KNAU eNews: Possible Outages, Point Sublime and more

It isn’t you, it’s us.

Later this week we may experience a few glitches in our service because of circumstances beyond our control: The Sun.

Our satellite dish antenna is aimed at the NPR satellite parked over the equator in geostationary orbit, meaning it appears fixed in space. Next week, as the sun crosses directly behind the satellite, we are blinded with thermal noise for a minute or two. This interference peaks at about 11:40am with peak days Wednesday and Thursday. We got lucky last year because we began using a larger more powerful antenna and our signal outages were minimal. But even if satellite reception here in Flagstaff is unaffected, areas served by our KNAU regional satellite network (Page, Prescott, Grand Canyon) will still be knocked out temporarily.

Thanks for your patience. Learn more about the phenomenon here.

In this week’s installment of Poetry Friday, we hear from Laura Tohe, poet laureate of the Navajo Nation. She grew up in Crystal, New Mexico, the daughter of a Code Talker, and went on to become a professor emerita of English at Arizona State University. In addition to bilingual poetry and fiction, Tohe also writes oratorios for operas. Learn more at KNAU.org.

When a warm storm front moves over a snow-capped mountain range, floods often follow. These events aren’t common on the Colorado Plateau, where winter precipitation usually falls as snow. Learn more at KNAU.org.

Just below Point Sublime in the Grand Canyon, a rock cairn marks the site where a small plane and a helicopter collided in 1986, killing everyone onboard. The cairn was placed there by KNAU commentator Scott Thybony…his brother John was one of the victims. Learn more at KNAU.org.

You may see some interesting public service announcements on Arizona Department of Transportation digital signs statewide starting the week. ADOT’s annual “Safety Message Contest” is back and you can submit your messages through March 2nd. Learn more at KNAU.org.

A year ago NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past a strange snowman-shaped object in the Kuiper Belt, far beyond Pluto. Named Arrokoth, it’s the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft. Learn more at KNAU.org.