http://www.rhci-online.net/radiogram/radiogram.htm

https://github.com/GyanD/codexffmpeg/releases/tag/2023-03-05-git-912ac82a3c

set MyFiles=*.flac *.fla *.wav *.aif *.mp4 *.mp3 *.mp2 *.aac *.ogg *.m4a
for %%a in (%MyFiles%) do ffmpeg -i "%%a" -y -lavfi showspectrumpic=s=1920x1080:color=fiery:gain=.7:fscale=lin:orientation=0:saturation=1:mode=combined:legend=enabled:start=0:stop=8000 "%%~na.jpg"

RSID: <<2025-03-07T00:31Z MFSK-32 @ 9265000+1500>>


Welcome to program 392 of Shortwave Radiogram.

I'm Kim Andrew Elliott in Arlington, Virginia USA.

Here is the lineup for today's program, in MFSK modes as noted:

  1:43 MFSK32: Program preview (now)
  2:12 MFSK32: Some Earth's meteors may come from Alpha Centauri
  2:54 MFSK64: NASA powers down two Voyager science instruments            "7.54"   
  9:31 MFSK64: This week's images
27:28 MFSK32: Closing announcements


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From Science News:

Some of Earth's meteors are probably coming all the way from a
neighboring star system

The number of interstellar objects coming from Alpha
Centauri will increase over time

By Ken Croswell
February 28, 2025

Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the sun, is probably
shedding comets and asteroids into our solar system - and even
producing a few meteors in our sky.

Located just 4.3 light-years from Earth, Alpha Centauri consists
of three stars that revolve around one another. If Alpha Centauri
has an Oort cloud of distant comets as the sun does, about a
million of these objects larger than a football field are now in
our solar system, astronomers Cole Gregg and Paul Wiegert of the
University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, estimate in work
submitted February 5 to arXiv.org.

"Most of [the objects] would be in the far reaches of the solar
system," Gregg says. That puts them well beyond the orbit of
Pluto, where they are mingling with the native objects in the
sun's own Oort cloud of cometary bodies.

Astronomers have only ever detected one interstellar asteroid and
one interstellar comet in our solar system. But neither came from
Alpha Centauri.

Just as Jupiter's gravity catapulted the two Voyager spacecraft
onto interstellar trajectories, so the stars of Alpha Centauri
and their planets should do the same to some of the comets and
asteroids that swing around them. A small percentage of the
ejected objects -- 0.03 percent -- pass through our solar system,
Gregg and Wiegert say, but none of the large bodies is close
enough for telescopes to see.

Still, small particles from Alpha Centauri probably reach Earth's
atmosphere, where they burn up. Gregg and Wiegert estimate that
up to 10 meteors worldwide come from Alpha Centauri each year.

"We expect these numbers to go up by about a factor of 10 when
Alpha Centauri is closest," Gregg says. Alpha Centauri is racing
toward us at 0.007 light-years per century (80,000 kilometers per
hour) and will be closest 28,000 years from now, when it will be
3.2 light-years from Earth.

But 10 or even 100 meteors a year is a pittance compared with
Earth's annual total of 7 trillion meteors. Furthermore, because
Alpha Centauri lies far to the south, its meteors appear only in
the far southern sky, out of sight of most people on Earth, Gregg
and Wiegert say.

"Their calculations are right, but the problem hides basically in
the assumptions," says Simon Portegies Zwart, an astronomer at
Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. We don't know the rate at
which Alpha Centauri ejects material, he says, which means the
actual number of interstellar objects coming from our near
neighbor could be much greater or smaller than the study
calculates. Nevertheless, the work demonstrates that our solar
system is not an isolated object in space, he says. "We are
connected to other objects -- like Alpha Centauri, like other
stars in the neighborhood."

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/comet-alpha-centauri-solar-meteor
 

Shortwave Radiogram now changes to MFSK64 ...


 

RSID: <<2025-03-07T00:37Z MFSK-64 @ 9265000+1500>>

 

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

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From Phys.org:

NASA powers down two Voyager science instruments to extend
mission life

DC Agle, Calla Cofield, NASA
March 5, 2025

Mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern
California turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard
Voyager 1 on Feb. 25 and will shut off Voyager 2's low-energy
charged particle instrument on March 24. Three science
instruments will continue to operate on each spacecraft. The
moves are part of an ongoing effort to manage the gradually
diminishing power supply of the twin probes.

Launched in 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 rely on a radioisotope power
system that generates electricity from the heat of decaying
plutonium. Both lose about 4 watts of power each year.

"The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and
we want to keep it that way as long as possible," said Suzanne
Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL. "But electrical power is
running low. If we don't turn off an instrument on each Voyager
now, they would probably have only a few more months of power
before we would need to declare end of mission."

The two spacecraft carry identical sets of 10 science
instruments. Some of the instruments, geared toward collecting
data during planetary flybys, were turned off after both
spacecraft completed their exploration of the solar system's gas
giants.

The instruments that remained powered on well beyond the last
planetary flyby were those the science team considered important
for studying the solar system's heliosphere, a protective bubble
of solar wind and magnetic fields created by the Sun, and
interstellar space, the region outside the heliosphere. Voyager 1
reached the edge of the heliosphere and the beginning of
interstellar space in 2012; Voyager 2 reached the boundary in
2018. No other human-made spacecraft has operated in interstellar
space.

