one diet coaching and weight loss tips to anyone willing to pay $99 to participate in an eight-week contest where participants could compete to shed the most pounds. Before it could even start, however, the state government shut it down.

On January 22, Harris received a cease-and-desist letter from the Mississippi Department of Health. Talking about healthy eating on Facebook and getting paid to do it, the department said, could trigger a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail. In the eyes of the state, Harris was an unlicensed dieticianand apparently enough of a threat to public safety that she might need to be put behind bars.

"When I learned I would have to cancel my weight-loss class, I was devastated," said Harris in a statement. "People were counting on me and they were so excited about learning how to lose weight in a healthy way, and they were so disappointed when I told them I was not going to be able to go through with the program."

Harris wasn't pretending to be a licensed dietician. In fact, her Facebook page and website both specify that she isn't one. Anyone willing to pay her for advice on eating healthier was engaged in a voluntary transactionone that has little to do with the state government's interests.

In a lawsuit filed this week on Harris' behalf, the Mississippi Justice Institute, a nonprofit law firm, argues that Mississippi's overzealous enforcement of its dietician licensing law violated Harris' First Amendment rights.

Aaron Rice, the group's director, is particularly galled by what happened when Harris asked the state what information she could legally provide without a license. She was told to stick to "government-approved guidelines, like the food pyramid," Rice says. "So you can engage in government-approved speech, but not non-government-approved speech?"

Getting a permission slip to speak freely about healthy diets is no easy task in Mississippi. It requires a bachelor's degree and more than 1,200 hours of supervised practice. Starting in 2024, the license will require a graduate degree. Harris actually has one of thosea master's degree in occupational therapy, to go along with her bachelor's degree in nutrition and food sciencebut not the one the state will soon require.

Mississippi is not the only state to require that dieticians be licensed, and this is not the first time a state has gone to extreme lengths to enforce its mandatory permission slip regime. In 2017, Florida Department of Health officials ran a sting operation to catch Heather Kokesch Del Castillo giving out unlicensed diet advice online. She, too, was threatened with jail time. A judge rejected a subsequent challenge to the state's dietician licensing laws brought on Del Castillo's behalf by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm.

"Laws that restrict who can give dietary advice clearly implicate the First Amendment," says Paul Sherman, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. "If the government wants those laws on the books, it bears the burden of justifying them."

States get away with regulating all sorts of economic activity via occupational licensing laws, in part because of the so-called "professional speech doctrine," a legal practice in which courts have held that governments may limit or compel speech under the guise of regulating business activity. But the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down the professional speech doctrine in a 2018 ruling that overturned a California law requiring pregnancy centers to tell women where they could get an abortion.

Sherman says that the 2018 rulingNational Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerrawas a "game-changer" that has caused lower courts to begin to grapple with how occupational licensing laws may run afoul of the First Amendment too. He predicts there will be more litigation in that space.

Rice notes that Mississippi has a reputation for being one of the most obese states in the nation, as well as one of America's highest incarceration ratestwo things that won't be improved by treating unlicensed dieticians like serious criminals.

"Telling healthy adults what they should eat or buy at the grocery store is a freedom we all have as Americans," he says, "whether we are paid for that speech or not."

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A Mississippi Woman Gave Diet Advice Without a License. The State Threatened To Throw Her in Jail. - Reason

Energy Valuations: Freefall Into Bankruptcy Or Is This Time Different? – Forbes

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Energy valuations are taking an epic pummeling

Energy valuations are taking an epic pummeling.Considering declining demand amid COVID-19 concerns, the initial fallout to the Saudi-Russia feud this weekend was predictable.Within hours, prices had dropped like an anchor (to $33 a barrel as of this morning).Several companies have already announced cutbacks, including Diamondback Energy, as they dropped two additional drilling crews.Parsley Energy made a similar announcement andmore are sure to follow.Perhaps even more draconian, SM Energys unsecured bonds fell to $0.42 on the dollar and pushed the yield up to around 25%.These bonds traded above $0.90 as recently as February 24th.Trading has been halted this morning amid the panic.Whether the market fallout has hit rock bottom remains to be seen. Regardless of what Russia may have been thinking, the geopolitical climate has put more pressure on U.S. producers and bankers.Operators who were contemplating hedging production at $50 per barrel but waiting to act are kicking themselves today.

Energy and related bankruptcies that were estimated to rise in 2020 will likely accelerate a few notches.According to Haynes and Boones Oilfield Services Bankruptcy Tracker, there were six (6) new bankruptcies in the oilfield services area in the fourth quarter of 2019.Up until this point in 2020, Pioneer Energy Services is the only major oilfield services company to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy.Thats almost undoubtedly going to change soon.As upstream companies have vowed to spend within their cash flow, oilfield services will take the biggest brunt of this at first.However, producers with high leverage capital structures could quickly follow.Gas prices have held their ground but theyre so low anyway, its hard to know how much lower they could go.

