Black-and-white 1922 studio portrait of astronomer Annie Jump Cannon in profile, facing left. She is a middle-aged woman with her hair styled in an elegant, voluminous Gibson-girl updo with soft curls framing the top and sides. She wears a lace-trimmed blouse with intricate floral embroidery on the shoulders and sleeves. The photograph has a classic, softly lit, formal quality typical of early 20th-century portrait photography.

🔭 American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon died #OTD in 1941.

Co-credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme that organizes/classifies stars by their temperature & spectral type. She classified >300,000 stars & her system is still used today.

#WomenInSTEM #astronomy #AstroSky

Italian ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti inside the International Space Station (ISS), sipping fresh espresso from a special 3D-printed "Zero-G cup" designed to use the fluid's surface tension to let the astronauts sip from it rather than using a straw from a pouch. She has short dark hair, wears a red-and-black jacket over a purple shirt (a Star Trek uniform specifically for the occasion), and smiles softly while Earth’s blue horizon and swirling white clouds fill the huge circular window above her.

Later she brewed the first espresso in space.

Cristoforetti is an ESA astronaut, Italian Air Force pilot, engineer, 1st Italian woman in space & holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight of a female European astronaut.

International #HumanSpaceFlight Day🚀 #WomenInSTEM #StarTrek

Now would be a great time to reconsider that 46% cut to NASA’s science budget for FY2027.

A blurried view of a starry night sky above a desert landscape with the Milky Way visible. On the right, a globe of Earth is surrounded by thousands of colored dots representing satellites in orbit. Overlaid text reads: “ESO files response to new threats to dark skies.”

Reflect Orbital and SpaceX have filed proposals with the US Federal Communications Commission that threaten ground-based astronomy. We submitted replies and collaborated with the UK Royal Astronomical Society & the International Astronomical Union for their responses 🔭🧪

A black-and-white photograph of astronomer Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit (1907–2007), a pioneering variable star researcher and co-author of the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, seated at a wooden desk in a dimly lit observatory or office. She is a middle-aged woman with short, neatly styled dark hair, wearing a patterned geometric blouse or dress with a textured, abstract design. Dr. Hoffleit smiles warmly and directly at the camera with a gentle, engaged expression. In front of her rests a large binocular microscope (likely for examining photographic plates of stars), its eyepieces and adjustment knobs clearly visible, positioned on the desk surface. The background shows wooden paneling and faint outlines of shelves or equipment, evoking the scholarly, hands-on environment of mid-20th-century astronomy. The image captures her dedication, intellectual curiosity, and significant contributions to stellar astronomy, including cataloging thousands of variable stars and advancing women's roles in the field.

🔭 Astronomer Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit is best known for her work in variable stars, astrometry, spectroscopy & meteors.

She was the compiler/editor of the most significant revisions to the Yale Bright Star Catalog, a standard reference in the field. She was born #OTD in 1907. #WomenInSTEM #astronomy

Don’t let mega-constellation-building billionaires steal your night sky Satellites are wonders of modern technology that have improved all of our lives. But having more than a million of them in orbit could destroy our view of the heavens and seriously damage our planet

Satellites are wonders of modern technology that have improved all of our lives. But having more than a million of them in orbit could destroy our view of the heavens and seriously damage our planet

SpaceX Aims to Launch 1 Million AI Data Center Satellites The satellites could ruin dark skies, pollute the atmosphere, and increase space debris — and the public has a limited time to comment.

Experts are concerned that the satellites could ruin dark skies, pollute the atmosphere, and worsen the space debris. The public has a limited time to comment.
skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

A Women's History Month montage in a grid layoutof pioneering women across STEM, education, science advocacy, and related fields. The portraits are primarily black-and-white or vintage-style photographs, celebrating trailblazers whose work advanced scientific discovery, engineering, computing, astrophysics, civil rights through education, and more. Top row (left to right): Gladys West, mathematician and educator whose modeling of Earth's shape contributed to the development of GPS technology; Jocelyn Bell Burnell, astrophysicist who discovered pulsars; Eleanor Roosevelt, humanitarian, First Lady; Chien-Shiung Wu, experimental physicist who disproved parity conservation. Middle row (left to right): Edith Clarke, pioneering electrical engineer, the first woman to earn an electrical engineering degree from MIT; Grace Hopper, computer scientist, mathematician, and U.S. Navy rear admiral who developed the first compiler; Marie Curie, two-time Nobel Prize winner in Physics and Chemistry for her groundbreaking work on radioactivity; Pearl Buck, Nobel Prize in Literature. Bottom row (left to right): Rosalind Franklin, chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose Photo 51 was essential to understanding the double-helix structure of DNA; Septima Clark, educator and civil rights leader; Rita Levi-Montalcini, Nobel Prize-winning neurologist who co-discovered nerve growth factor (NGF); Gabriela Mistral, poet, educator, diplomat, and Nobel Prize winner in Literature. #WomenInSceince #WomenInSTEM

𝘐𝘧 𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴. ~Newton

Women's History Month starts Sunday. #celebrate #WHM

Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Dies at 95 ALEXANDRIA, VA — Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She passed away

Thank you for your resilience, your persistent brilliance...it transformed how the world navigates & understands our planet. Your work touches nearly every modern device & journey and more people should know your name.

Goodnight and godspeed, Gladys West.🕯️

thezebra.org/2026/01/18/d... #WomenInSTEM

The photo is a black-and-white image featuring a large telescope mounted inside a domed observatory. The telescope, with its long cylindrical body and intricate support structure, is angled upward. A person, dressed in a textured jacket, stands beside the telescope, adjusting or inspecting it with their hand on a control mechanism. The background shows the interior of the observatory with a curved, paneled ceiling and a railing, giving the scene a vintage, scientific atmosphere.

