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Rice University: Researchers Find Sulfur-Rich Mercury Magmas Behave Differently Than Earth’s news.rice.edu/news/2026/ri...

'Indeed, I have never doubted that if the sphere of the Earth were seen from a distance, when flooded with the Sun’s rays, that part of the surface which is land would present itself to view as brighter, and that which is water as darker in comparison'.

- Galileo Galilei, 1610 🧪 🔭

apparently that paper mentions tholins being pretty poor at dissolving in non-polar liquids

wait what indications of storm activity

Yeah that may very well be the case, though I also enjoy the idea of aerosol gunk layer floating on the surface dampening the waves arxiv.org/pdf/1905.00760

I wonder if the Working Group on Star Names's small team size means some cultures will necessarily be overrepresented among the brighter stars.

Balinese names in addition to Arabic, Chinese, Greco-Roman, etc. are cool and all, but what about everyone else? Is this a feature or unintended?

All the #Cassini observations finding centimetre-sized waves on Titan, and then you look at the landforms to find they're supposed to have been carved by decimetre-sized waves. Heck it's predicted the planet should've had 3 metre-tall waves!

#astronomy #space #SolarSystem #Titan

A coordinate-aligned view of the solar eclipse viewed by the Artemis II mission.

A cool demonstration of @astropy.org + SunPy functionality with Artemis II! sunpy.org/posts/2026/a...
🔭

PS two NASA Missions to Venus, DAVINCI science.nasa.gov/mission/davi... and VERITAS science.nasa.gov/mission/veri..., are slated for cancellation under the President's and the Office of Management and Budget's 2027 NASA Budget.

yeah so the week of discourse on here to the tune of "bluesky's devs are lying, this was the fault of AI coding!" sure looks like it was a waste of time

Nope. We did get Holoea, Bajamar Star, Sapaki, Paloma, and Calvera approved just now though.

Day-night cloud asymmetry prevents early oceans on Venus but not on Earth Earth has had oceans for nearly four billion years and Mars had lakes and rivers 3.5-3.8 billion years ago. However, it is still unknown whether water has ever condensed on the surface of Venus becaus...

I wonder if the paper positing that planets within certain distances of a star would lost all their water before they can condense to form oceans (arxiv.org/abs/2110.08801) would turn out to be correct.

Am not a fan of that one definition of “temperate” going up to 4 So for that reason.

Venus isn’t just our nearest planetary neighbor. It’s one of the best tests we have for how rocky worlds diverge. If we want to understand habitability, climate evolution, and Earth-size exoplanets, we need the full Venus story.

We have a binary star called Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It's called HD 173495 and is 189 pc away.

#astronomy #space #star

This artwork depicts personifications of Jupiter, Saturn, Caelus (Uranus), and Neptune, from right to left. Each is accompanied by a box containing their name and symbol, bordered by the planet's colour. The name box is flanked by "GIANT" to the right, and either "Gas" or "Ice" to the left, indicating the type of the planet in question. Jupiter (gas giant) is standing straight in a confident manner. Their legs apart, their right hand pointing at the viewer, while the left hand is on their hip. They are winking their right eye. Their clothes are noticeably wrinkly, unlike others'. Saturn (gas giant) is doing a playful pose. Their body is turned away from the viewer and bent forwards slightly. Their hands are folded at the back. They are looking at the viewer. Their rings, located around their hips is prominently visible. Caelus (ice giant)'s pose is more reserved. Their arms are folded, and their body turned to face the viewer. Caelus wears a voluminous skirt and is the only one with a hat. Neptune (ice giant)'s pose is relaxed. Their right foot is placed in front of their left foot. They are looking at their bright white cloud armbands.

The four giant planets of the Solar System, those massive enough to retain primary atmospheres of hydrogen-helium. Their mere presences write the rules of our entire planetary system.

#ACelestialJournal #art #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #Jupiter #Saturn #Uranus #Neptune

Hot take: Kelu-1 should be named "Kelu" and "TRAPPIST-1" named "Trappist". These were probably meant to be catalogues but they only ever have one, so we should just turn those into proper star names.

In the light of @iau-wgsn.bsky.social adding a whole bunch of names from research papers recently, I figured I should just post the list I made here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

#astronomy #space #star

I've heard the argument that "no one uses these names" but in fact they are occasionally used by media outlets and science communicators. And also an IAU working group is much more transparent than one group of stars that made it into SIMBAD, named after astronomers' cats.

Skeptical views have since been raised about this report, including the possibility of an image-analysis error or other processing issue.
If you observe Jupiter tonight, please do not expect too much and simply check the relevant area carefully.
🔭

13 new star names not yet in the Catalog of Star Names...

Epsilon Boötis joins the small club of star systems with two named components.

New named stars within 100 ly: Genghe (Sigma Boötis) and Tepiamenit (Tau Boötis — familiar name). Lovely!

Several new star names from research papers!

bsky.app/profile/astr...
Full work is out!

Sneak peek: bsky.app/profile/astr...

no shading because I want to display the entire texture, totally not because I'm too lazy to do that (might make a shaded version later?)

This artwork depicts personifications of Jupiter, Saturn, Caelus (Uranus), and Neptune, from right to left. Each is accompanied by a box containing their name and symbol, bordered by the planet's colour. The name box is flanked by "GIANT" to the right, and either "Gas" or "Ice" to the left, indicating the type of the planet in question. Jupiter (gas giant) is standing straight in a confident manner. Their legs apart, their right hand pointing at the viewer, while the left hand is on their hip. They are winking their right eye. Their clothes are noticeably wrinkly, unlike others'. Saturn (gas giant) is doing a playful pose. Their body is turned away from the viewer and bent forwards slightly. Their hands are folded at the back. They are looking at the viewer. Their rings, located around their hips is prominently visible. Caelus (ice giant)'s pose is more reserved. Their arms are folded, and their body turned to face the viewer. Caelus wears a voluminous skirt and is the only one with a hat. Neptune (ice giant)'s pose is relaxed. Their right foot is placed in front of their left foot. They are looking at their bright white cloud armbands.

The four giant planets of the Solar System, those massive enough to retain primary atmospheres of hydrogen-helium. Their mere presences write the rules of our entire planetary system.

#ACelestialJournal #art #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #Jupiter #Saturn #Uranus #Neptune

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Presenting our favourite ice giants! Neptune works to keep the TNOs in line and Caelus does interesting poses in their extra big skirt.

#ACelestialJournal #art #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #Neptune #Uranus

What do you mean, normal humans don’t have one fixation they pursue for their entire lives?

FIELD TRIIIIPPPP!

Weirdy arches within the Cambrian LaMotte Sandstone formation. People for scale.

We're standing on top of rocks that are 1.4 billion years old. That's pretty old.

Geology rocks.

One of the best parts of my job is bringing students into the field and helping them understand why our planet works the way it does

I love big skirts. Shame I don't get to draw them more often since only Caelus wears it, at least for now. I should put Sol in it too.
bsky.app/profile/astr...

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Presenting our favourite ice giants! Neptune works to keep the TNOs in line and Caelus does interesting poses in their extra big skirt.

#ACelestialJournal #art #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #Neptune #Uranus

And Terran year! And aliases of them all! Wooo!

Planet hunting 101.