Montreal Area Event / Convention

Gaming convention: Festival Draconis October 14-16

Draconis October 14-16

This year’s event features 103 game sessions, 55 different role-playing game systems which includes 13 made in Quebec. https://festivaldraconis.ca/home/

From the Draconis website:

 Draconis Festival is the biggest role-playing game event of Quebec. It offers more than a hundred role-playing game sessions for beginners or advanced players. Offered games go from classics like Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu to the latest independent local role-playing game. The festival is held two times a year. Online on Discord in Winter and in person at the CÉGEP du Vieux-Montréal in Fall. In any case, the event is totally free and open to all the diversity.

The organization team is made entirely of volunteers and the role-playing games are offered by members of our excellent community.

Le festival Draconis est le plus gros événement de jeux de rôle au Québec. Il offre une centaine de parties de jeux de rôle autant pour les personnes débutantes que les plus aguerries. Les jeux de rôles offerts vont des classiques comme Donjons et Dragons et Call of Cthulhu jusqu’aux dernières sorties de jeux de rôle indépendants incluant plusieurs jeux créés par des gens d’ici. L’événement revient deux fois par année. Il a lieu en ligne sur Discord en hiver et en personne au cégep du Vieux-Montréal en automne. Dans tous les cas, l’événement est 100% gratuit et ouvert à toute la diversité.

L’équipe d’organisation est entièrement composée de bénévoles et les parties de jeux de rôles sont offertes par les membres de notre excellente communauté de rôlistes.

Montreal Area Event / Convention

ToyCon Montreal scheduled for November 5-6

The next Montreal ToyCon will be happening on Saturday/Sunday, November 5 and 6, 2022 from 10am to 4pm at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Ville St Laurent.

If you’ve enjoyed the previous conventions and are looking for the best and brightest toys for your collection, be sure to check it out! There will be comic book and toy dealers selling GI-Joe, DC, Marvel, Transformers, Star Wars, Funko Pop, Lego and tons more. We’d love to see you there. For more details, visit our website. https://www.cmdstore.ca/pages/montreal-toycon

Courtyard Marriott Hotel
7000 Place Robert-Joncas
St Laurent, QC H4M-2Z5
(Near Mega-Plex Speheretech 14 – Cinema Guzzo)

Date and Time: Saturday/Sunday, November 5-6/2022 from 10am to 4pm
Admission: FREE
Parking: 2hr / $5

Montreal Area Event / Convention

ToyCon de Montréal 5 – 6 novembre

Le prochain ToyCon de Montréal se tiendra le samedi/dimanche, 5 et 6 novembre, 2022 de 10h00 à 16h00 au Courtyard Marriott, à Ville St. Laurent.

Si vous avez aimé les conventions précédentes et cherchez de nouveaux jouets pour votre collection, venez nous voir ! Il y aura des vendeurs de bande dessinées, des jouets de GI-Joe, DC, Marvel, Transformers, Star Wars, Lego, Funko Pop et beaucoup d’autres. Nous comptons sur votre présence ! Pour de plus amples détails, veuillez visiter notre site web!

Lieu / adresse de l’évènement:

Hôtel Courtyard Marriott
7000 Place Robert-Joncas
Ville St-Laurent, QC H4M 2Z5
(Près du Mega-Plex Speheretech 14 – Cinema Guzzo)

Dates & heures de l’évènement: le samedi/dimanche 5 et 6 novembre 2022, de 10:00 à 16:00 heures
Admission: GRATUIT
Stationnement: 2h / $5

Astronomy News

NASA STRIKES ASTEROID DEAD-CENTER

DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) Asteroid moonlet Dimorphos as seen by the DART spacecraft 11 seconds before impact.
Sep 26, 2022
RELEASE 22-100

NASA’s DART Mission Hits Asteroid in First-Ever Planetary Defense Test

After 10 months flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration – successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space.

Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT.

As a part of NASA’s overall planetary defense strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered.

“At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth.”

DART targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth.

The mission’s one-way trip confirmed NASA can successfully navigate a spacecraft to intentionally collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact.

The investigation team will now observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that DART’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos. Researchers expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1%, or roughly 10 minutes; precisely measuring how much the asteroid was deflected is one of the primary purposes of the full-scale test. READ MORE FROM NASA’s PRESS RELEASE

https://spaceweather.com/ BULLSEYE! NASA STRIKES ASTEROID DEAD-CENTER: NASA’s DART spacecraft hit asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26th–an incredible, dramatic bullseye 11 million kilometers from Earth. DART took this picture of Dimorphos only 11 seconds before impact, reveaing it to be a boulder-strewn rubble pile:


See more images from DART’s approach and impact

Mission scientsts say DART hit the asteroid less than 17 meters off center. Think about that: 17 meters off at a distance of 11 million kilometers.NASA still has the right stuff.

Now more hard work begins. Astronomers on Earth have begun monitoring Dimorphos’s orbit to find out whether or not it has changed in response to DART’s impact. If so, it proves that human tech can alter an asteroid’s trajectory–a possible strategy for future Planetary Defense. Stay tuned.

Astronomy News

Jupiter marks its closest opposition since 1963.

From Sky and Telescope:

Jupiter reaches opposition on September 26th just 591 million kilometers (367 million miles) from Earth, the closest they’ll pair for the year. Opposition distances vary depending on where the planet happens to be in its orbit when opposition comes around. The closer perihelion and opposition dates align, the closer the two planets will draw together and the brighter and larger the gas giant will shine.

