So as I mentioned yesterday, there are 10 new paterae with official names approved by the IAU as of July 23.
astrafoxen
@astrafoxen.bsky.social
21 - any pronouns Astrophysics undergrad student in California (grad '27), aspiring planetary scientist. I do astronomy research on asteroids, comets and TNOs! pfp by me banner by Ian Regan
We are used to seeing weird shapes of small asteroids, but this is next level! look at the shape of 44 Nysa from Minker et al. This is 75 km volume-equivalent diameter object! Also it has a satellite! #planetSci 🧪
arXiv astro-ph.EP Earth and Planetary Astrophysics@astrophep-bot.bsky.social · last wk.Kate Minker, et al.: Unmasking (44) Nysa: Evidence for a trilobate structure https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.25786 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.25786 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.25786
Amazing #arXiv pull today with new direct imaging of asteroid 44 Nysa. I just wanna say- WOAH WHAT THE HEY WTF IS THIS ASTEROID SHAPE?? What's with all those concavities?? And holy crap it's apparently a contact TRINARY with a half-kilometer-sized moon??? arxiv.org/abs/2607.25786
Hello everyone! My name is Voyager, and I’m an animation and game design student from Texas. My passion is with space, hard sci-fi, worldbuilding, and alternate history. I use Autodesk Sketchbook as my main software - and it has been for 9 years. Commissions are open! Info is in a separate post
Second photo of an asteroid released today! This time it comes from JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission, which flew by Torifune yesterday. It's a 300-meter-wide contact binary rubble pile. It looks uncannily identical to Itokawa, another asteroid visited by JAXA's first Hayabusa mission back in 2005. ☄️🔭
Elizabeth Tasker@elizabethtasker.bsky.social · last mo.The presentation will be in Japanese, but there's a JAXA press conference at 16:00 JST (~30 minutes) on the flyby of Torifune by Hayabusa2. SHOW US A SPACE ROCK! And let's hug a 12 year old spacecraft that just pulled off a tight flyby it was never designed to do. Maybe we can save the world 🛰️👀🪨.
Smallest asteroid ever photographed up close, and WOW I've never seen anything like this before!! No obvious craters and very jagged shape. Just a single, 30-meter-long chunk of solid rock, unlike other asteroid visited by space probe.
Andrew Jones@andrewjonesspace.bsky.social · last mo.Tianwen-2 had arrived. Here's asteroid Kamo'oalewa seen from 20 km away www.xinhuanet.com/20260706/eb8...
New by me for @skyandtelescope.bsky.social : how slowing spin makes gravity win (over centrifugal acceleration) for the peanut asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, visited by the Lucy mission last April skyandtelescope.org/uncategorize...
Lucy's First Asteroid Flyby Sheds Light on a Double-lobed Asteroid
On its way to future encounters with Trojan asteroids, the Lucy spacecraft made a practice run past tiny asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025. Today, the Lucy team, led […]
skyandtelescope.org
Last year I rewrote Wikipedia's article on Makemake and it's now featured on the front page!! i spent 2 months hyperfixating on this topic and doing all the research and writing. It was SO worth it :D Special thanks to @renerpho.bsky.social & others for reviewing it ^^ (1/12 thread) 🔭 #planetsci
Just survived a whole year of undergrad E&M and quantum mechanics, yaaaay now to worry about applying for grad school and figuring out where to go and what to do :(
This is a graph of the inclination vs semi-major axis (distance from the sun) of 1,249,051 asteroids in the asteroid belt. Using proper elements allows us to see the belt's fine structure, including asteroid families that are fragments of past collisions. Each asteroid is (roughly) to scale.
Neat stuff! This was done by observing an occultation which is pretty cool. The team in Japan basically did the math to predict this ~500 km object, at 5 billion km ish from Earth, passing in front of a distant star for less than 30 seconds and watch it from several locations.
astrafoxen@astrafoxen.bsky.social · 3mo agooohhh my god, this tiny iceball has an atmospheric pressure of 100-200 nanobars?? Not even the dwarf planets (except Pluto) have atmospheric pressures this high, and JWST has only found water ice with apparently little to no CO/CO2/CH4 ice on this object.
oohhh my god, this tiny iceball has an atmospheric pressure of 100-200 nanobars?? Not even the dwarf planets (except Pluto) have atmospheric pressures this high, and JWST has only found water ice with apparently little to no CO/CO2/CH4 ice on this object.
Chara@astrochara.bsky.social · 3mo agoA really thin atmosphere detected at ~10σ (pretty significant) on the ~250 km radius TNO (612533) 2002 XV93! For my fellow English-reading astronomy enthusiasts, here's the English version of the article. www.nao.ac.jp/en/news/scie...
