Now on @sciam.bsky.social: Behold! These are the sharpest images of the sun's surface ever obtained, and they reveal something *wild*: never-before-seen whirlpools of plasma called Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities that are fundamental to solar energy flow. www.scientificamerican.com/article/spec...

Spectacular images reveal never-before-seen whirlpools on the sun

Strange whirlpools of plasma seen in the sharpest images ever captured of our star help explain the deep origins of Earth-threatening space weather and more

scientificamerican.com

These two images aren't much to look at, but I wanted to point out that Uranus and Neptune really don't look very different. It's been an accident and miscommunication/misinterpretation by the press during VGR2 flybys that Uranus was noticeably green and Neptune was dark blue. flic.kr/p/J8aWsJ

Ice Giants in September 2015

Approximately natural color Hubble telescope views of Uranus (left) and Neptune. The same WFC3 filter combinations (F657N, F547M and F467M) were processed in an identical manner, retaining the relativ...

flic.kr

Considering that the space junk hitting the Moon from today was apparently undetectable, I propose we send a bigger junk on lunar intercept trajectory. Better if it hits the night side!!!

Shuang Yang—Chang’e 7 will land near the Moon’s south pole Shackleton crater later this year and deploy (via tether) a seismometer that is planned to survive for 8 years. This might be the first node of a long-lived *international* geophysical network! #AOGS2026

Ralph Lorenz—Huygens showed that Titan can be wet, even at low latitudes. As Dragonfly flies across Titan, the odds it’ll land in mud are low (<1%), and if so, the stickiness will be again to sticky wheat dough (and Dragonfly could still takeoff). #AOGS2026

The Solar System has ten planetary bodies with a global collisional atmosphere, six of whom are solid: the inner, oxidized Venus, Earth, Mars, and the outer, reduced Titan, Triton, and Pluto. More info in ALT! #ACelestialJournal #art #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #moon #dwarfplanet #天体擬人化

2nd Star, planetary scientist #art #oc

The Solar System has ten planetary bodies with a global collisional atmosphere, six of whom are solid: the inner, oxidized Venus, Earth, Mars, and the outer, reduced Titan, Triton, and Pluto. More info in ALT! #ACelestialJournal #art #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #moon #dwarfplanet #天体擬人化

the crazy thing about doing high level statistics is learning how few facts there are, and also how many. and none of it means anything unless you are quite committed to asking the right question, the right way, and connecting findings to questions. and that was with stuff that came measurable!

🚨URGENT ADVOCACY ACTION - We can pause OMB's harmful rewrite of grant rules that insert political appointees into the funding process, but only if enough of us speak up THIS WEEK. 🚨 This is our best shot before senators leave for August recess. Send your letter: www.planetary.org/advocacy-act...

Advocacy Action Center

The Planetary Society is organizing a new space constituency that is educated, empowered, and loud.

planetary.org

When and how did Earth get its oxygen? The answer used to seem simple...but the more we learn, the more complicated it looks. The path to breathable air may have been twisted by shifting continents & runaway glaciers. 🧪🔭 www.science.org/content/arti...

One thing I’m positive of is 26Al was uniformly distributed across the solar system at its birth. No heterogeneities, no injection from supernovae or late streamers. See my four 2023 works, including the PP7 book chapter. If an asteroid failed to melt, it formed too late and/or with too much ice.

In the end it is the Labour government who is responsible for this decision. The people who they have appointed are clearly not in sync with the UK scientific community. They should be told to rethink or be replaced.

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 5d ago

"There are shades of the departed Starmer government in this saga: @ukri.org wants to tell a big story about science funding going up, but instead is mired in a row over a fairly minor sum.... One does not have to be an astronomer to know that optics matter." 👌🔭 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

天体擬人化　OC

it's actually sad as hell to use AI for research when research is the fun part. you can just email people and call them on the phone and ask them questions about the thing that they have expertise in. you can read documents & learn cool shit. ok now i'm just talking about how being a reporter is fun

Hand clap for the joke, standing ovation for one of the most significant radio telescope sites in the World.