The looming factor for companies is how banks will go about determining borrowing bases this year.Its a tough position to be in at this point.Bankers at the Hart Energy Capital Conference in Dallas last week did their best to portray patience towards the upstream sector, but were also clear about expectations.Those expectations were that borrowers can meet their obligations, and that borrowing bases will shrink with valuations.One of the speakers, Tom Petrie, expressed concern about $110 billion in debt coming due in the next decade for the energy market.

As working interest values for producing interests dive, the expected returns have changed from PV10 to closer to PV20.This has degraded credit quality.The mix of below-investment grade debt has worsened in the past year.In high yield markets, CCC or below is the most common rating according to some recent data.

High Yield Debt Rating Mix

Even if bankers lending on reserves maintain their lending ratios, the borrowing bases will shrink accordingly.However, based on recent indications, lending ratios have and will continue to shrink alongside values.Debt-to-EBITDA ratios which used to often float in the 3.5x to 4.5x range are now, not surprisingly, in the 2.5x to 3.5x range.Enterprise values for upstream producers were often between 6.0x to 8.0x EBITDA too.That is in the past.

Shifting Credit Ratios

Impacts appear bad and immediate.However, this plunge could, ironically, buy the market a little more time.The founder of OnyPoint Global Management, L.P., Shaia Hosseinzadeh, told Bloomberg just last week that Things are so bad now, that the banks can kick the can down the road and say theres no point of rushing everybody into bankruptcy, well wait until October. But if its business as usual, its going to be a horror show.That may be a prescient thought.Another consideration is that fewer banks are even lending to energy companies anymore.The rise of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement, alongside weak returns, have pushed many bankers and other investors out of the space.There isnt as much capital to go around, not that its cheaply available right now anyway.

Due to valuations being so low, the recovery for bankers coming out of Chapter 7 situations may be less attractive, especially on the oilfield service side.The market value of intangible assets is so depressed compared to other times in the commodity cycle, that it may not make economic sense to rush into the process for some.

This prognostication about delayed bank behavior may be a moot point if liquids values cant recoup over time.This is an undercurrent that has been a factor in keeping values down recently.Electrification trends and the idea that liquids demand will wane have proffered the notion that demand for liquids will be flat to even shrinking in the future, all while supply becomes bountiful.Some project the electrical passenger car trends to reach around 20% by the end of this decade.However, while the short-term appears bleak, many projections about the medium- and longer-term remain more optimistic for upstream producers and servicers.J.P. Morgan Cazenove recently suggested that the oil industry may be under equipped to meet demand recovery in 2021 and beyond.Another way of putting that is downward pressure on prices could be its own cure in the medium term.Capex budgets have been slashed and continue to be.Over 200 oil drilling rigs (and counting) have been shut down in the past six months.Production will suffer, even with drilling and production efficiencies achieved in recent years.Especially in the U.S. shale markets, declines on existing wells drop off so fast, that their effect on supply will show up sooner rather than later.

Producers are hopeful for this.Regardless of the markets relentless pounding down on reserve values, producers know that, particularly proven reserves are next years production.They do not want to sell or unload them for the pennies on the dollar (or less) that implied valuation multiples suggest right now.Intrinsically, they have much more value than inferred by market capitalizations.Management teams believe that enterprise values shouldnt be trading at a fraction of PV10 values over a long period of time.At a minimum, many producers believe there is an optionality to their future drilling inventory.

The question remains, could that happen fast enough to save a bankruptcy slog this year?Only time will tell.

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Energy Valuations: Freefall Into Bankruptcy Or Is This Time Different? - Forbes

Art Van bankruptcy could leave customers without items, refunds – WNEM Saginaw

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Art Van bankruptcy could leave customers without items, refunds - WNEM Saginaw

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Bankruptcy costing Puerto Rico – Washington Times

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The Washington Times editors recently wrote that Puerto Ricos creditors need to know the depth of the fiscal hole into which the island has dug itself (Its time to audit Puerto Rico for real, Web, Feb. 27). We, the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, know the answer.

In August 2018, we presented a 600-plus-page investigative report about the debt and the factors that contributed to Puerto Ricos fiscal crisis. It was the result of an independent investigation by Kobre & Kim LLC. It investigated Puerto Ricos $74-billion debt and approximately $50 billion in pension liabilities piled up by more than 90 entities, including the commonwealths government and its instrumentalities, going back to 2006. The independent investigator reviewed approximately 260,800 documents and interviewed 120 witnesses, including former and current senior government officers, underwriters, rating agencies, and outside professionals and advisers. It identified potential recoveries.

It is available to the public on our website, and we encourage everyone to read it.

Why would we duplicate the work Kobre & Kim did with yet another audit that would takes years to complete and cost millions of taxpayer dollars only to find out what we already know? What Puerto Rico needs is to get out of bankruptcy so it can build a foundation for economic growth and prosperity.

