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)

This brings back many memories!

My wife says this is what I look like cooking in the kitchen.

The ice breaker question I often ask at nerdy parties is this:

What code or latex editor do you use?

My answer: vi for most editing. Emacs for lengthy code and most latex documents.

Answers involving web browsers are hard to accept. I love when someone brings up something random like nano.

This hits hard!!! I recently edited a latex file offline using emacs, and it was so much swifter and less cumbersome than Overleaf. It’s unfortunate that many students know only write using online tools.

I hear the same concerns from undergraduates.

Satellite megaconstellations will threaten space-based astronomy - Nature Rapidly growing satellite constellations pose a substantial threat to astronomical observations, with projections indicating that future space telescopes will have more than 96% of their exposures aff...

You can access the article for free here:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(Sorry for the previous link which is broken!)

I love me mine! 🌌☂️

Sad to realize that 80% of people in North America can’t see the Milky Way at night.

We need these protected Dark Sky escapes to connect with the Universe.

I haven't seen research though I'd guess it exists, but handwriting letters *extensively* - as in 18th & 19th centuries- seems to produce a critical mass of great writers & thinkers. Jefferson's correspondence with Adams, for example. Maybe it's quill pens, which slow down writing to thinking speed.

Yes to this also! Everyone has different strategies to learn.

I’m reminded of a saying from my dad:
“If you do nothing, you know nothing.”

I can read all about, e.g., basketball, but unless I’m on the court practicing shots, I’m not going to improve my game.

I remember the “old fashioned library search”

Same reason why I tell students to consider writing notes instead of typing them in class: numerous studies show that actively synthesizing information (a necessity from slower writing) is superior to more extensive but passive notetaking when it comes time to recall and interpret content.

Webb First to Show 4 Dust Shells 'Spiraling' Apep, Limits Long Orbit - NASA Science NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered a first of its kind: a crisp mid-infrared image of a system of four serpentine spirals of dust, one expanding

Very excited to share the NASA/ESA/STScI press release of our team's work on Apep! It's a terrific writeup, complete with a brand new beautiful visualisation of the nebula geometry.
1/? ⚛️🔭🧪
science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

Snapshot of a part of Euclid VIS detectors, almost saturated with cosmic ray hits.

Those were beautiful #aurorae in the past days. A solar storm brought a lot of protons to Earth. Not only to Earth but also to #ESAEuclid – but does #Euclid notice? Oh yes.

www.euclid-ec.org/here-comes-t...

#ESA #Sun #SpaceWeather #space

How did I not know this?!

Astronomers have spotted the largest and most distant flare ever observed from a supermassive black hole.

Nicknamed “Superman,” the flare originated 10 billion light-years from Earth, and at its peak, the light emitted shone with the brightness of 10 trillion suns. https://cnn.it/3WFwNNN

Another title for this article could be: “Superman Outshines Scary Barbie”

www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/s...

An Extremely Luminous Flare Recorded from a Supermassive Black Hole Since their discovery more than 60 years ago, accreting supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) were recognized as highly variable sources, requiring an extremely compact, dynamic env...

Excellent, exciting new paper by M. Graham et al. who find the newest record holder for most energetic flare from a supermassive black hole, nicknamed “Superman”. The previous record holder was “Scary Barbie,” first reported by our group at Purdue in Subrayan et al. 2023.

arxiv.org/abs/2511.02178

Figure showing the proposal counts for Cycle 5, tracking above Cycle 4 by a few hundred.

So, we are tracking well above Cycle 4. Figure by @mpudoka.bsky.social and Yongda Zhu. 🔭

I thought loopnet was only a place to find office and warehouse space!

Amateur image of NGC 7531 (left). DESI Legacy Imaging Survey image of NGC 7531 (right). Sky-subtracted image of NGC 7531 as processed by Gnuastro’s NoiseChisel program was used as a basis for photometry measurements. Features are labelled: (a): main shell; (b): faint outer shell; c: counter plume.

Michelle's first paper discusses the Pearl in the Shell, a study of an ultra compact dwarf and a debris cloud around a nearby spiral galaxy. The study combines data from professional and amatCheck it out in our latest episode! arxiv.org/abs/2509.14038 🔭 ☄️

Excellent morning read. Thanks for sharing!

I love this photo!!! 😍 It’s amazing. Thank you for sharing!

Wilbur, this morning!

Happy Miniature Schnauzer Day!

I asked Google “What’s your favorite dog?” and it came back with Miniature Schnauzer—like our Wilbur.

A+ to whoever trained this LLM. 🧑‍💻🐾

Does your smart assistant agree?

Wilbur hopes you get well soon!

Three canvas-like prints of star clusters and neabulae on a dark purple wall.

A canvas print of Cas A on a dark purple wall.

A placard for the Cas A canvas. Of importantance to this post, it shows credit to Danny Milisavljevic (of course, among others).

was v excited to see work by @danmil.bsky.social (+ many others!) featured at the @amnh.org today !!

JWST captured this sparkling scene of star birth in Pismis 24, a young star cluster about 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. This region is one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve.

This new JWST image is one of the most spectacular yet from the space telescope.

Giant, newborn stars here are carving away surrounding gas & dust. The bright pair at center is two of the most massive stars known. The dark spire is 50 trillion kilometers tall! 🧪🔭

webbtelescope.org/contents/new...

Rainer Weiss, Who Gave a Nod to Einstein and the Big Bang, Dies at 92

Obituary in NY Times

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/s...