Letters to the Editor: Proposed Zone 0 fire-safety regulation needs more scrutiny
To the editor: The Los Angeles Times has seen fit to print an article about an insurance industry-sponsored 'test' purporting to show the effectiveness of California's proposed Zone 0 regulation ('In a test, one home burns, the other is unscathed. A lesson for fire-proofing L.A.?,' June 11). This would require homeowners to remove all vegetation within five feet of homes. There are several facts that this article ignores about the 'test' and Zone 0:
The test failed to consider science showing that mature, healthy vegetation can provide protection to homes in urban wildfires, as an opinion piece in the L.A. Times pointed out recently. What if this experiment had included a fire-hardened home surrounded by healthy vegetation? What if this experiment included a Zone 0-compliant home subjected to flying embers and winds of 60-80 mph?
The insurance industry stands to benefit significantly by Zone 0 regulation because it potentially hands them yet another reason to cancel California homeowners' policies. All it takes is a drone flyover for insurers to know what's growing on your lot.
The regulation is profoundly regressive. Homeowners with the least resources will pay disproportionately more to come into compliance with Zone 0. Homeowners with small lots will have disproportionately less green space where their children can play.
Lastly, the article fails to mention the grave impact on California's environment that the wholesale removal of millions of plants and mature trees would have.
Defensible space is critical to fire prevention. I hope future reporting will explore the motives of Zone 0 advocates and the science behind more nuanced approaches.
Susan Woolley, Altadena
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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
What is the moon phase today? Lunar phases 2025
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Today, June 27, 2025, the moon is 2 days old and is in the Waxing Crescent phase of its lunar cycle. It is 6% illuminated. Moon phase Date First Quarter June 2 Full Moon June 11 Third/Last Quarter June 18 New Moon June 25 Moon phases reveal the passage of time in the night sky. Some nights when we look up at the moon, it is full and bright; sometimes it is just a sliver of silvery light. These changes in appearance are the phases of the moon. As the moon orbits Earth, it cycles through eight distinct phases. The four primary phases of the moon (new moon, first quarter, full moon, last quarter) occur about a week apart, with the full moon its most dazzling stage. While the moon has four primary phases each month, it is always changing. As you observe the moon during the month, watch as it grows from a new moon to a first quarter moon. As it grows, it is known as a waxing moon, and gradually increases from a waxing "crescent" (for its shape into the first quarter moon. As it continues to brighten, it takes on an oblong, or "gibbous," shape until it reaches the full moon stage. Then it will repeat the steps in reverse as it heads back to a new moon. You can see what today's moon phase is here with the embedded widget on this page, courtesy of Top telescope pick! Looking for a telescope for the moon? We recommend the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ as the best for basic astronomy in our best beginner's telescope guide. The next moon phase milestone will be the First Quarter Moon on Wednesday, July 2 at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT). The First Quarter Moon, also known as the first half moon of the month because the moon appears half-illuminated as seen from Earth, marks the time when the moon is a quarter of its way through its lunar cycle and journey around the Earth. "People may casually call this a half moon, but remember, that's not really what you're witnessing in the sky," NASA wrote in a statement. "You're seeing just a slice of the entire moon ― half of the illuminated half." The First Quarter moon rises around noon and sets at about midnight, according to NASA. That means it will appear high in the sky in the evening, making it an excellent time for lunar viewing, the agency added. Here are the moon phases for 2025, according to NASA's SKYCAL. If you need equipment for viewing the moon, check out our guide to the best telescopes and the best telescopes for kids. You can also check out our guide on how to photograph the moon, as well as how to photograph a lunar eclipse for major moon events. There's even a guide on how to photograph a solar eclipse. If you're looking for imaging gear, our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography guides can help prepare you for the next lunar sight. New Moon First Quarter Full Moon Last Quarter -- Jan. 6, 6:56 p.m. Jan. 13, 5:27 p.m. Jan. 21, 5:31 p.m. Jan. 29, 7:36 a.m. Feb. 5, 3:02 a.m. Feb. 12, 8:53 a.m. Feb. 20, 12:32 p.m. Feb. 27, 7:45 p.m. March 6, 11:32 a.m. March 14, 2:55 a.m. March 22, 7:29 a.m. March 29, 6:58 a.m. April 4, 10:14 p.m. April 12, 8:22 p.m. April, 20 9:35 p.m. April 27, 3:31 p.m. May 4, 9:52 a.m. May 12, 12:56 p.m. May 20, 7:56 a.m. May 26, 11:02 p.m. June 2, 11:41 p.m. June 11, 3:44 a.m. June 18, 3:19 p.m. June 25, 6:31 a.m. July 2, 3:30 p.m. July 10, 4:37 p.m. July 17, 8:38 p.m. July 24, 3:11 p.m. Aug. 1, 8:41 a.m. Aug. 9, 3:55 a.m. Aug. 16, 1:12 a.m. Aug. 23, 2:06 a.m. Aug. 31, 2:25 a.m. Sept. 7, 2:09 p.m. Sept. 14, 6:33 a.m. Sept. 21, 3:54 p.m. Sept. 29, 7:54 p.m. Oct. 6, 11:48 p.m. Oct. 13, 2:13 p.m. Oct. 21, 8:25 a.m. Oct. 29, 12:21 p.m. Nov. 5, 8:19 a.m. Nov. 12, 12:28 a.m. Nov. 20, 1:47 a.m. Nov. 28, 1:59 a.m. Dec. 4, 6:14 p.m. Dec. 11, 3:52 p.m. Dec. 19, 8:43 p.m. Dec. 27, 2:10 p.m. -- -- Related stories: — How to photograph the moon using a camera: techniques, kit, and settings — How to observe the moon with a telescope — What you can see in this month's night sky — Best cameras for astrophotography The moon, like Earth, is a sphere, and it is always half-illuminated by the sun. 