Jupiter corona
Jupiter is so bright it creates an aureole in a bank of passing clouds earlier this month. Bob King

This go-round, Jupiter lines up with Earth just four months shy of its January 21, 2023, perihelion. It hasn’t been this close since the October 1963 opposition and won’t be again until October 7, 2129. That’s why it appears exceptionally large (49.9″ across) and bright (magnitude –2.9). But that’s only half the story.

READ MORE

Fanzines

Another zine!

NAPA260

Lots of history ion this one. CPL

In this issue:
Front Cover: Public Domain Space Art
The Official Organ #260
Intermission 123, by Ahrvid Engholm – 16
Archive Midwinter, by Jefferson P. Swycaffer – 3
Intermission 124, by Ahrvid Engholm – 14
Snow Poster Township #6, by Heath Row – 6
Synergy 41 September 2022, by John Thiel – 7
Ye Murthered Master Mage 259, by George Phillies – 4
Samizdat… Ish #14, July/Aug 2022, by Sam Lubell – 5

MonSFFA Website

NASA’s DART spacecraft is about to slam into an asteroid

NASA’s DART spacecraft is about to slam into an asteroid

On Sept. 26, NASA will ram a spacecraft into an asteroid to test techniques that may eventually be needed to prevent a cataclysmic asteroid strike on Earth.
By Christopher Cokinos  |  Published: Saturday, September 24, 2022
RELATED TOPICS: ROBOTIC SPACEFLIGHT | ASTEROIDS
DARTspacecraftimpact
DART approaches its target, asteroid Dimorphos, in this artist’s illustration. The spacecraft is on track to smash into the space rock on Monday, Sept. 26. NASA

Move over, Bruce Willis. Your asteroid-deflecting services — dramatically portrayed in Armageddon — are no longer needed. At least, we hope so.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft is set to impact the tiny asteroid Dimorphos on Monday (Sept. 26) at 7:14 P.M. EDT.

This has never been done before, and the results of DART will help humans learn how to prevent asteroids from slamming into the Earth, potentially causing local, regional, or even global devastation.

Such asteroid impacts are low-probability but high-risk events. Current estimates suggest that “while no known asteroid larger than 140 meters [460 feet] in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, only about 40 percent of those asteroids have been found as of October 2021,” according to the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, which is managing the DART mission.

READ MORE from Astronomy Magazine’s web site.

Fanzines

Fanzine to share!

A bumper crop of zines arrived while I was away. Enjoy!

from Guy Lillian: Spartacus no. 59

New today at https://efanzines.com:

Leybl Botwinik’s CyberCozen – September 2022

Ray Palm’s The Ray X X-rayer #167

Taral Wayne’s The Baloobius #9

Octothorpe #66, a regular fannish podcast by John Coxon, Alison Scott and Liz Batty, is now on line

Ethel the Aardvark #215 and archive issues 13, 185

Guy & Rosy Lillian’s 2004 archive trip report The Galactic Route

Garth Spencer’s The Obdurate Eye #19.5

David Grigg’s Through the Biblioscope #30

—
Bill

From  Leybl Botwinik in Israel, CyberCozen.

CCSeptember-2022-v01

This month’s roundup: • More Yiddish-related SF material dedicated to my dear departed father, David Botwinik (o”h – ע” ה ): o First 2 chapters of “Kamf-Nign” Yiddish SF short story by Leybl Botwinik (with English translation) • Book review: “More Zion’s Fiction” o Story #07: Dragon Control – by Rami Shalheveth o Story #08: The Word Farmers – by Lili Daie

From Garth Spencer, The Obdurate Eye

ObdurateEye19.5

NEW CORFLU UPDATES!!
VCON 2022 CANCELLED!!!
INTERSTELLAR FAN FUND PROPOSED!!!!

Local News ……. 1
Corflu Pangloss Updates …. 1
VCON: On Again Off Again .. 1
NASFiC 2023 in Winnipeg …. 2
Are These Persons Actually Missing? …… 2
LoCs ……………. 3
Dreaming Is an Art Form …….. 5
Complexity ……. 5
Anglic  7
Spoons ………….. 7
Fanzines Received ……… 8

The N3F sent us:

ORIGIN55September2022

FanAct202209

MT VOID 2237

MT VOID 2238

MT VOID 2239

MT VOID 2240

MT VOID 2241

TNFF202209

 

MonSFFA Website

Post 8 of 8: Wrap-Up

This is our closing post of the afternoon.

10) THANK YOU!

We thank for their chief contributions to this afternoon’s e-meeting Joe Aspler, Keith Braithwaite, John Mansfield, and Cathy Palmer-Lister. We offer a nod of appreciation, as well, to all of our supporting players.

MonSFFA hopes you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, we thank you for dropping in, and we ask all of you to check in regularly here at www.MonSFFA.ca for additional content during this continuing pandemic, and for any updates as to when the club will be returning to regular, face-to-face meetings—soon, we hope!

Thank you for your interest and attention, and don’t forget to comment on today’s e-meeting!

11) DATE OF NEXT CLUB MEETING, AND SIGN-OFF

No booking of our intended downtown meeting room has yet been confirmed; function space rentals remain on pause and we continue to await word of facilities reopening.

And so, we bid a fond farewell to all until we meet again on Saturday, October 15, at 1:00PM. Whether that’ll be live in a physical meeting hall, or online again right here at www.MonSFFA.ca remains unknown at this time. We’ll let you know of any new developments on that front!

Stay well, everyone, and enjoy the waning days of summer!

Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association