Picture credit: Ben Doyle
And now for something completely different.
Here's an image of the central regions of the Perseus cluster (Abell 426) made by Maynooth undergraduate students using the 120cm reflecting telescope at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence. Not quite as sharp as Euclid but not bad at all!
Have any of the Artemis crew returned with super powers? Asking for a friend.
Weather satellites were able to see the Artemis II launch and re-entry.
Space is cool, satellites are cool. It's all cool!!!
On my way to Space Symposium in Colorado ✈️ #spacesymposium
Big Doggie Do returns to Willen Lake in Milton Keynes next month. For context, Canis Major the Great Dog constellation includes Sirius the brightest star in our night sky often mistaken for a wandering pooch in the heavens.
If every time I open your software, it prompts me about a new update being available, and upon updating, there is no evident value in having done so, you are training me to stop updating the software.
With respect, I refuse to be normal this evening. I’m still struggling to wrap my head round the fact that this is actually ✨happening✨. #ArtemisII
efore going to sleep on flight day 5, the Artemis II crew snapped one more photo of the Moon, as it drew close in the window of the Orion spacecraft. Orion and the four humans aboard entered the lunar sphere of influence at 12:37 a.m. EDT on April 6, at the tail end of the fifth day of their mission. That marked the point at which the Moon's gravity had a stronger pull on the spacecraft than the Earth's. Artemis II's closet approach to the Moon will come on flight day 6, as they swing around the far side before beginning their journey back to Earth. About an hour after entering the lunar sphere of influence, Artemis II Mission Specialist Christina Koch said, "We are now falling to the Moon rather than rising away from Earth. It is an amazing milestone!"
It is astonishing that humans are able to do these things. This is what happens when we act collectively to solve extremely difficult technical problems. (It works with many other kinds of problems, too.)
You can follow Artemis II's encounter with the Moon starting at 1pm EDT. 🧪🔭
plus.nasa.gov
Amateur astronomers with telescopes equipped with video cameras are requested to look for impact flashes on the Moon tonight, to coordinate with #ArtemisII observations. Details here: www.geodes.umd.edu/impactflash
I am so thrilled to share this guide to the observations that the #ArtemisII crew will be making during their closest approach to the Moon!! I hope you'll follow along!
science.nasa.gov/resource/art...
Love this: ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma... such a good description of the almost Promethean power of LLMs to both supercharge your understanding and execution, but also burn it entirely to the ground
Screenshot from the NASA Artemis II launch livestream showing the core stage separation from a camera on the rocket.
What a fucking shot holy shit
NASA logo
NASA's live feed on the Artemis launch is here, and it's just started broadcasting:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_U...
I don't anticipate much happening for a while - the launch is currently scheduled for 11:24pm UK time. But keep an eye on the feed and share the link.
Do parts of the #ArtemisII system look familiar? The metal casing on the solid rocket boosters are recycled from Shuttle boosters. The liquid engines are the same ones used on the Shuttle.
Of course. There’s no one person so vital to a field that you can’t cite around them.
Can't believe this entire Artemis mission was an April Fool's joke. I mean truly, hats off to the global lizard elite for that one 👏
Tomorrow evening, NASA opens the launch window for Artemis II. Four astronauts leave low Earth orbit for the first time since 1972. It has been a long wait.
blog.orbitingfrog.com/2026/03/artemis-ii-retur...
Generative AI gets condemned on environmental grounds while people scroll Netflix in bed. The numbers tell a different story.
blog.orbitingfrog.com/2026/03/the-moral-panic-...
I've had agents working for me for just over a week. A PA, a home helper, a doctor, a blog editor. The realisation that this could do 80% of what I do for a living is somewhat humbling.
blog.orbitingfrog.com/2026/03/the-computer-fro...
I'm going to expand this statement to say that astronomers should actually look at their data whatever the format. Yes pipelines and high level science products are great, but you learn a lot from just spending some time exploring the counts-on-pixels images, even for spectroscopy. 🔭
A photo of my laptop on a train. There's some code on the laptop screen. There are fields outside the window
the decentralized urbanist dream: doing devops upgrades for @astrosky.eco while on a high-speed train zooming through central europe
Europa and the other Galilean satellites might be the survivors of multiple generations of moons that formed and were destroyed during Jupiter's violent youth.
blog.orbitingfrog.com/2026/03/the-last-generat...
The Vera Rubin Observatory's 800,000 nightly alerts mark the beginning of real-time astronomy, fundamentally changing how we discover and study transient cosmic events.
blog.orbitingfrog.com/2026/02/push-notificatio...
Next Saturday I'm walking barefoot across burning hot coals at 650°C to raise money for Project Possibility. There's one week left to donate.
blog.orbitingfrog.com/2026/02/walking-on-fire-...
I'm constantly trying (/failing) to get this point across.
If you're a trained expert in a field, then it may be worthwhile to question the scientific consensus of your peers.
If you're not, the scientific consensus is absolutely the best you can do and it's arbitrary foolishness to disregard it.
Two cats have jumped onto a sash window and climbed up under the blind, dislodging it
Working from home proving more stressful than I feel is necessary
For years I've been getting emails asking about my old satellite tracking tools for Google Earth. They went offline in 2015. In February 2026 I finally rebuilt the whole thing from scratch in a single afternoon: wi…
blog.orbitingfrog.com/2026/02/satellites-on-go...
This was taken during the 2017 USA eclipse, but we're going to try again for Spain 2026! Woohoo!
photos.orbitingfrog.com/2026/02/total-eclipse-pl...
NGC 281 is more fondly known as the Pacman Nebula. In normal wavelengths this image resembles(ish) the ghost-gobbling Pacman, but here I'm using narrowband SHO…
blog.orbitingfrog.com/2021/12/the-pacman-nebul...
I'm really hoping to talk about how to use generative AI in astro, how private industry is transforming space, and also any S5 rumours about #ForAllMankind 😀
