A UFO? A plane? What was that bright white object flying over Quebec Tuesday night?
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
3 hours ago
- CTV News
Six planets are hanging out in early morning skies this month. Here's how to spot them
NEW YORK — Six planets are hanging out in the sky this month in what's known as a planetary parade. Catch the spectacle while you can because it's the last one of the year. These linkups happen when several planets appear to line up in the night sky at once. Such parades are fairly common, happening around every year depending on the number of planets. At least one bright planet can be spotted on most nights, weather permitting, according to NASA. Six planets were visible in January skies and every planet of our solar system was visible in February, but not all could be spotted with the naked eye. Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and a faint Mercury are visible this month without any special equipment, and the best chances to spot them are over the next week. Uranus and Neptune can only be glimpsed through binoculars and telescopes. Jupiter and Venus made a close brush earlier this week and are still near each other in the eastern sky, 'close together like cat's eyes,' said Carolyn Sumners at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Mercury will be at its farthest point from the sun on Tuesday morning, making it easier to spot before it disappears into the sun's glare. To catch the planets, go out in the morning shortly before sunrise and look east. Try to find Jupiter and Venus clustered together first. Saturn is off to the side and Mercury will be close to the horizon, trying to rise before the sun. 'You're looking for little tiny pinpoints of light, but they are the brightest ones,' said Justin Bartel with the Science Museum of Virginia. 'They don't really twinkle like the stars do.' Before heading out, make sure it is a clear, cloudless morning and try to get away from tall buildings that could block the view. Mercury will hide behind the sun again toward the end of the month, but a crescent moon will then join the parade. The next big planetary hangout is in February. ___ Adithi Ramakrishnan, The Associated Press The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CBC
5 hours ago
- CBC
Moving to a more walkable city pays off for health, scientists find
Smartphone data reveals a boost in physical activity based on where people live People who moved to a walking friendly city walked more, and at the brisk pace favoured to improve health and prevent disease, a new natural experiment shows. Walkable cities allow you to access more amenities on foot for daily life, like going to school or work, buying ingredients to make dinner or heading to the park to play. But that's not available to everyone, given many cities and suburbs in Canada and the U.S. have been designed to emphasize transit by car, urban planners say. Teasing out cause from effect — whether walkable cities lead people to move more or if people who like to walk tend to live in more pedestrian-friendly cities — is important to nail down because it could help encourage more investment in safe sidewalks and zoning to encourage physical activity, medical researchers say. To find out, Tim Althoff, a computer science professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, used data from a step-tracking app to compare daily steps of more than 5,400 people who moved between major U.S. cities. "In short, we found that your city can help make you healthier," Althoff said. "The design of your city impacts how much you walk and as a result, your health." Althoff and his co-authors said in this week's issue of the journal Nature that moving from a less walkable city to a more walkable one adds about 1,100 steps a day on average. It's something the computer scientist has seen first-hand. "I grew up in a rural area in Germany," Althoff said. "I've lived in California and now in Seattle. Personally, I'm a really big fan of public transit, but I also, for instance, intentionally move to a neighborhood where it would be close to a bus stop." Canadian and international guidelines recommend adults get 150 minutes or more a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week. The researchers found people who lived in more walkable cities were about twice as likely to accumulate those steps. Dr. Laura Rosella, a professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, said several high-quality Canadian studies point to decreased risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and prediabetes as well as mental health benefits from more walkable cities. Image | Pedestrians, Old Montreal. Caption: Pedestrians walking in Old Montreal on a sunny day. The city has slowly increased the walkability of the Plateau neighbourhood, an urban planner says. (Charles Contant/CBC/Radio-Canada) Open image in new tab "We spend lots of money on the health care system," Rosella. "This [walkability] is something that literally we could make small tweaks that could have a huge difference." To apply the findings in Canada's climate, Rosella said, policy makers would also need to take into account safety considerations, like clearing snow and ice on sidewalks. Benefits of mixed density Ahmed El-Geneidy, a professor in urban planning at McGill University, said it takes about 15 years to gradually make changes to neighbourhoods and change the culture so people walk around cities more. "The whole idea is that you need to build high density beside the single family" homes, El-Geneidy said. That's how areas like Montreal's Plateau neighbourhood encouraged people to walk to more destinations, like grocery shops, he said. WATCH | Urban renewal for Edmonton residents: Paul Sharma, director of chronic disease and injury prevention at Peel Public Health, said Mississauga and Brampton's sprawling suburban neighbourhoods are sedentary places. Residents tend to have longer commutes compared to elsewhere in Ontario, according to the region's data. To design more walkable communities, Peel officials say they're working on factors like increasing density, proximity to services, and making wider sidewalks with better lighting and shade. "This is where public health and local planners need to work closely together to improve the health of the residents," Sharma said. At a playground in Calgary's Crestmount residential neighbourhood, Jarek Soltys said the family chose the location to be close to the mountains and walking paths, where they get steps in for enjoyment, but not transportation for errands. "When we moved here seven years ago there really wasn't anything here at all, not even a convenience store so we knew we would be driving places," Soltys said. "That is the reality of the suburbs in a big city."