The board has reached agreements or completed restructurings that would reduce Puerto Ricos debt to $38 billion. These include a plan of adjustment, filed last week, that would reduce $35 billion in Puerto Ricos central government debt alone to $11 billion. The plan is supported by almost 60 percent of bondholders despite meaningful reductions of the value of their claims. The plan also includes a debt-management policy to ensure that Puerto Ricos history of irresponsible borrowing will not repeat itself. But among the most important of the policys elements is that new debt may only be used to finance capital improvements, not operating deficits and refinancing debt is only permitted if it saves Puerto Rico money.

Not only is remaining in bankruptcy costly to the economy now, but without access to capital markets in the future, Puerto Ricos ability to invest in infrastructure is limited. It is paramount that we turn the corner from this crisis as soon as reasonably possible.

NATALIE JARESKO

Executive director

Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico

San Juan, Puerto Rico

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Bankruptcy costing Puerto Rico - Washington Times

Small Business Bankruptcy Reforms You Need to Know – JD Supra

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Updated: May 25, 2018:

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High Court considers whether trust property vests in trustee in bankruptcy – Lexology

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Boensch v Pascoe [2019] HCA 49

The High Court has recently considered the question of whether, and in what circumstances, property held by a bankrupt on trust for a third party vests in the trustee in bankruptcy pursuant to s 58 of the Bankruptcy Act 1966 (Cth): Boensch v Pascoe [2019] HCA 49. The decision was handed down late last year, providing further guidance for trustees following Carter Holt Harvey Woodproducts Australia Pty Ltd v The Commonwealth (2019) 93 ALJR 807.

Mr Boensch held land on trust for his children and subsequently became a bankrupt. The trustee in bankruptcy lodged a caveat claiming a legal interest in this property, on the basis that whatever beneficial interest the bankrupt might have in the property would vest in him as trustee in bankruptcy and that was enough to support a caveat.

Mr Boensch claimed compensation against the trustee in bankruptcy under s 74P(1) of the Real Property Act 1900 (NSW) for lodging or maintaining a caveat without reasonable cause.

High Court decision

The High Court unanimously dismissed the former bankrupts appeal from the Full Court of the Federal Court and held that his right of indemnity as trustee was a sufficient interest such that the property held by the bankrupt on trust for third parties vested in the trustee in bankruptcy. That is, provided the bankrupt has a valid beneficial interest in the trust property, the trust property will vest in the trustee in bankruptcy subject to the equities to which it is subject in the hands of the bankrupt.

For these purposes, a valid beneficial interest means a vested or (subject to applicable laws as to remoteness of vesting) contingent right or power to obtain some personal benefit from the trust property. In this case, Mr Boenschs right to retain the property as security for satisfaction of his right of indemnity as trustee was a sufficient beneficial interest in the trust property.

Conversely, the property may not pass where the bankrupt has no valid beneficial interest in the property. Ordinarily, the burden of proving the absence of such a beneficial interest is on the bankrupt. On the evidence, Mr Boensch failed to discharge this onus that any beneficial interest would be set off against any benefit he obtained from living in the property free of rent.

Practically, the trustee in bankruptcy was entitled to be registered as proprietor of the property and there was a sufficient basis to sustain a caveat. The trustee in bankruptcy was warranted in lodging a caveat, provided that the caveat was lodged on the basis of an honest belief on reasonable grounds that the bankrupt had an extant beneficial interest in the property, including a beneficial interest by way of right of indemnity. Thus the former bankrupt was not entitled to damages for a caveat lodged without reasonable cause.

Consideration of other issues

In relation to the description of the caveat, Bell, Nettle, Gordon and Edelman JJ doubted that the expression Legal Interest pursuant to the Bankruptcy Act 1966 was adequate to describe an equitable estate vested in bankruptcy pursuant to s 58(2) by reason of the bankrupts right of indemnity. Their Honours considered that the use of the word legal in this context was apt to mislead and the expression as a whole did not afford sufficient information to determine whether any dealing with the property would adversely affect the interest claimed.

However, this deficiency did not of itself demonstrate the absence of reasonable cause to lodge and not withdraw the caveat, at least where the caveat did not overstate the interest sought to be protected.

Kiefel CJ, Gageler and Keane JJ reflected on the Full Courts decision not to determine the issue of whether Mr Boensch had, at the time of his bankruptcy, an entitlement in equity to be indemnified. Their Honours considered the principle sometimes referred to as judicial economy that an appellate court should confine itself to determining only those issues which it considers to be dispositive of the justiciable controversy raised by the appeal before it. Their Honours stressed that intermediate courts of appeal should not feel compelled to treat determination of non-dispositive issues in appeals before them as the norm. This promotes judicial efficiency by narrowing the scope of issues for determination and ensuring pronouncements by appellate courts on contested issues of law are limited to those that have the status of precedent.

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High Court considers whether trust property vests in trustee in bankruptcy - Lexology