Mareographic record (i.e. sea-level height) at Manzanillo on the Pacific coast of Mexico, for the past two days.
The arrival of the tsunami caused by the Kamchatka earthquake is very clear, and sea-level oscillations are still ongoing.
Sunspot numbers are in for June 2025, and weโve once again experienced the lowest sunspot numbers for 15 months! As more months pass, we can say with increasing confidence that we experienced solar maximum back in October 2024. โ๏ธ
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐๐บ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐๐ผ๐น๐๐๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ถ๐๐ฒ๐ ๐งODAY ๐ฎ๐ ๐ญ๐ฌ:๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฝ๐บ ๐๐ง โ the Sunโs northernmost standstill and the longest day of the year.
Ancient cultures built monuments to mark it & coined the word solstice to mean โSun stopped.โ
Weโre still watching. Still wondering.๐งช๐ญ
#solstice #astronomy #OurIslandUniverse
Reslience, the second iSpace (Japan) Hakuto-R lander,
made its deorbit burn on Jun 5 at about 1809 UTC but impacted the lunar surface at high speed at 1915 UTC near the target landing side in Mare Frigoris (60.5N 4.6W).
A large, transequatorial coronal hole is now directly facing Earth along with other smaller CHs. We may see a high-speed solar wind stream in the coming days. A minor (G1) storm watch was added beginning May 28th.
#heliophysics
๐จ New dwarf planet candidate: 2017 OF201 ๐จ
~700 km wide, now 90.5 AU from the Sun.
Orbit: a = 838 AU, q = 44.9 AU โ deep into the inner Oort Cloud. Possibly part of a hidden population totaling ~1% of Earthโs mass.
๐ Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.15806
#astronomy #dwarfplanet
My own plot of the final orbit, showing the Roskosmos estimate of the path between reentry and impact in purple. I guess that Kosmos-482 SA reentered somewhere along this track between India and the ocean south of Australia.
ESA reports K482SA reentered between 0604 UITC (seen by radar on pass over Europe) and 0732 UTC (not seen by European radars on the next orbit). Roskosmos reports that reentry was at 0624 UTC over the Indian Ocean, but with no details on how they conclude that.
Chart from The Economist showing the US box office revenue and IMDb ratings of films featuring the three main actors of Star Wars
This chart, which is unnecessarily harsh on the great @markhamillofficial.bsky.social by neglecting his voice work, redeems itself with its x- and y-axis icons
www.economist.com/graphic-deta...
The ground track for the predicted reentry window of the Kosmos 482 descent vehicle.
Window is currently 11 may 2025 06:50 UTC +/- 50 hours (@marcolangbroek.bsky.social). Still a lot of uncertainty.
May I tempt you with a mechanical watch?
No battery, no electronics, just gears and springs.
If it's an automatic, as long as you wear it you never even have to wind it.
One of the largest coronal holes observed by SDO is now facing Earth!
#heliophysics
Dance with Death, by Hieronymus Hess, 1841, ๐ธ via Vatican Media Pool
The moment has come to say goodbye to Gaia! ๐ฅน
What smugness? We're just top-tier power users enjoying the most advanced and morally superior operating system.
One of these things is not like the others
Near maximum eclipse.
This photo was released today by Intuitive Machines, seemingly taken by their Athena IM-2 mission lander.
The lander clearly tipped over, but otherwise looks OK. But it can't recharge, so is functionally dead.
As far as I know, this is the first photo ever taken from the lunar south polar region.
Today's update of the impact risk for 2024YR4 puts it as 268,000 +/- 207,000 (3ฯ) km. For the first time, the nominal closest approach distance is above 3ฯ.
Increasingly clear that this rock won't hit us.
The estimated impact probability of 2024YR4 has decreased significantly! It's currently at 0.36% according to JPL.
This is a strong indication that YR4 will not impact Earth in 2032, as the impact prob of non-impactors is expected to rise gradually (as it did in past weeks) and then fall suddenly.
New Scientist magazine interviewed me about the Space Library www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKXr...
Enceladus, by Cassini.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill (@kevinmgill.bsky.social)
No significant change today in #2024YR4 's chance of impacting the Earth in 2032 -- still 2.1%.
That's largely due to the asteroid being relatively close to the Moon during these few days, and thus being pretty much unobservable (it's so faint it gets lost in the Moon's glare).
Trump's America in an image ๐
Atom xkcd.com/3050
Estimated 2032 impact parameters for YR4. The nominal minimum distance has fluctuated a lot in the range ~10-270 thousand km, but the uncertainty has been steadily decreasing as more observations are added -- albeit at a diminishing rate.
Unclear whether we'll be able to know for sure by May.
A bold blue graphic titled โArticle 2โ from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. The text reads: โEveryone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. (โฆ)โ At the bottom, the logo of the Human Rights Index is displayed, featuring two raised fists symbolizing equality and justice.
Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. โ๏ธ๐
โก๏ธ Everyone has the same rights, no matter who you are or where youโre from.
#HumanRights #Equality
Not an image from the JWST though (don't know if that is what this account is about).
It's actually a composite mosaic of images taken in 1980 by the Viking 1 orbiter.
