This is a really nice analysis of the impact of proposed satellite constellations on ground-based astronomy. 🔭☄️
One thing that might otherwise get lost in the margins is that these satellite constellations would waste many, many billions of euros of government funding spent on telescopes.
Imagen de Artemis II cerca de Antares
Todo el mundo miraba a Artemis II. También los astrónomos de la Universidad de Valencia @uv.es desde el observatorio AstroCamp al sur de Albacete www.astrocamp.es. Consiguieron fotografiar la nave ¡a 300000 km de distancia! pixinsight.com/gallery/arte...
I have spent the whole day with my colleagues from NASA explaining to kids how rockets work, how do you get to be an astronaut and space scientist, what space telescopes observe, and even what black holes like to eat.
Then we all watched four humans come back from the Moon. Great day.
Still frame from animation showing Artemis II leaving Earth's magnetosphere bubble and heading towards the Moon
The visualisation / animation from NASA SVS that shows #ArtemisII leaving Earth and punching through the magnetosphere is very good!
If I were doing presentations, this is the one I would use - highlighting Earth's protective magnetosphere.
Go here: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5622/
🔭
The Integrity spacecraft just entered the lunar gravitational sphere of influence, at 0438 UTC Apr 6. Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen are now the 25th to 28th humans to have left terrestrial space.
Today's calculation: how long does a satellite in a circular orbit stay up when it stops all reboost burns? Depends on a lot of things, especially solar activity, but let's average over all of that and do a Kaplan-Meier analysis in 50 km height bins on 69 years of actual data.
#Artemis II update: our European Service Module's main engine performed the translunar injection so precisely that flight controllers in Houston decided to cancel the first of three outbound trajectory correction burns on the way to the Moon 🥳
TLI! Translunar injection complete, Artemis II apogee now over 400,000 km; they're heading to the Moon.
You are doing very important work @astrojonny.bsky.social covering one of the major enviromental problems to be addressed in the next decade. Like writing about Ozone in 1980's. Keep it up
SpaceX massive orbital data satellites bigger than Starship
A million of these in orbit
spacenews.com/spacex-offer...
I do not like the space race where billionaire corporations launch as much as they can, as fast as they can, until 😱 🛰️💥, now nobody gets to use space anymore
www.pcmag.com/news/blue-or...
Amazing article by @astrojonny.bsky.social for Scientific American.
The Low Earth Orbit is a limited resource that must be regulated quickly, if we do not want to repeat the same mistakes against the environment.
A major milestone for mega constellations has just been reached.
As of this morning, SpaceX now has 10,000 – yes, 10,000 – active Starlink satellites orbiting Earth.
What does it mean, and what does the future hold for Earth orbit?
Story by me in SciAm
www.scientificamerican.com/article/spac...
I want to repeat comments I already made on this plot since some news outlets seem to ignore them: Hubble will not reenter until early 2030s. The curve here is alarming, but will flatten out as we hit solar minimum in the coming years. I still think it's time for NASA to take action on a reboost.
We still have time to turn things around for the better.
Fixing the planet is possible, but it means transforming how we power our world, grow food, manage waste, and protect nature.
The payoff? Up to US$100 trillion in benefits every year.
Read more: www.unep.org/news-and-sto...
A satellite re-entering every 3 minutes. Seems fine.
Vera Rubin Observatory is just mindblowingly insane. A new era of astrophysics.
Illustrated graphic with the boot-shaped Rubin Observatory atop its site on Cerro Pachón beneath a sparkling night sky and the glowing band of the Milky Way stretching from lower left to upper right. Sprinkled throughout are many "Data alert!" popups, labeled with icons that represent supernovae, asteroids, hungry black holes, and more.
A 3-by-4 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled supernova, variable star, active galactic nucleus, and solar system object.
The largest spot-the-difference effort EVER has begun!🚨
On the night of Feb 24, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory officially released its first ~800,000 public alerts of detected changes in the night sky!🔍
A new era of discovery is here✨ 🔭🧪☄️
🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...
Because it's been a while, here is an update of my plot on the altitude of the Hubble Space Telescope versus time
Last night astronomers were glued to screens looking at new data coming in publicly in ~real time for the first time 🤩
Now the PR is out—read all about it! It was amazing to be part of the whole astro community excitedly online watching new PUBLIC data stream from this amazing facility we built 🥹 🔭
Alerts are flowing from Rubin Observatory!
There will be a proper press release in the coming hours, please see all the details then, and meanwhile, your favorite alert broker probably has public data available to peruse *now*!
We are up to well over 20k alerts after 20 min on sky 🔭
Space people familiar with SpaceX's FCC application for 1 million satellites:
DarkSky (darksky.org/news/two-sat...) says there is no current deadline for comments on the SpaceX proceeding, but AAS says it is 6 March (aas.org/action-alert...).
Anyone know who is correct?
The article itself is devoid of reasons to defend the thesis suggested in the title. I wonder why the authors decided to ignore radioastronomy, space debris, or metal atmospheric pollution out of the discussion.
A proper answer from the scientific community is on its way.
How to protect the ozone layer and fight #ClimateChange?
@unepozone.bsky.social provides resources to help stakeholders in governments and industries implement the Montreal Protocol effectively.
Explore now: www.unep.org/ozonaction/r...
TechEdSat-11 was a 6UXL cubesat from NASA-Ames and San Jose State to test an exobrake drag device, launched on 2024 Jul 4. It reentered Feb 15; the decay rate increased sharply on Jan 16, likely marking the exobrake deployment.
A large yellowish blob in the upper-left centre, with two dimmer dots to the lower right marked by arrows. These dots are giant exoplanets. The remaining dots without arrows are background stars, and the features around the main blob are imaging artefacts.
See those two dots with arrows pointing to them?
They're giant gas planets orbiting their star, located 307 lightyears away.
These are directly imaged exoplanets.
Climate action saves lives.
Cutting emissions reduces air pollution and protects people from extreme heat and floods, while cleaner energy and protecting ecosystems result in a healthier planet and communities.
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This galaxy is VERY tiny—much much smaller than our own Milky Way—& incredibly distant. But we can see it AND distinguish its shape!
How?
The light we see from it is from SO LONG AGO that the Universe was MUCH smaller at the time: we see it as it was when it was close enough to us to look big!! 🤯
