Webb telescope finds signs of ancient disaster for Neptune's moons reut.rs/4vXChSZ

Webb telescope finds signs of ancient disaster for Neptune's moons

New observations of some of Neptune's moons and rings are providing evidence of a catastrophe that occurred billions of years ago around the solar system's outermost planet in which a Pluto-sized interloper ​caused a celestial demolition derby.

reut.rs

Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of Caltech researchers has observed Neptune's rings and three of those moons—Larissa, Galatea, and Proteus—and found that their composition is unique among outer solar system bodies. www.caltech.edu/about/news/n...

Neptune's Inner Moons May Be Shattered Remains of Ancient Icy Worlds

New findings from Caltech researchers suggest Neptune's smallest satellites formed from the shattered remains of an original moon system that was destroyed when Triton was captured by Neptune's…

caltech.edu

I'm absolutely devastated for colleagues at Jodrell Bank who found out this morning that funding for the UK's e-MERLIN radio telescope array will be terminated. This is a short-sighted move, to save a tiny fraction of the overall UK science budget. #SaveJodrellBank 🔭🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands

Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.

bbc.co.uk

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 3w ago

“What will the Lovell Telescope discover/enable 20 yrs from now? I can’t tell you, and that’s the point. It will either be something extraordinary that none of us can yet predict, or we will defund it and leave Cheshire with a rusting monument to unfulfilled potential and discoveries never made.” 🔭🧪

Neptune’s inner moons are unlike anything in the outer solar system. We might know why and we can blame a captured dwarf planet! 🔭 www.iflscience.com/neptunes-inn...

Neptune’s Inner Moons And Rings Might Be Left Over From A Cosmic Game Of Marbles Caused By The Capture Of Triton

Evidence suggests the giant planet captured its largest moon, then things went sideways.

iflscience.com

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

Neptune's Inner Moons May Be Shattered Remains of Ancient Icy Worlds

New findings from Caltech researchers suggest Neptune's smallest satellites formed from the shattered remains of an original moon system that was destroyed when Triton was captured by Neptune's gravit...

caltech.edu

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

Sources: apnews.com/live/trump-i... www.planetary.org/space-policy...

This is a real image. Taken by Voyager 1 in 1979, the icy moon Europa floats above Jupiter's swirling Red Spot maelstrom. The shadow is from Io, another of Jupiter's large inner moons, which is out of frame. Oh to see this view with my own eyes (safely shielded from the lethal radiation fields)

❗This rule would end peer review as we know it at NASA. For 80 years, experts decided which federal research gets funded based on merit. A new OMB rule would give politicians final say instead. But this isn’t over yet. Comment by July 13: www.planetary.org/ombgrantrules

Advocacy Action Center

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

planetary.org

Excited at our paper just out in PNAS. We used JWST to detect frozen deuterated water ("heavy water") on the moons of Uranus. There is **much more** on the moons than on Uranus itself, showing that Uranus and the moons formed from separate reservoirs of water. Fun lab work in the supplement, too.🔭🪐

Deuterated water and the formation of the satellites of Uranus | PNAS

The satellites of Uranus orbit in a low-eccentricity, equatorial plane that is tilted by 98° relative to the solar system—a geometry that mirrors U...

pnas.org

@bowlerhatscience.org on the recent paper on Neptune's moon Nereid by Belyakov @import-astrory.bsky.social @plutokiller.com & co. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Nereid as a regular satellite of Neptune

James Webb Space Telescope observations suggest Nereid is Neptune’s sole intact original moon, a survivor of past cataclysms.

science.org

Eos@eos.org · last mo.

Lunar theft, violent encounters, all those space rocks breaking and entering. . .“The outer solar system is like a crime scene,” says @megschwamb.bsky.social. eos.org/articles/odd...

1) Open this image up 2) Find the small, blue feature in the very middle Congratulations, you've spotted the Perseverance rover on Mars, photographed from orbit! 3) Trace the rover tracks as they wend their way across the surface

There’s a new proposed rule that can cancel a grant at any time and all new grants have to be approved by political appointees. Submit a comment here and let them know how catastrophic this would be for US Science. www.regulations.gov/document/OMB...

Some light Friday afternoon reading - @caltechipac.bsky.social wrote a nice piece on Scaling K2, the K2 exoplanet demographics collab that I lead, and that @kevinkhu.bsky.social wrote both the first and latest papers for! (Wherein I confess to the most unoriginal astronomer hobby.)

Finding Patterns in Planets: Researchers Explore the Demographics of Alien Worlds in K2 Data

The Kepler mission and its follow-on K2 discovered thousands of exoplanets around different types of stars, and new work reveals broader trends in the planetary populations of the Milky Way.

ipac.caltech.edu

So thrilled to see this out today and proud to be part of it! 🎉JWST spectroscopy + N-body sims pointing to Nereid as the last survivor of Neptune's original moon system. Huge congrats to @matt-belyakov.bsky.social who led this work! MOONPOCALYPSE WAS REAL 🪐🔱💥🔭

Lisa Grossman@astrolisa.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I really enjoyed putting "ancient moonpocalypse" in a headline.🧪🔭🪐 www.sciencenews.org/article/nept...

Just before finishing my PhD and leaving Caltech in April, I had the opportunity to give this year’s Everhart Lecture. The recording is now online! If you’re interested, you can watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=61bu...

A Planetary Cold Case: Using JWST to Uncover the Catastrophic History of Neptune’s Moons

YouTube video by caltech

youtube.com

Do you know of an undergrad who would be a good fit for icy moons or geophysics research? If so, encourage them to apply here: stemgateway.nasa.gov/s/course-off...

M. Ryleigh Davis, Samantha K. Trumbo, Michael E. Brown, Matthew Belyakov: Spectroscopic Mapping of Callisto with HST/STIS and Implications for its Surface Composition https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00151 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.00151 https://arxiv.org/html/2506.00151

"You’re punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don’t just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on.” www.scientificamerican.com/article/prop...

This Budget Plan Would Devastate U.S. Space Science

Scientists are rallying to reverse ruinous proposed cuts to both NASA and the National Science Foundation

scientificamerican.com

Briefly wandered over to The Other Place to gauge the response to the NASA budget devastation to encounter a bunch of gleeful 'we spend too much money, so this is great.' TO BE, ONCE AGAIN, PERFECTLY CLEAR, THE BUDGET REQUEST MOVES ALL THIS MONEY TO DEFENSE. IT SPENDS IT. NO MONEY IS SAVED.

The NASA planetary science fleet chart if the president’s budget is enacted.