Just for fun, let me tell you about somebody you've probably never heard of, but who was once one of the most famous people in England, a national hero, a disgraced fraudster, and an astonishingly accomplished piratical maniac.
He led quite a life. (1/53)
As forecast it was a bust from Sydney, solid grey clouds and showers all day, night & week (photo from the office). 😢 Classic astronomy event weather!
Any Sydney-based astronomers here? A team at Andalucia is coordinating an occultation campaign for one of Jupiter's small (2-5km) irregular moons, #Kallichore (a candidate for an #ESAJuice flyby) that'll be passing in front of a star at ~12:20UT on March 18th.
opop.obspm.fr/media/data/c...
I'm just south of the path, but the cloud cover forecast (though still 6 days out) is not at all promising for the east coast - easterly winds and extensive cloud. Fingers crossed it improves...
Day one of January Cricketpalooza - a net session with @deep-twilight.bsky.social, good to roll the arm over a bit.
Want to see the aurora? Tonight might be the night!
There have been a bunch of coronal mass ejections (big flares of plasma) from the Sun that are all arriving at Earth today and tonight.
theconversation.com/aurora-likel...
Submit them to Aurorasaurus!!! They're an NSF funded project out of University of New Mexico that takes crowdsourced aurora observations for research purposes:
www.aurorasaurus.org
YES! THIS on GenAI!
Please read this absolutely splendid piece of writing that had me cheering, a little bit weepy, and writing in the margins:
"An extraordinary amount of money is spent by the AI industry to ensure that acquiescence is the only plausible response. But marketing is not destiny."
My social media manager for this one is Helen, but I'm pretty chuffed to win the Solar System category at the Malins for the third time in the last five years (move over Brisbane Lions, I'm doing back-to-back wins too 🤣). Congrats to the other winners and finalists too, some great images again
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪
Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students.
I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:
Three galaxies, aurora, mountains and clouds
A timelapse from a recent trip to Glenorchy, NZ - beautiful dark skies and plenty to look at, with clouds bubbling off the Humboldt Range, broken enough to see the southern lights below the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. EOS6Dii, 228 frames, 20s each
A great summary of the start of the #wncl cricket season by @crystallised-cricket.com . Who will be the breakout stars of 2025-26? I'm looking forward to finding out!
Two comets and Mars, 21st Sept
C/2025 R2 (SWAN) is keeping pace with Mars, and fainter C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) is descending towards the Sun. Processing was interesting, correcting for three moving objects against the twilight starfield. Tonight, the Moon joins the party!
EOS 6Dii, 35x1min, 300mm @ f/5.
In a UN speech today, President Trump said that "all of these [climate] predictions were wrong".
Back in 2019 I led a research effort to digitize old climate model projections and assess how well they did. Turns out they got future warming pretty spot on!
Thanks for the repost Rami!
A Galactic frame of reference
What's your point of view? Does the Milky Way set, or does the Earth just get in the way? Been wanting to do this one for a while! ~6hrs, 30s per frame, EOS6Dii, Star Adventurer, Sigma 14-24mm. Processed in PixInsight & PS. #astrophotography #timelapse
I'm pretty sure (like a few others here) these are mammatus, with parts blown into streaks by strong winds towards the camera along the underside of the cumulonimbus anvil. They're in an odd perspective with the good mammatus structure far away and silhouetted against the brighter sky. Nice pic!
Waxing Moon, 3rd Sept
I was playing with camera focus and focal length points on the C14 - 585MM + focal reducer = 7 panel whole Moon mosaic, The full-size processed image is 90 megapixels. Hello, nearest neighbour! Full res view here: photos.app.goo.gl/J5pR2DJYiwrq...
A dusty MIlky Way snap from a short break at Turon Gates, NSW. 29x90s, EOS 6Dii @24mm, Star Adventurer, good skies. Antares region is below centre. #astronomy #astrophotography
Peter Rosén has created another great animation of #Jupiter's storms during the 2024/25 apparition, made from thousands of amateur observations and projected in a variety of different ways. Incredible amount of work must have gone into this #planetsci [Credit: P. Rosén]
youtu.be/x1W_Ux_jgaE?...
You have been kidnapped and a character from the last tv show you watched is trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you?
Chances of survival... slim
“When the system forces you to code with a hallucinating clown, eventually you stop resisting. You let him type. You let him be "productive." You check out. You surrender your brain to the noise and just float.” deplet.ing/the-copilot-...
If your business model doesn’t work without breaking the law, then you’re not in business.
You’re in organized crime.
Dust storm this morning, everything a bit hazy. Our periodic reminder there's a lot of desert away out west!
Images are red filter only, calibrated to be similar in brightness, moons labelled. The line across Saturn is the rings/silhouetted against the planet. F ring would normally be totally invisible, may be brightest part of the rings in images at/just before before equinox. Celestron C14, ZWO ASI585MM.
Sunrise on Saturn's rings
3 images 3rd-8th May (UT) - rings reappearing through Saturn's equinox on the 6th. First image shows the Sun/Earth-facing outer edge only, likely basically the F ring! (brightest equinox ring in Cassini 2009 data) Last image has south face of the rings illuminated again.
Edge on view of the planet Saturn. The rings appear as a thin black line that dissects the disc of the planet. The colours are hues of soft pink and grey-green
If you like then you better put a ring on it! 🪐
@deep-twilight.bsky.social got a really nice pic of #Saturn during the time when it’s ring system is pretty much edge on to our perspective. And a couple of Moons!
Really like the colour of the equatorial and higher latitude belts.
Thanks Rami! Those colours are pretty but a nightmare, some of the belts appear actually slightly greenish (and did last year), but normally green isn't seen much in the sky - adjusting this image wasn't easy and i still don't think I have it right 😬
Indeed - it is significantly easier to catch Mimas, and perhaps even fainter moons just now without the rings glare. It should also be easier throughout this opposition as the rings will be a bit fainter.
