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Scott Kardel aka Palomar Skies

@palomarskies.bsky.social

Associate professor of astronomy at Palomar College, user of smart telescopes. 🔭 Blog: http://visiblesuns.blogspot.com/

3558 Posts4227 Follower834 Folgt
James Tuttle Keane@jtuttlekeane.bsky.social · 10h ago

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

A photograph of my notebook showing a sketch of Shuang Yang (Chinese Academy of Science) talk at AOGS. It shows a low, oblique shot of the Chang’e 7 lander, landed on the Moon, as it lowers its seismometers (SP + VBB) to the surface of the Moon from the bottom of the lander. The seismometer will survive up to 8 years through use of an RHU.
Sarah Tuttle@niais.bsky.social · 2d ago

This is truly disgusting. We don't participate in higher education for job training. It is crucial for a vital society that we have people throughout our communities who are educated in music, religious studies, history, gender studies, and philosophy amongst many.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

Daniel Swain@weatherwest.bsky.social · last wk.

New post out on Weather West on the upcoming intense, double-peaked heatwave event in the Pacific Southwest. What are the (indirect) links to Hurricane Genevieve? (Substantial.) And also: will California see an uptick in wildfire activity? (Probably yes.)

Building Western ridge will bring double-peaked Southwest U.S. heatwave into August, with elevated humidity persisting in SoCal due to very warm ocean - Weather West

July 28, 2026 - Daniel Swain - Continued ocean warming brings increasingly warm and humid conditions to coastal SoCal In recent weeks, the Pacific Ocean along the immediate Pacific Coast has continued to warm. Earlier this year, I mentioned that this was not yet due to El Niño because...well, El Niño had not developed yet (and was, instead, related to other patterns #

weatherwest.com

Robert McNees@mcnees.bsky.social · 2w ago

Astronomer Vera Rubin was born #OTD in 1928. Her work on galactic rotation curves became one of the main pieces of evidence for the existence of dark matter and she deserved a Nobel Prize for it. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️ 👩‍🔬 Image: Vassar College / Emilio Segrè Visual Archives

Black and white photo of a young Vera Rubin – likely in her teens or twenties – looking through the eyepiece of a long telescope. She wears a blouse or dress with short sleeves and a grid print. Her wavy hair is shoulder length, and there is a wall behind her composed of two-by-fours and wood boards. Her right hand touches the eyepiece, and her left hand is turning a small adjustment knob on the side of the telescope.
Ele Willoughby@minouette.bsky.social · 2w ago

Happy birthday to #astronomer Vera Rubin (neé Cooper, ‘28-‘16) & her discovery that angular motion of galaxies deviates from predictions, 1st evidence for dark matter, now known as 5x as common as matter & the stuff which dictates dynamics of galaxies & evolution of our universe! 👩🏼‍🔬🔭🧪🐡 #histsci 🧵

My linocut portrait of astronomer Vera Rubin with short hair, glasses and resting her face in her hand in burgundy on a background of outer space with stars and galaxies in black with blue and pink splotches to mimic how dust bends light in space. At the base of the print is a large spiral galaxy with a plot of orbital velocity versus distance going out from its centre (so the distance axis is indeed distance from centre). There are two lines labelled “observed” which goes up from the origin and then is a pretty flat wavy line all the way across. This line marks the bottom of Rubin. Below it is a wide empty gap of visible white paper down to the second line labelled “predicted”. The Predicted line goes up from the origin to a peak where it diverges from the observed and falls smoothly back down in a gentle curve.
Paul Byrne@theplanetaryguy.com · 2w ago

The U.S. Secretary of Defense just stated that—so far—the war with Iran has cost $37.5 billion dollars. That's since February. That same amount is how much the United States spent on planetary science from FY2013 through FY2026 inclusive. Thirteen years of planetary science or five months of war.

The Curiosity rover on Mars. At about $2.6 billion, it buys you about ten days of Iran war.
Scott Kardel aka Palomar Skies@palomarskies.bsky.social · 2w ago

This fall I will have a blind student enrolled in my community college physical science class, which covers low level physics and chemistry. Does anyone know of any good sources in Braille for things like periodic tables? So far I am less than impressed by what I have found online.