🔭 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

So excited to bring the ExoClimes conference series to Asia where we have a load of amazing Exoplaneteers. See you in Tokyo next summer!

ExoClimesVIII@exoclimesviii.bsky.social · last wk.

🔈Save the date! ExoClimes VIII will take place at the Institute of Science Tokyo, from 11–16 July 2027. The conference will bring together the international community studying planetary climates, atmospheres, and habitability🌏 Stay tuned for more updates!  exoclimes.org

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

#OTD 50 years ago, the Viking 1 orbiter took one of the most famous Mars images ever. www.iflscience.com/the-face-on-...

The "Face On Mars" At 50: The Face That Launched A Thousand Conspiracies

Viking 1 landed on Mars 50 years ago and snapped what would become one of the most famous space images of all time.

iflscience.com

I’d like to make it clear for all the people following me what the sheer gravity of the news is. Without this facility we can’t ensure constant communication with spacecraft beyond Earth orbit. If this facility is off-line, the Artemis program cannot send a crew to the Moon.

Andy Scollick@andyscollick.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex at Robledo de Chavela municipality in the Community of Madrid, Spain on fire. Burgohondo wildfire. 📷 via Infues Avila

Talk about a cosmic glow-up✨📸 This progression of images of galaxy group RSCG 55 shows the evolution of ground-based sky surveys spanning more than three decades🤯, ending with NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's view. 🔭🧪

NASA's Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex under smoke and flames from the forest fires in Spain. 24 July 2026.

🔭 !!!!!!

Meg Schwamb@megschwamb.bsky.social · 2w ago

Looks like the SOAR webcams are online - gives a peek of what Cerro Pachón is looking like after the major snow storm. I think that's the SOAR in front, then Gemini South behind it, and to the right in the far distance is Rubin Observatory. www.ctio.noirlab.edu/~soarcam/out...

Oh crap, NASA Madrid DSN station, 1/3 of our capacity to communicate with spacecraft at the Moon and beyond.

Andy Scollick@andyscollick.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex at Robledo de Chavela municipality in the Community of Madrid, Spain on fire. Burgohondo wildfire. 📷 via Infues Avila

15. I keep coming back to this line. It is willful misrepresentation of our federal funding agencies' mission beyond discovery: developing that R&D workforce (and a pipeline of ideas) that flow into the private sector so beloved to our author. We employ trainEES because trainING is what we do.

Who decided it's Grabby Satellite Summer? This is a theme we were not prepared for. With India's Cosmoserve Space launching the Embrace mission, Katalyst Space launching the LINK Swift Reboost Mission, & SpaceLogistics/Northrop Grumman launching the Mission Robotic Vehicle-1, orbit is grabby grabby

What are YOU doing Wednesday August 5th?!? Do you wanna meet a cool author and get their fabulous new book? You’re in luck! @toomanyspectra.bsky.social has a launch event for ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Starships’:

BOOK LAUNCH: Cloudy with a Chance of Starships

Join us at the Bureau for the launch of Seven Rasmussen's new book, CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF STARSHIPS

eventbrite.com

Given how susceptible academics are to it, I cannot think of a clearer example of a scholarly jingle-jangle fallacy than philosophers on concepts en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle-...

Remis Ramos@remisramos.bsky.social · 2w ago

Philosophers interested in Concepts™: We all can agree that a theory of Conceptsᴬ (qua abstract mental representations) and a theory of Conceptsᴮ [qua abstract ideas in discourse/culture] are about *different things*, and they should satisfy an only partially overlapping list of desiderata, right?

Very cool revision of a solar abundance. But I’m not singing “Re, a drop of silver sun.”

Linn Boldt-Christmas@nplinnspace.bsky.social · 2w ago

🔭 Did you know that there is *silver* in the Sun? If yes: did you know we JUST found out there’s 55% more than previously thought?! +0.19 dex from ref values, which is a LOT! The culprit? (Scooby-Doo villain reveal) As always, those darn meddling 3D non-LTE effects!!! 👻 Press release & paper ⬇️

🔭 Did you know that there is *silver* in the Sun? If yes: did you know we JUST found out there’s 55% more than previously thought?! +0.19 dex from ref values, which is a LOT! The culprit? (Scooby-Doo villain reveal) As always, those darn meddling 3D non-LTE effects!!! 👻 Press release & paper ⬇️

The Sun contains more silver than previously estimated – Uppsala University

uu.se

"Typical spacecraft operators today, relying upon free-to-operator public SSA data and lax collision probability action thresholds, are mitigating less than 10% of collision risk, according to Oltrogge" www.kratosspace.com/constellatio...

