I don't follow much in this article but I do know from mapping the Hyades that it is an older nonspherical object in the process of disintegrating. arxiv.org/abs/2608.02814

The Bimodal Mass Ratio Distribution of the Hyades

The distribution of stellar mass ratios, q, in binary systems provides critical insights into the dynamical history and star-formation processes of open clusters. Here, I re-evaluate the recently publ...

arxiv.org

I should have said that I liked the film a lot. No it is not on a level with Apocalypse Now but nothing is. My daughter studied the original in ancient Greek and she said that the film reminded her of a lot of it. Yes, it is a modern adaptation with popular actors and that is why it is a huge hit.

Galaxy Map@galaxymap.bsky.social · 3d ago

Went to see The Odyssey with my daughter. I can see how some people see this as a sister film to Oppenheimer. Smart man leads a team to build a device (Trojan horse / Atomic bomb) to successfully win a war. Although widely praised, he is horrified by the brutal outcome and believes that the ...

Spain Offers $1.14 Billion To Get Thirty Meter Telescope Moved To Canary Islands https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/08/04/0040200/spain-offers-114-billion-to-get-thirty-meter-telescope-moved-to-canary-islands?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Spain Offers $1.14 Billion To Get Thirty Meter Telescope Moved To Canary Islands

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Behind the Black: In a new bid to get the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) to move from Hawaii, which has blocked its construction for more than a decade, the Spanish government has put together a $1.14 billion package that would not only pay for co...

science.slashdot.org

A while ago I turned my Gaia DR3 map into a Tolkienesque fantasy map, just for fun (link to zoomable version below). I'm thinking about hiring a professional fantasy map cartographer to do something similar (but better) for my Gaia DR4 Atlas of the Milky Way Kickstarter. gruze.org/dr3_fantasy/

Cosmic fire 🔥 Located 1,300 light-years away, the Flame Nebula, aka NGC 2024, is a spectacular star-forming region. See the bright bluish star towards the right? It's part of an iconic trio of stars. Discover which one here: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0949n/  🔭 #flashback

Always interesting to hear about new discoveries so close to the Sun. arxiv.org/abs/2607.28720

A New Sirius-like System at Only 21 Parsecs: An Elusive White Dwarf Companion to the Nearby K-dwarf HD 38230

White dwarfs are among the rarest and faintest stars found in the solar neighbourhood and are therefore persistently challenging to detect. Whereas the \textit{Gaia} mission has vastly expanded our kn...

arxiv.org

Went to see The Odyssey with my daughter. I can see how some people see this as a sister film to Oppenheimer. Smart man leads a team to build a device (Trojan horse / Atomic bomb) to successfully win a war. Although widely praised, he is horrified by the brutal outcome and believes that the ...

I am preparing a list of interesting objects to map as part of my Atlas of the Milky Way Kickstarter. Here's a recent solar twin catalog: cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/...

I love to collect words like violin/fiddle or parasol/umbrella that refer to the same object used in different contexts. My wife just pointed a verb pair that is a bit like those: tilt / list. If you say that an object is tilting you are describing a temporary condition. If it is listing it is ...

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 · 4d 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...

This is a beautiful galaxy but I find the description puzzling. NGC 5335 is not particularly flocculent and these sort of branching arms with spurs are quite common and may resemble at least parts of the Milky Way.

Astronomy Bot@astronomybot.bsky.social · 6d ago

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 5335 Image date: 23 April 2025, 16:00 The Hubble Space Telescope captured in exquisite detail a face-on view of a remarkable-looking galaxy. NGC 5335 is categorized as a flocculent spiral galaxy with patchy streamers of star formation across its disk. There is a strikin...

I just mapped the new WISE HII v 3.0 data set, and it does show somewhat more of a connection between the Perseus and Cygnus arms in the first quadrant. So stay tuned!

Hubble observed the Pistol Star in 1997, revealing an erupting star and the gas it expelled. The star is one of the brightest in our galaxy, but can only be seen in infrared because it is hidden behind great dust clouds at the core of the Milky Way: https://go.nasa.gov/4u6Sft7

Yikes! 😬 nltimes.nl/2026/07/30/r...

