Pittsburg, PA
Pittsburgh may get a chance to see an ancient comet this month
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — An ancient comet discovered last year is passing by Earth, and Pittsburghers may get a chance to see it if conditions are right.
KDKA-TV went to Pittsburgh astronomers and astronomy lovers to find out how to catch a glimpse of the rare astronomical event.
This year has been full of cosmic reasons to look up. We put on our protective glasses to view a total solar eclipse. We were captivated by the northern lights more than once. We’ve even been dazzled by meteor showers.
“Now we have a comet,” said astronomer Diane Turnshek, a physics lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University and instructor in the University of Pittsburgh’s Physics and Astronomy Department.
“If I get to see the comet, it’s just one more this year before the year is out for celestial events,” said astronomer Simonetta Frittelli, a Duquesne University physics associate professor.
The comet, known as C-2023-A3 aka Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, will be closest to Earth on Oct. 13. Then it’ll put on a show after sunset each day through the end of October. The best time to view the comet will be between Oct. 14-24.
“It should be visible to your naked eye in the dark sight, possible to your naked eye here in Pittsburgh, and certainly with binoculars and a small telescope,” said Kerry Handron, Allegheny Observatory’s special events and outreach coordinator.
Handron said using binoculars or a telescope will be very helpful, and you can also see the icy dust ball by taking pictures on your phone using night mode/longer exposure times.
“The comet is going to be fuzzy. It’s going to have a tail, maybe two tails. That would be exciting, and we’ll find it in the west,” Handron said.
“Right after sunset looking west, maybe a little south, you should see the comet right as the glare of the sun goes away, and a coma, the dirty snowball part has a big, long trail, which is always pointed away from the sun,” Turnshek said.
“It’s close to the sun so you have to look westward when the sun goes down, and wait a little bit,” Frittelli said.
As the comet moves away from the sun, it’ll get higher in the sky, making it easier to see. But it will get fainter each day. Frittelli said it’s transforming to see a comet.
“The comet just hangs. It hangs in the night sky. It’s just like floating there. It doesn’t move. It’s beautiful. I’ve seen pictures of it taken in other parts of the world already, and it’s beautiful,” Frittelli added.
And if you don’t see this rare astronomical event, you’re out of luck.
“This one comes about every once every 80,000 years. Might seem like a lot to you, but the Neanderthals were walking the Earth at the time so they might have seen it,” Frittelli said.
Turnshek said the ancient comet may never come back.
“It may just get ejected from the solar system,” she said.
“People in the Southern Hemisphere got a chance to see it, but now is our chance to get to see it after sunset. So many things in the sky are exciting. But there haven’t been that many great comets in recent history,” Turnshek added.
Pittsburg, PA
Republican House Speaker visits Pittsburgh, says Dems have too much campaign cash
During a visit to Western Pennsylvania on Friday, Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson called the amount of money Democrats are spending on House races this year “irrational” — even though both Democrats and Republicans are on track to spend less money in the area than they did two years ago.
“Democrats, I think irrationally, have raised a lot of money this cycle,” Johnson said during a stop at an Aliquippa trucking company. “They’ve raised more in a lot of the key races around the country. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s not about the quantity of the cash. It’s about the quality of the candidate.”
Johnson was stumping for Republican Congressional candidate Rob Mercuri, who is looking to unseat the Democratic incumbent Chris Deluzio in the 17th Congressional District — and whose own candidacy has been outgunned so far.
The Democrat-aligned House Majority PAC has reserved $1.9 million for ads on the race, while the Republican equivalent, the National Republican Congressional Committee, has reserved only around $700,000, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign ad spending.
Although Johnson called the amount of Democratic spending “irrational,” outside funders in both parties had each spent more than four times as much on ads — around $8 million — by this point in the 17th District race in 2022.
Mercuri is also being outspent when comparing each campaign head-to-head, without factoring in allied groups. Deluzio’s campaign is spending $1.7 million on ads, according to AdImpact, compared to just $400,000 for Mercuri. Deluzio spent a similar amount of money on ads in 2022, though resources in that race were more evenly matched: Republican candidate Jerememy Shaeffer spent four times as much money on ads in the district in 2022 as Mercuri’s campaign has so far.
Johnson said that Mercuri could make up the difference with help from outside groups.
“The campaign finance laws prevent me from coordinating with our super PACs and the conservative groups that are out there,” Johnson said. “But I know there’s a lot of buzz about Rob’s race. They’re watching it very closely. And my expectation is in the coming days, he’ll have a lot more air cover coming in here at the end, and that’s when it really counts.”
That money has already started to flow in recent weeks. A Super PAC called the Eighteen Fifty-Four Fund has reserved around $1.8 million worth of ads in the final weeks of the campaign starting on October 15. Five family members of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary under former president Donald Trump, are listed as the committee members for the organization in a tax filing. No outside group has spent $3,000 or more on ads for Deluzio.
The 17th Congressional District is expected to be the closest Congressional race in Western Pennsylvania. The Cook Political Report says the voter distribution in the district is about evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, but has listed the race as “lean Democrat.”