Last October, to conserve energy, the project turned off Voyager
2's plasma science instrument, which measures the amount of
plasma -- electrically charged atoms -- and the direction it is
flowing. The instrument had collected only limited data in recent
years due to its orientation relative to the direction that
plasma flows in interstellar space. Voyager 1's plasma science
instrument had been turned off years ago because of degraded
performance.

Interstellar science legacy

The cosmic ray subsystem that was shut down on Voyager 1 last
week is a suite of three telescopes designed to study cosmic
rays, including protons from the galaxy and the Sun, by measuring
their energy and flux. Data from those telescopes helped the
Voyager science team determine when and where Voyager 1 exited
the heliosphere.

Scheduled for deactivation later this month, Voyager 2's
low-energy charged particle instrument measures the various ions,
electrons, and cosmic rays originating from our solar system and
galaxy. The instrument consists of two subsystems: the low-energy
particle telescope for broader energy measurements, and the
low-energy magnetospheric particle analyzer for more focused
magnetospheric studies.

Both systems use a rotating platform so that the field of view is
360 degrees, and the platform is powered by a stepper motor that
provides a 15.7-watt pulse every 192 seconds. The motor was
tested to 500,000 steps-enough to guarantee continuous operation
through the mission's encounters with Saturn, which occurred in
August 1980 for Voyager 2. By the time it is deactivated on
Voyager 2, the motor will have completed more than 8.5 million
steps.

"The Voyager spacecraft have far surpassed their original mission
to study the outer planets," said Patrick Koehn, Voyager program
scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Every bit of
additional data we have gathered since then is not only valuable
bonus science for heliophysics, but also a testament to the
exemplary engineering that has gone into the Voyagers -- starting
nearly 50 years ago and continuing to this day."

Addition through subtraction

Mission engineers have taken steps to avoid turning off science
instruments for as long as possible because the science data
collected by the twin Voyager probes is unique. With these two
instruments turned off, the Voyagers should have enough power to
operate for about a year before the team needs to shut off
another instrument on both spacecraft.

In the meantime, Voyager 1 will continue to operate its
magnetometer and plasma wave subsystem. The spacecraft's
low-energy charged particle instrument will operate through the
remainder of 2025 but will be shut off next year.

Voyager 2 will continue to operate its magnetic field and plasma
wave instruments for the foreseeable future. Its cosmic ray
subsystem is scheduled to be shut off in 2026.

With the implementation of this power conservation plan,
engineers believe the two probes could have enough electricity to
continue operating with at least one science instrument into the
2030s. But they are also mindful that the Voyagers have been
weathering deep space for 47 years and that unforeseen challenges
could shorten that timeline.

Long distance

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 remain the most distant human-made
objects ever built. Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (25
billion kilometers) away. Voyager 2 is over 13 billion miles (21
billion kilometers) from Earth.

In fact, due to this distance, it takes over 23 hours to get a
radio signal from Earth to Voyager 1, and 19½ hours to Voyager 2.

"Every minute of every day, the Voyagers explore a region where
no spacecraft has gone before," said Linda Spilker, Voyager
project scientist at JPL. "That also means every day could be our
last. But that day could also bring another interstellar
revelation. So, we're pulling out all the stops, doing what we
can to make sure Voyagers 1 and 2 continue their trailblazing for
the maximum time possible."

https://phys.org/news/2025-03-nasa-powers-voyager-science-instruments.html
 

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

Please send your reception report to radiogram@verizon.net
 

This week's images ...


Sunset as seen from the Canadian National tracks in South Bend,
Indiana, March 1. tinyurl.com/2dyvx9zk ...

Sending Pic:196x146C;








The Kawazu cherry blossoms in Japan, with Mt. Fuji in the
background, March 1. tinyurl.com/22crapfy ...

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Polar bear Aurora is pictured next to her cub Nur at the São
Paulo Aquarium in Brazil. tinyurl.com/24hcx4f8 ...

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A Tibetan woman prepares tea to mark Losar, the Tibetan new year,
with the Tibetan exile community in Kathmandu, Nepal.
tinyurl.com/2cqcbxal ...

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A heterochromic cat in Van, Turkey. tinyurl.com/2cqcbxal ...

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Orchids at the Spring Flower Show at the Minnesota Landscape
Arboretum (1). tinyurl.com/26cwe33m ...

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A crocus, sign of early spring, in Washington state.
tinyurl.com/2ark89lt ...

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Our painting of the week is a detail from "Barges à charbon,
Arles" (1888) by Vincent van Gogh. tinyurl.com/2y9ro52o ...

Sending Pic:202x190C;







Shortwave Radiogram returns to MFSK32 ...
 

RSID: <<2025-03-07T00:57Z MFSK-32 @ 9265000+1500>>

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK32 ...


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I'm Kim Elliott. Please join us for the next Shortwave
Radiogram.
 

Sending Pic:144x108C;
 

RSID: <<2025-03-07T11:30Z MFSK-64 @ 15770000+1500>>


Ernest “Ernie” Isley of the Isley Brothers was born on
March 7, 1952.

Sending Pic:175x240;

https://officialisleybrothers.com/

Please report your decode to themightykbc@gmail.com.