Rhine reaches lowest water level ever recorded at Dutch border

The Rhine River has officially dropped to its lowest water level ever recorded at the Dutch border entry point. The critical measuring point at Lobith, where the Rhine crosses from Germany into the Ne...

nltimes.nl

UK science is the latest victim of the AI bubble. The Labour party has transferred funding from real science like astronomy to AI research for fear of "falling behind". A shame that the AI bubble has not popped yet - the larger it gets, the more victims it claims, like a metastasizing cancer.

I'd like some advice. I have a sign up to show interest in my Atlas of the Milky Way Kickstarter, which I plan to launch later this year. The form has been up for a while but only 15 people have signed up. Should I give up? Or does anyone have promotion advice? kevinjardine.dev/signup #Astronomy

I've changed my profile icon to my new Milky Way image.

Shame that the Number One character was removed from the original Star Trek.

I've been skeptical of such sightings ever since Fomalhaut b turned out to be just a dust cloud. But maybe this new observation should tip the balance? I think I might wait a *little* longer.

ESO@eso.org · last wk.

The conclusion of a century-long quest 😲 Our VLT obtained firm evidence that Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star in the Orion constellation and one of the most famous stars in the night sky, is not alone! 🔭 🧪 1/4

Made another slight change to the analog image to make it fit the Milky Way model.

After yesterday's huge threads about my first quadrant map, I'll be quieter today. But here are some images based on the same data sets. First, a new model of the Milky Way with ring arms based on the same data sets.

If I overlay the spiral model I derived from the recent data sets I've been using over the famous Oort 1958 map of the Milky Way, I see what appears to be a pretty close match. I don't want to overemphasize the significance of that other than to point out that the golden age cartographers were ...

I've been working on the map of the Milky Way first quadrant I released today for quite a while and I used it previously to modify the Milky Way analog NGC 2336 to create this new image of the Milky Way.

This morning I released my most important map in years - a huge map of the first quadrant based on recent data sets. The original long thread explained the sources for the map. This thread looks at the map itself.

Galaxy Map@galaxymap.bsky.social · last wk.

Attempts to map the spiral structure in the Milky Way always seem to sink when they hit reefs in the first quadrant. So here is my map of the first quadrant based on several recent data sets. Apologies in advance for this lengthy thread.

Attempts to map the spiral structure in the Milky Way always seem to sink when they hit reefs in the first quadrant. So here is my map of the first quadrant based on several recent data sets. Apologies in advance for this lengthy thread.

I've been making maps of the Milky Way for about 30 years and largely avoided mapping large scale spiral structure because it seemed to be a cursed area of research with more arguments than agreements. But this year I'm going to try, for several reasons. One is the release of Gaia DR4 on 2 December.

Earlier this year I wrote an article about the golden age of galactic cartography, which ran approximately from 1950 to 1970. The age began with great optimism and many astronomers were convinced that radio telescopes would allow us to map the entire galaxy. kevinjardine.dev/blog/post-16/

The Phantom Arm

Can Gaia DR4 improve our maps of the inner galaxy?

kevinjardine.dev

Puzzled by this article. Despite what it says, Olympus is a mountain range, not a mountain. It has more than 50 peaks. Are they all part of the UNESCO heritage site? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Joy in Greece as Mount Olympus joins Unesco list of world heritage sites

Mythical home of the ancient Greek gods designated alongside the D-day landing beaches in Normandy

theguardian.com

Very good to see that the main science publication in the United States is being very clear what the stakes are. Science is owned by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a non-profit organization, which makes it less vulnerable to Trump-friendly buy outs.

Aaron Sojourner@aaronsojourner.org · 2w ago

Admirable clarity @science.org

The way Hank Green edits the videos on his personal channel tires me out but this video on how weird the stars we can see in our night sky are is, as always, insightful and well researched: youtu.be/YhwkaH1-S7Q?...

You Have Never Seen a Normal Star

YouTube video by Hank Green

youtu.be