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The sun also affects the tides, albeit less so than the moon, by attracting masses of water. The solar role is additive to the lunar one therefore, the respective geometry also influences the tides. When the moon is New or Full, the tides are maximum because the attraction forces of the sun and the moon add up. When the moon is in the First or Last Quarter, forming a 90° angle with the sun and the Earth, the tides are minimal because the attractive forces of the sun and moon oppose each other. To predict the magnitude of the tide we will also consider the position of the sun. NASA's SkyCal Events Calendar offers a comprehensive calendar of moon phases, lunar and solar eclipses and more for the entire calendar year. You can see more about the full moons of 2024, in Full Moon Calendar. Our night sky guide has a list of events for skywatching this month. SkyCal - SkyEvents Calendar, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Centerhttps:// What's Up - Skywatching Tips from NASAhttps://
Los Angeles Times
4 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Letters to the Editor: Proposed Zone 0 fire-safety regulation needs more scrutiny
To the editor: The Los Angeles Times has seen fit to print an article about an insurance industry-sponsored 'test' purporting to show the effectiveness of California's proposed Zone 0 regulation ('In a test, one home burns, the other is unscathed. A lesson for fire-proofing L.A.?,' June 11). This would require homeowners to remove all vegetation within five feet of homes. There are several facts that this article ignores about the 'test' and Zone 0: The test failed to consider science showing that mature, healthy vegetation can provide protection to homes in urban wildfires, as an opinion piece in the L.A. Times pointed out recently. What if this experiment had included a fire-hardened home surrounded by healthy vegetation? What if this experiment included a Zone 0-compliant home subjected to flying embers and winds of 60-80 mph? The insurance industry stands to benefit significantly by Zone 0 regulation because it potentially hands them yet another reason to cancel California homeowners' policies. All it takes is a drone flyover for insurers to know what's growing on your lot. The regulation is profoundly regressive. Homeowners with the least resources will pay disproportionately more to come into compliance with Zone 0. Homeowners with small lots will have disproportionately less green space where their children can play. Lastly, the article fails to mention the grave impact on California's environment that the wholesale removal of millions of plants and mature trees would have. Defensible space is critical to fire prevention. I hope future reporting will explore the motives of Zone 0 advocates and the science behind more nuanced approaches. Susan Woolley, Altadena
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Sir Francis Graham-Smith, radio astronomy pioneer whose work indicated that the universe had a beginning
Sir Francis Graham-Smith, the former Astronomer Royal, who has died aged 102, was a pioneer of radio astronomy, carrying out research which helped to establish our modern picture of the universe. In the 1950s, he was the first astronomer to measure the accurate positions of distant 'radio galaxies', those that have large regions of radio emission that extend well beyond their visible structure. Together with Sir Martin Ryle, his predecessor as Astronomer Royal, he suggested that the speed at which these galaxies are moving away from us indicated that the universe must have had a definitive beginning. These findings helped to demolish the then fashionable steady state theory of Sir Fred Hoyle and others, which held that the universe had always existed. In the 1970s, Graham-Smith did much detective work on pulsars – fast-spinning stars made up of matter so dense that one ton can be contained in a teaspoon. King Charles II established the office of Astronomer Royal in 1674. Appointed in 1982, Graham-Smith was the 13th to hold the office – an unlucky portent as it turned out, for the 1980s saw a series of cuts in funding for astronomical research. The shadow hanging over British astronomy partly stemmed from a public relations disaster on the night of March 13 1986 when, shortly after midnight, the European spacecraft Giotto passed through the tail of Halley's comet, sending back data to earth. The BBC, in a late-night television show, invited several astronomers, including Graham-Smith to comment on the results, forgetting that none of their guests knew much about