Immortal Robert Burns of Ayr,
There's but few poets can with you compare;
Some of your poems and songs are very fine:
To "Mary in Heaven" is most sublime;
And there again in your "Cottar's Saturday Night,"
Your genius there does shine most bright,
As pure as the dew drops of night.
Just a reminder that Trump is selling Venezuelan oil and depositing the proceeds into a bank account in Qatar that is NOT under any control by the US government or Congress.
He's just stealing it. It really is that simple.
BFFs Nigel Farage and Donald Trump laughing together, in a gold-plated lift.
It'd be a real shame if this photo went viral again today, wouldn't it?
ITYM M1. HTH, HAND.
You mean that North Dakota has pristine dark skies with exceptional seeing?
I'm jealous. Why did you want to leave?
It is a fallacy that Hawking radiation comes from an event horizon. It comes from curved spacetime.
See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_e... where the temperature of the vacuum at the Earth's surface is given as 4e-20 K.
If not sited in Hawaii, the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (ORM) on La Palma is a possible candidate for the location of the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) @iacastrofisica.bsky.social
iac.es/en/outreach/... 🔭🌌🧪 #exoplanet
Both Germany and the UK have had leaders with degrees in chemistry
Angela Merkel has a PhD in quantum chemistry.
Margaret Thatcher had an Oxford BA (Oxford has idiosyncratic nomenclature) which included 9 months of research experience.
Questions:
1) Will a complete list be posted on-line?
2) Will international shipping be a possibility?
3) How will payment be made?
I ask 2) because I live in Europe. If PayPal is a possibility that will make life much easier for non-US customers.
Thanks,
Paul
Behind a paywall 8-(
As always, I forgot the 🔭 again. Doh!
A star field surrounding a line of seven images of Barnard's Star, each of which were taken one year apart from 2019 to 2025. Those images demonstrate that Barnard's Star is moving remarkably quickly against the background sky.
This stack shows the proper motion of Barnard's Star over the period 2019-25, or 5.96 years to be precise. My measurements give a proper motion of -0.603"/yr in RA and 10.503"/yr in Dec whereas Gaia DR3 has -0.80155 and 10.362394. Agreement is satisfactory IMO.
From Diana Solano-Oropeza @dsolanooropeza.bsky.social : Turns out there’s more than one way to “plate” a planet! 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/10/01/s...
Not sure a telescope is ideal for watching a meteor shower ...
Looking at the moon, star clusters, planets, double stars, sure.
I think he meant to write "Vega".
That may be true but here in Europe at least virtually all credit card transactions are made with chip&PIN and I don't believe they are especially sensitive to magnetic fields.
Computer disks on the other hand ...
No reason why we can't do both. Or all three if you regard orbital and Martian colonies as separate.
What is OU in this context? Open University? Oxford University? Something else?
I was a long-term member of OUAS --- Oxford University Astronomical Society --- but that was decades ago and it may have changed its name since then.
Sky & Telescope magazine are now charging to look at articles on their website. However this means I will no longer be posting any links to their site. A bit disappointed. I've enjoyed reading their articles and weekly sky guide. 🔭 🧪
A screenshot of the abstract of the paper, reading: The Moon is our future. It may seem like a chimera with a projected cost in excess of 100 billion$, and counting, dispensed on ARTEMIS with little to show to date. However it is the ideal site for the largest telescopes that we can dream about, at wavelengths spanning decimetric radio through optical to terahertz FIR. And it is these future telescopes that will penetrate the fundamental mysteries of the first hydrogen clouds, the first stars, the first galaxies, the first supermassive black holes, and the nearest habitable exoplanets. Nor does it stop there. Our lunar telescopes will take us back to the first months of the Universe, and even back to the first 10 second after the Big Bang when inflation most likely occurred. Our lunar telescopes will provide high resolution images of exoplanets that are nearby Earth-like 'twins' and provide an unrivalled attempt to answer the ultimate cosmic question of whether we are alone in the universe. Here I will set out my vision of the case for lunar astronomy over the next several decades. This paper was presented at Lemaitre2024, International Conference on Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and Space-Time Singularities (June 17-21, 2024, Castel Gandolfo, Specola Vaticana)
Cosmology: The Moon is our Future
The limits of cosmology, by Joseph Silk
arxiv.org/abs/2509.08066 🧪 #Cosmology
Behind a paywall. Is it available elsewhere?
Thanks to @slavkobogdanov.bsky.social for pointing me to this really cool 🔭 history paper! arxiv.org/abs/2509.04127
I hope everybody understands how f**king dangerous and terrifying this is.
Credit: @sandcrawler1990.bsky.social
This image speaks for itself...
Forgot the #astro
Many people don't much want to go to the US anyway. he dislike goes back a long way but the recent decision of USG to check every single visa holder for evidence of thoughtcrime on social media has only made things worse.
How to lose friends and influence people: www.bbc.com/news/article...
The Australasian Dark Sky Alliance have created a petition to get the Aust. Govt to create legislation that limits light pollution and preserve Australia's Dark skies. Important for human health, wildlife and #Astronomy!
Australians can sign here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...
🔭☄️
what a fantastic discovery !!!
🧪☄️🔭