Pittsburg, PA
Raiders linebacker wants revenge on Pittsburgh Steelers for letting him walk in free agency
Former Pittsburgh Steelers and now Las Vegas Raiders linebacker Robert Spillane knows all about what it means to play the Steelers. For the second straight year, he will face his former team in Las Vegas, and while 2023 did not give him the revenge he wanted, 2024 is another opportunity for Spillane.
The 28-year-old Spillane played for the Steelers from 2019 to 2022, going from a special teamer on the roster fringe to a legitimate starter. He earned a two-year, $7 million contract in the 2023 offseason and has become a stalwart for the Raiders in the middle of their defense. He has set himself up for another nice payday this spring.
However, Spillane would like to get some revenge on his former team. The Steelers did have a chance to bring him back in free agency and opted to let him walk instead, something that Spillane does not take kindly to even over a year later.
“Leaving them has only [added] to the chip on my shoulder…they had a chance to bring me back in free agency but I’m here now and I’m so thankful to be a Raider and I look forward to bringing it to them on Sunday,” Spillane said on Thursday.
Spillane leads the NFL in tackles for loss among linebackers. He has 25 run stops, and is a massive reason why the Raiders are ranked as the top run defense by run success rate allowed. Even in more traditional metrics, such as yards per carry, they still rank top five in the NFL in run defense.
Spillane will welcome back his running mate in Divine Deable next to him, too. Deablo missed time with an oblique injury, and should add some needed speed to the second-level along with Spillane, who can be the downhill hammer.
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Pittsburg, PA
Obama gives blistering critique of Trump as he campaigns for Harris in Pittsburgh
Former President Barack Obama was in Pittsburgh Thursday, where he urged an Oakland crowd to get out the vote for Democrat Kamala Harris. The visit was the former president’s first campaign trail stop of the 2024 election cycle, as polls continue to show a tight race in Pennsylvania between Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Speaking to the crowd, Obama said that the last few years, starting with the pandemic, have been hard for Americans, with high prices and other impacts putting a squeeze on working families.
“I get why people are looking to shake things up. I mean, I am the hopey-changey guy. So I understand people feeling frustrated and we can do better,” Obama said.
But he painted Trump as out-of-touch and not the choice to lead the country to change, calling him a “bumbling” billionaire “who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down the golden escalator” in 2015 to launch his first campaign.
He called Harris “a leader who has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a chance” and declared, “Kamala is as prepared for the job as any nominee for president has ever been.”
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns believe Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, may be the most pivotal contest in determining the outcome of the Nov. 5 election. Obama carried the state in both of his 2008 and 2012 election victories, before Trump won by just more than 44,000 votes in 2016. President Joe Biden took the state back for Democrats in 2020.
Obama’s was the latest in crisscrossing stops across the commonwealth for both campaigns during the last week. Harris’ Democratic running mate Tim Walz was in Central Pennsylvania last week; former President Donald Trump was in Butler on Saturday, and both Scranton and Reading on Wednesday.
Earlier in the evening, Obama made a surprise stop in East Liberty, where he delivered pastries to a group of Harris-Walz volunteers. During his remarks to that group, the former president took the opportunity to address a perceived lack of enthusiasm for Harris among Black male voters.
Black men are traditionally one of the most consistently Democratic leaning demographics in the nation. This year, however, both major parties view Black men, especially those under the age of 40, as attainable voters.
“I’m going to go ahead and just, say, speak some truths,” Obama said. “Based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities … we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running.”
Obama said that it “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers,” and that he wanted to speak directly to Black men.
“When you have a choice that is this clear, where, on the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences,” Obama said. “ … And on the other side, you have someone who has consistently shown disregard, not just for the communities, but for you as a person.”
“And you are thinking about sitting out?” he said.
Democrats have deployed Obama, one of the party’s most popular and high-profile surrogates, as the 2024 election has clearly entered its endgame. Mail-in ballots have already been sent out in Allegheny County, and the Harris campaign is working to energize its Democratic supporters and woo to their side what few undecided voters remain.
More than 1.5 million Pennsylvania voters have already requested an absentee ballot and nearly one in every six has already been returned, according to data collected by The New York Times. One in four Democrats and one in eight Republicans in Pennsylvania have requested an absentee ballot.
Prior to Thursday, Obama’s highest profile 2024 campaign activity came during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August.
The former president’s appearance also aimed to bolster the reelection campaign of Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who introduced and appeared on stage alongside Obama. Casey is being challenged by Trump-endorsed Republican David McCormick.
The event brought out a large crowd of Democratic supporters from around the Pittsburgh area.
Donna Nelson of Verona is afraid of what a second Donald Trump presidency would bring. She wore a shirt that depicted Kamala Harris in front of the Statue of Liberty with the words, “It’s time to pass the torch.”
“I fear for my democracy. I fear for women’s rights. For abortion,” Nelson said. “How can you people in the Republican Party take away a woman’s right?”
Dom Randall, a leader of the Young Democrats at Chatham University and a political science major, attended the rally with his aunt and friend. He loves politics, but he said the Obama rally was just his second ever; his first was a recent campaign event featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Pittsburgh.
“I’m just excited to see [Obama] here,” Randall said. “Even if I’m all the way across the room, I’m just excited to see him.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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