The Growing Gap Between Orbital Data Collection and Data Confidence

As orbital activity accelerates, the challenge for space situational awareness is shifting from collecting more data to ensuring its accuracy, interoperability and trustworthiness through advanced dat...

kratosspace.com

In Cloudy with a Chance of Starships, @toomanyspectra.bsky.social takes readers on an irreverent expedition through the world of #astrobiology, using as a guide the most important equation in science since E=mc2. Out Aug 4 (29 Sep UK pub). Preorder yours: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

TIL astronomers are using #JWST and MIRI to search for Dyson spheres - this paper dropped on the arXiv last week arxiv.org/abs/2607.09460 (the title of the program was a much more modest "Anomalous infrared fluxes of M dwarfs") 🔭

Project Hephaistos -- IV. James Webb Space Telescope Observations of Two Dyson Sphere Candidates

We report on JWST/MIRI imaging and spectroscopy of two M-dwarf stars previously singled out by project Hephaistos as potential Dyson-sphere candidates (their candidates D and E) due to the presence of...

arxiv.org

“England’s green and pleasant land” becoming “England’s brown and scorched land” — effects of a long-lived heatwave and little rainfall on vegetation in England evident in these images from NOAA-20 today (left) and 18 July 2024 (right) during closer to average conditions.

Astronomers discover 1st atmosphere around a rocky Earth-like planet in the habitable zone www.space.com/astronomy/ex...

Astronomers discover 1st atmosphere around a rocky Earth-like planet in the habitable zone

"It's in the habitable zone, which is super exciting for astrobiology and habitability and searching for life."

space.com

📢 Join my group at the @unibe.ch as a PhD student in #planetSci. Work on how impacts and sublimation shape comets and other icy bodies using experiments and numerical modelling. 📆 Start Date: Jan. 2027 or by arrangement ⏳ Apply by 30 Sept 2026: jobs.unibe.ch/job-vacancie...

#PPOD: As of June 23, 2026, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has spent an incredible 17 years orbiting the Moon, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) has been hard at work ever since. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬 #planetaryscience

Following the formal adoption of the ARRAKIHS mission last month, @esa.int is now recruiting a Project Scientist for the mission. Check out details and apply! 🔭https://jobs.esa.int/job/Noordwijk-Project-Scientist/1414232033/

Project Scientist

Project Scientist

jobs.esa.int

"Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite That Struck New Jersey home" -- awesome work by the homeowner to glove up and put the fragments that came through the roof into glass jars! It's a CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite, only the second observed fall of its kind www.seti.org/news/alien-w...

Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite

seti.org

Hide-and-seek champion award goes to the newly discovered beta Pic d! 🏆 Please welcome the newest member of the exoplanet zoo, and be kind, it’s a little shy, it’s been hiding in direct imaging data for over a decade!

ESO@eso.org · 3w ago

Ten years of hide-and-seek! 🫣 Astronomers used our VLT to find a new #exoplanet orbiting the famous star Beta Pictoris — hiding in archival ESO observations spanning over a decade! And it's shyer than any exoplanet we've imaged before. 🔭 🧪 1/3 📷 ESO/B. Sutlieff, M. Bonse et al.

Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born #OTD in 1943. As a Cambridge grad student in 1967, she discovered an entirely new type of celestial object: Pulsars! In 1974 the Nobel was given to her advisor; she was left off. 🧪 👩‍🔬 🔭 Photo: National Science & Media Museum

Hi #exoplanets folks, I’m attending the Expanding Horizons conference @eso.org this week (thinking about the facility post-ELT… terrifying, I know 😅). One thing that came up is that relatively few early-career astronomers submitted (co-authored) white papers for the process. next.eso.org 1/3

Expanding Horizons

next.eso.org

Upcoming/recent PhD grads working in (exo)planetary astronomy: 🪐🔭Applications are open for the 51 Peg b Fellowship, & Carnegie Science is a host institution! 🪐 🔭 Please don't hesitate to reach out if you are interested in applying. I can speak to both campuses (EPL & OBS) & the application process.

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)