Vibert Douglas fought against gender discrimination in her field, earned an MBE for her war service, was a celebrated astrophysicist and one of the first individuals to receive the Order of Canada.
This is her remarkable story.

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⭐Among all of ONC’s coastal community observatories, Campbell River stands out as a sea star hotspot!

📍Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish territory
🥽8 metres

Watch the full video ⭐ bit.ly/42EZ4Hu

#KnowTheOcean #Underwater #MarineBiology #CDNsci #OceanScience #OceanMonitoring #Canada #BritishColumbia

Nearly 3,000 people are leaving NASA, and this director is one of them Makenzie Lystrup’s departure from Goddard comes soon after the resignation of the director of JPL.

Nearly 3,000 people are leaving NASA, and this director is one of them arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...

The photo is a black-and-white image of a woman with neatly styled, wavy hair pulled back. She is wearing a dark jacket over a collared shirt and has her hand raised to her chin in a thoughtful pose. The background is plain and dark, focusing attention on her face and expression.

On this day in 1983, Gabrielle Roy died in Quebec City. Born in Saint Boniface, Manitoba, she became one of Canada's most celebrated authors. Her 1945 book Bonheur d'occasion (The Tin Flute) was a landmark work in Canadian literature. She has seven schools named for her.

Le volet astronomie a été une expérience incroyable. J'ai passé trois étés au camp, et je suis devenu astronome professionnel. Je n'oublierai jamais la beauté du site et l'énergie et le dévouement des gens qui l'animaient.

Only the third ever interstellar object: a tiny world that started its existence at another star. Now cruising in toward our Sun at ~58 km/s, a faint dot (V~18) in the Southern skies.
What a day 🔭

The photo is a black-and-white image featuring a large telescope mounted inside a domed observatory. The telescope, with its long cylindrical body and intricate support structure, is angled upward. A person, dressed in a textured jacket, stands beside the telescope, adjusting or inspecting it with their hand on a control mechanism. The background shows the interior of the observatory with a curved, paneled ceiling and a railing, giving the scene a vintage, scientific atmosphere.

Vibert Douglas fought against gender discrimination in her field, earned an MBE for her war service, was a celebrated astrophysicist and one of the first individuals to receive the Order of Canada.
This is her remarkable story.

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A Demonstration of Interstellar Navigation Using New Horizons As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft exits the Solar System bound for interstellar space, it has traveled so far that the nearest stars have shifted markedly from their positions seen from Earth. We demo...

Very cool experiment by Tod and colleagues:
arxiv.org/abs/2506.21666

Protecting the Cosmos: NSF NRAO Leads Critical Spectrum Studies to Safeguard Radio Astronomy - National Radio Astronomy Observatory The U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) has received funding to expand its study of...

Protecting the Cosmos: NSF NRAO Leads Critical Spectrum Studies to Safeguard Radio Astronomy

New award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to support ongoing research of the radio spectrum, with a focus on key radio frequency bands being considered for repurposing.

#RadioAstronomy

First Time in 100 Years: Young Kayakers on a Ride for the Ages

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/u...

2025-05-23 On-sky Commissioning Update This is week five of LSSTCam on-sky commissioning. Clouds and colder temperatures have arrived at Cerro Pachón. During a period of in-dome testing, the team collected the most extensive set of…

Finally, the team achieved the first patch of sky captured using all six wavelength bands!

Rubin’s quest to #CaptureTheCosmos is about to begin ✨Get ready for our grand reveal of our first images, coming June 23. 🔭🧪

Read the details from this week: community.lsst.org/t/2025-05-23...

Deep ALMA observations of 12CO emission from fifteen protoplanetary disks reveal a stunning range of structures in the gas morphology including gaps, rings and spirals. Credit: Richard Teague and the exoALMA Collaboration

I recently visited the ALMA observatory in Chile. While I was poking around the telescopes, ALMA researchers released amazing new views of planet-forming disks around young stars.

These are the most detailed images yet of new solar systems being born. 🧪🔭

public.nrao.edu/news/exoalma/

CASTOR logo where the beaver is made up of two galaxies

Maria Drout is taking about the CASTOR mission right now at #TFS25, and I just think we should all pause for a second to acknowledge this very astronomical beaver logo 🦫🤩

🔭🧪

Awesome news. Rubin is the scientist perhaps most closely identified with the discovery that galaxy rotation cannot be explained with Newton’s law of gravity applied to the gas and stars they contain. This led directly to the idea that dark matter dominates the gravity of galaxies at large radii. 🧪

Very sad to hear of the death of my CfA colleague Bob Kurucz, pioneer of stellar atmosphere modelling, working here at Harvard/SAO since the 1960s.

Ok that’s cool - even the Oort Cloud has a spiral….

This photo is a satellite view of the Great Lakes region in North America, with the lakes labeled in their indigenous names. Here’s a description of the image: Gichi-gami: This is the Ojibwe name for Lake Superior, located in the northern part of the image. Michiganmi: This represents Lake Michigan, positioned to the southwest. Karegnondi: This is the indigenous name for Lake Huron, situated in the central part of the map. Ontari:io/Kanadario: These are the names for Lake Ontario, located in the southeast. The dual naming might reflect different indigenous languages or dialects. Erielhonan: This refers to Lake Erie, found in the southern part of the image.

The Original Indigenous Names for the Great Lakes:

Superior: gichi-gami (great sea)
Erie: erielhonan (long tail)
Michigan: michigami (long body of water)
Ontario: Ontarí'io\kanadario (great lake\beautiful water)
Huron: karegnondi (fresh water sea)