4-panel comic. (1) [Two people in a room with bed and nightstand. One person points at something on ceiling.] PERSON 1 with short hair on top of head: What’s that device? PERSON 2 with ponytail: Part of the supernova early warning system. There hasn’t been a Milky Way supernova in over a century. Astronomers don’t want to miss the next one. (2) [Person 2 sits on bed.] PERSON 2: 20 years ago, we set up a supernova alert system using neutrino detectors. It should give us a few hours’ advance notice. (3) PERSON 2: If it ever goes off, every astronomer on Earth will scramble to point their equipment at the sky. PERSON 1: Oh, Ok. So is that a detector? Or some kind of telescope? (4) PERSON 2 [leaving]: Fireworks launcher. I *refuse* to sleep through a supernova. PERSON 1: I think I’ll spend the night at my place instead.

SNEWS

xkcd.com/3208/

DUNE experiment prepares for supernova watch In addition to revealing characteristics of mysterious particles called neutrinos, the massive DUNE experiment could help astronomers find a supernova right as it begins.

In addition to revealing characteristics of mysterious particles called neutrinos, the massive DUNE experiment could help astronomers find a supernova right as it begins. www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/dune... 🧪 #physics

Daniel Craig saying “It makes no damn sense. Compels me though.” from Knives Out

me staring at my data

Supernova 1987A is located in the centre of the image amidst a backdrop of red, blue, and orange stars. A bright pink and red ring around the central region of the exploded star is composed of material ejected by the star about 20 000 years before the actual explosion took place. The supernova is surrounded by red and orange gaseous clouds. The color of these clouds represents the glow of hydrogen gas.

Light from supernova 1987A reached Earth #OTD in 1987.

The Hubble space telescope captured this spectacular image for the 30 year anniversary in 2017. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️

Credits: NASA, ESA, R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation), M. Mutchler and R. Avila (STScI)

Never Forgive Them In the last year, I’ve spent about 200,000 words on a kind of personal journey where I’ve tried again and again to work out why everything digital feels so broken, and why it seems to keep getting wor...

Fantastic end-of-year essay by @edzitron.com on how and why tech has gotten so bad

writing a big "W" on the chalkboard in front of the world OMELAS to invent Womelas, the Omelas for women. everyone in the boardroom cheers

can I code fast? no. but can I code well? also no. but does my code work? alas, no

Pillars of creation by JWST but with googly eyes

New #JWST image just dropped 🔭🐡🧪

Been playing a fun game with VSCode lately where on opening, it tells me it needs to restart for an update - I restart it - and on opening, it tells me it needs to restart for an update - I restart it - and on opening…

A jellyfish floating in an aquarium tank

Two jellyfish floating in an aquarium tank

Large group of jellyfish floating in an aquarium tank

Fluorescent red comb jelly floating in a dark aquarium tank

Mods are asleep post jellies

Just started, would love to meet some other students :)

illustration of a whale shark in an aquarium tank meeting a black cat sitting on the bench. remoras are swimming around the shark. the art style is rendered similar to a risoprint or screenprint with overlapping colors

an encounter

[ #art ]

A speckled blue plant plot, with two dots for eyes, a nose and a mouth giving it a happy expression. In the pot is a small cactus, looking like the hair of the pot.

:>

A supernova with its components labeled. The center of the image contains a dense green cloud, shaped like a keyhole. A white line points to this area, labeled “inner ejecta (keyhole).” Outside this region are two curved dotted lines with a white line pointing to the left one, labeled “crescent.” Outside this cloud of gas is a ring of dense orange gas and dust that becomes more diffuse as it travels farther away from the center. A dotted blue line is overlaid in the center of this ring with a blue line that is labeled “equatorial ring.” The innermost part of this dense orange ring contains brighter orange clumps of glowing gas. There is a gray line pointing to one of these hotspots labeled “equatorial ring hotspots.” Outside these structures, both above and below them, are very faint orange rings of gas and dust. They are overlaid with dotted lines and both have white lines pointing to them, labeled “outer ring.” There are several white stars strewn throughout the image.

This #NASAWebb image of Supernova 1987A shows the structures created before and after the explosion. The keyhole was formed from ejected material afterward, while the equatorial ring was made from material ejected thousands of years beforehand: bit.ly/482PSxW 🔭 🧪

Dazzling color crop of part of a spiral galaxy with broad curved arms and a bright center. Reddish regions of dense gas dot the arms, with brighter white and blue starts visible in the foreground.

NGC 6946 — the Fireworks Galaxy, also object 12 in the Caldwell catalog — sits between the constellations Cepheus and Cygnus. 🧪

Image: NASA, ESA and L. Ho (Peking University); processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

A picture of a collaged sentence on a pub garden wall that reads “the thoughts are Egg’s”. Each word is printed on separate bits of paper and stuck to the wall with sticky tape, and the background is a dark reflective surface so that vague shapes can be seen in it. The whole picture is bathed in orange light, adding an air of mystery.

Bristol pubs just built different

What was meant to be a clear, legible plot is just about visible in the background, but it is mostly covered in black elliptical contour lines, getting thicker towards the centre so that the middle is almost obscured completely. It’s made worse by the addition of numbers scattered around the plot, following the contour lines and varying from one decimal place to fourteen (really not sure how that happened). To top it all off, adjacent to the centre the lines have formed what looks like two staring eyes, and if you stare too long there is also an ominous smile at the bottom.

Have been quiet on here for a while, mainly recovering from finishing my MSc degree… so feels like a great time to post the most chaotic plots I managed to (accidentally) make while doing it

Starting off strong with the oops!all contours plot

A vertical mosaic of images shows the various photos, avatars, and icons for each of the more than 500 contributors to the Astropy project. The Astropy logo, an orange semi-transparent spiral with one end open, is overlaid on top.

The Astropy Project, developers of an open-source software used to analyze astronomical data—which STScI has contributed to since 2011—has been awarded the 2025 Lancelot M. Berkeley–New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work by AAS: bit.ly/3B08mmF 🔭 🧪

Protests on Campuses Continue Cop guy holding Jackson's Classical Electrodynamics

they have acquired tools for inflicting serious harm on other students and themselves

The Ring Nebula (M57) is more complicated than it appears through a small telescope. The easily visible central ring is about one light-year across, but this remarkably deep exposure - a collaborative effort combining data from three different large telescopes - explores the looping filaments of glowing gas extending much farther from the nebula's central star. This composite image includes red light emitted by hydrogen as well as visible and infrared light. The Ring Nebula is an elongated planetary nebula, a type of nebula created when a Sun-like star evolves to throw off its outer atmosphere and become a white dwarf star. The Ring Nebula is about 2,500 light-years away toward the musical constellation Lyra. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

Rings Around the Ring Nebula - ©
Robert Gendler


- Photo
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- About Astronomy Picture Of the Day

#astrophotos

Maintained by @shinyakato.dev

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Combined Pre-Supernova Alert System with Kamland and Super-Kamiokande Preceding a core-collapse supernova, various processes produce an increasing amount of neutrinos of all flavors characterized by mounting energies from the interior of massive stars. Among them,...

hep-ex paper of the day: for stars within 500pc of us, SuperK+KamLAND are sensitive to supernova neutrinos---but not just from the core collapse! They'll also see the final hours (up to a day!) of runaway nuclear heating! AND the signal is strongly mass-hierarchy sensitive via the MSW effect! 🧪⚛️

Am unlabelled graph, with over 100,000 data points. There is no clear correlation and it’s illegible

Mmmm data