Jodrell Bank@jodrellbank.bsky.social · 5d ago

Jodrell Bank has inspired discovery, advanced our understanding of the Universe and captured the imagination of people across the world. Today, its future is at risk. Your support can help ensure Jodrell Bank continues to play a vital role in science donate.manchester.ac.uk/p/jodrellbank/

Back when I took structural as an undergrad, my prof literally swerved the van off the road at this cut and shouted "it's like a wet f***ing dream" (from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moab_Fa...)

Hubble has conducted two gigantic surveys that combined to image about two-thirds of the Andromeda’s disk. Using that data, astronomers measured 200 million individual stars to tease out the history of star formation in our neighboring galaxy. (1/6) 🧵 🔭

New by me for Sky & Telescope: Jupiter's moon Io is surpisingly fluffy. Also, it's fun to get data from a new (to Io) kind of instrument at a previously studied world! skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

Jupiter’s Moon Io is Surprisingly Fluffy

Ash from countless volcanic eruptions on Jupiter's moon Io have likely built up the moon's porous surface.

skyandtelescope.org

In May 2022, I discovered a planet candidate via Planet Hunters TESS on @zooniverse.bsky.social . Today it is officially confirmed as TOI-5628 Ab, and our paper published in ApJL. I am grateful to Dr. Tianjun Gan for inviting me as a co-author. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... 1/9 🔭 🧪 #exoplanet

先ほど、はやぶさ2によるトリフネのフライバイの結果、推定サイズは840m×340mと発表されました。 2024年、私たちがわずか1地点の掩蔽観測をDOUSHITEで解析して得た840m×310mと驚くほど一致しています。 地上一点の観測から小惑星の形を高精度で推定できることが、探査機の直接観測で実証されました。

🔭 New paper day! 🪐 This time from Merle Schrader, a PhD student in the brown dwarf group at Trinity College Dublin. Today, they're publishing a fresh look at SIMP-0136, using principal component analysis, identifying the mechanisms driving its atmospheric variability. arxiv.org/abs/2607.26182

The JWST weather report: Unravelling the atmospheric variability of isolated worlds using principal component analysis

Brown dwarf variability directly probes atmospheric dynamics beyond the Solar System, and recent JWST time-resolved spectroscopy has opened a new window into these processes. Principal component analy...

arxiv.org

My new paper is out in Science Advances! Neptune's inner moons preserve clay minerals from the deep interiors of ancient icy worlds, exposed by Triton's catastrophic arrival. Here's the story and what it tells us about the violent history of the Neptunian system. 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Neptune’s inner moons and rings are exposed icy body interiors

Triton’s destructive wake exposed clay-like minerals from within ancient icy worlds, now reaccreted as Neptune’s inner moons.

science.org

Would love to check what forms of carbonaceous materials are present in these moons. I’d love to learn how those materials behave when a small icy planet differentiates.

AAS Press Office@press.aas.org · last wk.

California Institute of Technology: Neptune's Inner Moons May Be Shattered Remains of Ancient Icy Worlds www.caltech.edu/about/news/n...

Ant Wormhole Experiment Place an ant nest on a white grid space. Two black tiles exist; if the tile is stepped on by an ant, it immediately switches place with another tile, where a food item is nearby.

Sarita P, well-known influencer on the Jovian internet famous for her travel vlogs to rarely-visited places, records her most dangerous vlog yet; setting foot on Jupiter's moon Io. Down here the radiation kills in mere hours, constraining Sarita's time on the surface to only a few short minutes.

No longer content with pillaging intellectual work and dismembering our environment (already critically weakened), AI companies are now hellbent on destroying books galore including rare editions. Shut down these nefarious enterprises already.

AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books

If you have retreated to physical books because the internet is too full of AI slop, bad news — now they’re shredding the books to feed their AI slop machines.

news.com.au

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

Build a zen garden on Mercury? Yes No