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Tom Megeath

@megadeath.bsky.social

Astronomer studying the birth of stars, rust belt academic, connoisseur of beer inspired acronyms, closet Dadaist, & child of immigrant.

368 Posts2068 Follower4167 Folgt
Ryleigh Davis@import-astrory.bsky.social · last wk.

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

Tom Megeath@megadeath.bsky.social · last wk.

I just read Wilson’s brutal review. I had a similar reaction to Interstellar. As an astronomer, I was expecting an ingenious script about time and relativity, instead I got angry Matt Damon. Maybe Nolan’s movies are best enjoyed with expectations set to blockbuster and critical faculties paused.

EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · last wk.

I wrote about the Nolan Odyssey for the LRB. I'll summarize some of my main points below, in case you don't feel like reading all that. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · last wk.

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.” 🔭🧪

Stephen Schwartz@atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 4w ago

Today in 1955, Bertrand Russell issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in London, calling upon every government on Earth to prevent a nuclear war by publicly renouncing war, abolishing thermonuclear weapons, and pursuing “peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

A black and white photograph of mathematician, philosopher, and logician Bertrand Russell standing in front of a desk before a crowd of journalists and reading the Russell-Einstein manifesto at a press conference in London on July 9, 1955.
Sean Carroll@seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 4w ago

Students have long been given the idea that the goal of taking classes is to get good grades, learning is just a side effect. Now it’s not even a side effect.

Mike Boylan-Kolchin@mbkplus.bsky.social · 4w ago

This is so depressing. The models have incredible power and good use cases but I’m becoming more convinced we need to structure assessments around not being able to use LLMs. They are good for doing certain tasks, not knowledge or understanding, and we are not in the business of task mastering.

phoenixrising@mmcarthur.bsky.social · last mo.

Joan Miró : Ciphers and Constellations, in Love with a Woman, 1941 Opaque watercolor with watercolor washes on ivory, rough textured wove paper. 45.9 × 38 cm | 18-1/8 × 15 in The Art Institute of Chicago Further description in the alt text 👇

In January 1940, Miro began a series of 23 works on paper that later became known as The Constellations, of which this is an example. Composed on identically sized sheets of paper over 21 months, this remarkably poetic suite was created from January 1940 to September 1941, under the duress of World War II, when Miró and his family moved from France to his native Spain to avoid the advance of the Nazis. About the “Constellations” he stated: “If the interplay of lines and colors does not expose the inner drama of the creator, then it is nothing more than bourgeois entertainment. The forms expressed by an individual who is part of society must reveal the movement of a soul trying to escape the reality of the present… . in order to approach new realities, to offer men the possibility of rising above the present.” Miró chose a stiff, textured watercolor paper for the series, and began each sheet by sanding the surface, then rubbing his freshly cleaned oil paint brushes over the paper, sometimes blending it with thinned gouache so that the two incompatible liquids created diaphanous, cloud-like pools. In these suggestive fields, he constructed his visual story, covering the sheet with hourglass shapes and a multitude of forms suggesting crescents, eyes, stars, and triangles, linked by thin black lines to evoke an imaginary celestial world. Each picture took about a month to complete, demonstrating his intense engagement with the images. Miró titled the works as if each were a poem, and the background suggests night and day, alternately, evoking imaginary atmospheres, and characters in space.
Matthew Kenworthy@mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is absolutely astonishing - it's rare in astronomy to see so much change on a human timescale, but this really shows how dynamic the gas and dust around a young star can be. Seeing the shadows from the inner regions cast out onto the outer spiral arms, amazing!

ESO@eso.org · 2mo ago

Taken with our VLT over a period of four years, these images show the rotating disc of gas & dust around the young star AB Aurigae. Features like “twists” signal the places where #exoplanets could be forming 🪐 More: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/potw2622a/ 🔭 🧪 📹 ESO/A. Boccaletti et al.

M.J. Crockett@mjcrockett.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Entering the grand halls of the NAS I felt a potent mixture of awe and fury. Science is so amazing. Not just for its material discoveries, but also for what it reveals about human values and our ability to know the world *together*. Shame on everyone who is complicit in this crisis. >>

Kevin M. Gill@kevinmgill.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Wait, is that the Moon out beyond the Moon? And is the ISS out in lunar orbit or something?! Man, fire your AI provider... bsky.app/profile/redd...

Space@redditspaceviewes.bsky.social · 4mo ago

NASA’s Artemis II Reveals the Basin in Full For the very first time, the mysterious Orientale Basin has been fully photographed. Thanks to Artemis II, humanity now sees the Moon in unprecedented detail, reminding us of the endless wonders beyond Earth. 🛰️

Space Telescope Science Institute@stsci.edu · 3mo ago

Well, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes! 😍 Our beloved Hubble appears in this amazing image from one of Vantor's WorldView Legion satellites. It was 36 years ago today that Hubble was launched in the bay of the Space Shuttle Discovery from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Vantor.

A detailed image of the Hubble Space Telescope floating in space, showing its solar panels and cylindrical body in space.
Dr. Lucky Tran@luckytran.com · 4mo ago

Today is a good day to remember that Carl Sagan was as outspoken about the dangers of war and nuclear weapons as he was an advocate of space exploration.

Ele Willoughby@minouette.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This is one of a series of prints of Opabinia, 🧪🐡 an extinct prehistoric creatures which lived during the Cambrian geological time period, carved by hand in linoleum, printed onto lovely white paper with bark inclusions and collaged with Japanese papers in different colours and patterns, 🧵

As described this is my linocut print in blue in on white speckled washi paper of the segmented prehistoric animal Opabinia, with its claw-like proboscis and five eyes on stalks, each segment on a different colourful collaged paper.
Stephen Schwartz@atomicanalyst.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Tonight in 1983 in the Oval Office, President Ronald Reagan called on “the scientific community in our country” to develop a defensive shield to render strategic nuclear ballistic missiles “impotent and obsolete.” More than $494 billion later (fiscal year 2026 dollars), his dream remains just that.

A screenshot from a color video of President Ronald Reagan speaking to the American public from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office on this day in 1983.
András Gáspár@andrasgaspar.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Looking at the AAS jobregister lately, it seemed to me that there are less positions available in all categories than in previous years. Wanting to quantify, I used the wayback machine to check on the number of postings in the January-March window and it is quite depressing.

A Table showing the number of positions posted at AAS job-registed for various categories.
Corey S. Powell@coreyspowell.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I keep seeing versions of this post, which imply a bizarre misunderstanding of how we know the world. Do people really imagine that if we'd never observed galaxies or neutrinos or exoplanets or the cosmic microwave background, we could have *imagined* these things & that would be just as real? 🧪

Absurd claim: "Elon Musk says physics has stagnated and AI could overtake scientific research. He says progress has relied on expensive hardware like colliders and telescopes, that slows discovery."
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I talked to a lead NSF program officer (PO) who’s considering quitting because everything’s terrible. This is part of the apocalypse. POs don’t just give out money. They keep up with their scientific field and everyone in it to ensure that there’s balance in who and what’s funded. It’s bad news.