comets. The show was a shambles: no one could make head or tail of the Giotto data. But the real row began later in No 10 Downing Street, where Margaret Thatcher was watching the programme. She was angry at what she saw and decided that space research was a waste of money. The next year she barred British participation in a European X-ray telescope searching for black holes and rejected plans to boost the budget of the National Space Centre, a move which prompted the resignation of its director Roy Gibson. Caught in the cross-fire, Graham-Smith strove in as civilised a manner as possible to put the case for higher investment in British astronomical research: 'We have no shortage of excellent students,' he observed in 1986, 'but they will probably work abroad. The fact that we will go on populating the world with British astronomers is absolutely splendid, but wouldn't it be nicer to think that just a few would stay at home?' Francis Graham-Smith was born on April 25 1923 to Claud and Cicely and educated at Epsom College and at Rossall School in Lancashire. He began studying natural sciences at Downing College, Cambridge, in 1941 but did not graduate until 1946. Like his colleague Martin Ryle, he spent most of the Second World War working at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Malvern involved in the development of radar. This experience led him into radio astronomy and he stayed on at Cambridge after graduating to work with Ryle at the Cavendish Laboratory on radio waves from the sun and other stars. By a fortunate coincidence, the largest sunspot for many years occurred at this time – in July 1946 – and Cambridge radio astronomy grew from observations of its very powerful emissions. Soon afterwards the pair were using the same techniques to detect radio waves coming from other parts of the sky. Setting up a simple radio telescope in a field behind the house where they both lived, they left it for 24 hours to scan the sky as the earth rotated recording the radio signal on a paper chart recorder. When they looked at the chart the next morning, they were astonished to see the trace of not one but two powerful radio sources on the recording. The radio source appeared to be coming from the constellation Cassiopeia. A few years later, the radio source was precisely located and identified with the remains of a stellar explosion in the Milky Way. Another target of their research was a radio signal coming from a discrete source in the constellation of Cygnus. In 1952, Graham-Smith located this radio signal known as the galaxy Cygnus A (the 'A' indicating that it is the brightest light in its constellation), sufficiently accurately for a visual search to be made for a visible counterpart. This search turned out to be a turning point in modern astronomy. American researchers using large optical telescopes found that the radio waves were coming from a galaxy of unusual shape and with a large 'redshift' – evidence that it is moving away from earth at a speed which increases with distance. This discovery demonstrated that radio astronomy could be used for penetrating great distances outside our own galaxy. Cygnus A is the first known example of a radio galaxy. In 1952 Graham-Smith went to America to work at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, returning to Cambridge in 1953. He published a paper with Ryle in 1957 suggesting that radio signals from orbiting satellites could be used to aid navigation. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Graham-Smith worked on radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank, then moved into optical astronomy as director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, where his main task was to build the new optical telescope at La Palma in the Canary Islands. In 1977 he was part of a team working at the British-American optical telescope in New South Wales which photographed the Vela Pulsar, the brightest pulsar in the sky in terms of radio emissions, no more than 30 miles in diameter yet weighing one and a half times as much as the sun. The star's total explosion or 'supernova' had been recorded in Sumerian inscriptions. In 1981 Graham-Smith moved back to Manchester to become only the second director of Jodrell Bank – where he had a cameo in the series Treasure Hunt, giving Anneka Rice a piggy-back to help her reach a clue. He listed bee-keeping among his recreations in Who's Who, and looked after the hives at Jodrell Bank. In 1982 he was appointed Astronomer Royal, and he was professor of physics at Manchester from 1987 to 1990. After his retirement, Graham-Smith – who was known as Graham to friends and colleagues – became vice-president of the Royal Society and his attention turned increasingly to the future of our own planet. In 1994 he hosted an international population summit which concluded that zero population growth 'within the lifetime of our children' was the only way to save the earth from ecological disaster. He was knighted in 1986 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1970. He married, in 1945, Dorothy Palmer, whom he met when they were both working on radio astronomy with Martin Ryle in Cambridge; they had a daughter and three sons. Professor Sir Francis Graham-Smith, born April 25 1923, died June 20 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