Spotted: curious locals on Cerro Pachón 👀🦊 At NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory, it’s not just about galaxies and asteroids. Sometimes foxes wander by to check out what we’re up to, reminding us we’re part of a bigger ecosystem right here on Earth. Science is wild. Sometimes literally! 🔭🧪
arxiv.org/abs/2603.150... This coming May the weird goose-egg shaped dwarf planet Haumea will eclipse two (!) distant stars, from our perspective - one of them being way brighter than the star that gave us a glimpse of its ring system back in 2017! There's a lot to be learned here, potentially.
more love for TNOs <3
Justinas Vitkus@justinasvitkus.bsky.social · 9mo agoJust a quick painting of Máni. A trans-Neptunian object. Recent occultation observations hint that Máni might have a massive impact crater and a very tall mountain that I interpreted as a central peak in this impact crater. #SciArt #spaceart #astronomy #solarsystem
My favorite binary brown dwarf system, ZTF J1239+8347! These two red-hot dwarfs orbit so closely together that one devours gas from its partner and becomes superheated with a brilliant blue glow. Handdrawn over 2 days. (1/5; see my explanation!) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTF_J12... #spaceart #sciart
My favorite binary brown dwarf system, ZTF J1239+8347! These two red-hot dwarfs orbit so closely together that one devours gas from its partner and becomes superheated with a brilliant blue glow. Handdrawn over 2 days. (1/5; see my explanation!) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZTF_J12... #spaceart #sciart
The shape of the near-Earth asteroid 2000 RS11 is inevitably compared to that of comet 67P. But it has to have formed differently, since nothing is sublimating off of the rock pile. RS11 remains unusual as compared to other contact-binary asteroids. bsky.app/profile/agas...
Agata Rożek@agastro.bsky.social · 5mo agoToday on arxiv, a preprint of Richard Cannon's (my excellent PhD student) freshly accepted paper! If you enjoyed the Rosetta mission to comet 67P, you'll like the looks of this space-duck asteroid, as revealed by radar 🔭☄️ 📡🪨
For fun, I decided to check how the orbit of one of Saturn's newest moons changes over time. The Gallic group moon S/2023 S 54 shows a sinusoidal oscillation in eccentricity and inclination with an offset phase. Kozai mechanism perhaps? I'll defer the work to the folks at JPL since that's their job
Four more irregular satellites of Jupiter dropped so far today S/2011 J4 [a=0.07, e=0.14, i=27.5, H=16.8] S/2018 J5 [a=0.16, e=0.31, i=165.3, H=17.0] S/2024 J1 [a=0.16, e=0.31, i=162.9, H=16.9] S/2011 J5 [a=0.16, e=0.21, i=164.7, H =17.2] www.minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/RecentM...
Just updated the Wikipedia article on Kallichore with new information and graphics! Crazy that we might finally get a close view of one of Jupiter's tiny outer moons in 2031… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kallich... I really want Juice to flyby Kallichore, pleaseplease let it happen
Kallichore (moon) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
ESA Space Science@science.esa.int · 5mo ago🧃 Juice update! 👩💻 Science teams are busy analysing the 3I/ATLAS data received from five Juice science instruments ☄️ They're also looking forward to a star occultation by Jupiter’s moon Kallichore on 18 March, which could refine its known position – valuable data for a possible 2031 flyby. 1/2 🔭🧪
I personally headcanon Haumea's equator to be pretty jagged with ridges, considering that it's quite close to rotational breakup and has previously undergone rotational fissioning. Something like this 2017 Haumea art by @astraplanetshine.bsky.social (gorgeous btw) www.deviantart.com/astra-planet...
Haumea Flyby
Deviantart.com image by Astra-Planetshine
deviantart.com
Yesterday we got two papers on direct imaging and characterization of Epsilon Indi A b, so I decided this is a good time to draw it again. It is now depicted to be much cloudier. #art #astronomy #space #planet #exoplanet #EpsilonIndi
Chara@astrochara.bsky.social · last yr.After working on worldbuilding this system with friends, I would like to present: Epsilon Indi A b. Quite a similar planet to 14 Herculis c, but apparently has methane detection (which doesn't mean the latter doesn't have it). #astronomy #space #art #planet #exoplanet #EpsilonIndi
Any Sydney-based astronomers here? A team at Andalucia is coordinating an occultation campaign for one of Jupiter's small (2-5km) irregular moons, #Kallichore (a candidate for an #ESAJuice flyby) that'll be passing in front of a star at ~12:20UT on March 18th. opop.obspm.fr/media/data/c...
anyways its inexplicably so funny to me how charon is basically an ariel clone. like, pluto went to þe kuiper belt store and couldnt afford a real ariel so it just bought a knockoff instead no seriously whats up wiþ u charon
So today the IAU officially renamed Charon's iconic north pole from "Mordor Macula" to "Neverland Regio"… Not sure why it's renamed now, even though "Mordor" has been in scientific use for over a decade. Everyone I've talked to hates the new name lmao. This'll take time getting used to…