CBC
6 hours ago
- CBC
With short episodes and help of yellow space blob, new show Bumpadoo finds 'path forward' for kids' TV
Social Sharing An extraterrestrial yellow blob, a curious preschooler and thousands of painstakingly crafted stop-motion frames come together in Bumpadoo, a new children's show aiming to make science and math fun. Bumpadoo came out on YouTube and TVO online Aug. 8 and will broadcast on TVO Aug. 17. The short stop-motion show follows four-year-old LiLi, voiced by Olivia Yang, and her shape-shifting alien friend Bumpi. The pair learn about and discuss topics related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), such as the difference between up and down, and why you get hungry. The show, created by Carmen Albano and Celeste Koon, was first pitched in 2022 and the first season was later shot in a Toronto studio. Characters LiLi and Bumpi may be besties on screen, but in the studio they "can't go anywhere near each other," said Hamilton-raised Evan DeRushie, who is the show's stop-motion director. "Bumpi, we love him, but he's messy," he said, explaining how Bumpi's materials don't allow him to be physically with the rest of the cast. "He's oily, he's made of plasticine and he gets everywhere." That made production of the show a bit challenging, he said, as scenes between the two had to be filmed separately. Stop-motion animation is already careful, slow work, with still images put together to make movement on screen. The show was shot at 12 frames per second, and episodes are around three and a half minutes long. The math says that would be just over 2,500 frames per episode of handmade movements, not counting the scenes that had to be shot multiple times because of Bumpi's messiness. Hamilton a big influence for animator DeRushie grew up in Hamilton's Westdale neighbourhood. He said it was a co-op placement at Cable 14 while he was in school that set him up to eventually create his own studio, Stop Motion Department. "There's just a lot of patient people that have been there for a long time. And they show you how to coil cables and how to be respectful of the talent when they come in and how to manage a room of people," he said. "There's a lot of skills there that I think were really influential for me." DeRushie is now based in Toronto, where his studio is. Stop Motion Department now runs co-op programs with students from Sheridan College and Ontario College of Art & Design University. Some of the students there also took part in the making of Bumpadoo, said DeRushie. Them and the rest of the animation staff "really embraced the show and these characters," he said. "We were all quoting Bumpi all throughout the day." DeRushie said the animation team built the characters by hand and then photograph each frame. "It's a bit of just a photo collage of photos of props that are stuck together," he said. 'A lot of pressures' on children's TV industry The price and effort that goes into stop-motion animation is one of a few reasons why the episodes are short, said Hamilton-based producer Kat Hayduk. "In children's media, things are generally shorter," said Hayduk, founder of Turtlebox Productions, the company behind the show. "But this was also designed to be a digital-first show … So we put it together as little three and a half minute shorts. It's also a way to build the brand and see where it goes." Hayduk said with the children's television industry struggling, partly due to kids turning to YouTube content that may lack educational value, the show's digital nature was also intentional. "There's been a lot of pressures on the industry right now, but creators will find a way and creating a show like this that kids can find online is one path forward," she said. Albano and Koon originally pitched the show to Turtlebox Productions, led by Hayduk and her partner Cam, and the couple was "charmed by it immediately." "We loved the look of it," said Hayduk, "and we loved the pitch." The show is a comedy, she said, "which kids love and respond to," but it is also educational, exploring preschool STEM concepts such as shapes, colours and textures. "I like to think that the show is inspiring a little bit of STEM education in kids," said Hayduk. "But it's also the beautiful nature of the animation and the [colours], that could inspire some kid to become an artist." Hayduk said the team is already working toward a second season of Bumpadoo and producing "at least twice as many episodes" in 2026 to push the show internationally. "Who knows what Bumpadoo could become. We could see the potential for spinoffs and potentially some fun toys or books," she said.
