Super-Grover

This view perfectly captures the comet's two tails—one of dust and ice particles, and another of ionised gas.

The particulate tail shows remarkable flow structures that reflect how the comet's nucleus is coming apart with decreased solar distance. The ion tail points directly away from the Sun.

Holy shit look at this

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon), photographed by Chuck Ayoub on 30 October 2025.

The comet made its closest approach to Earth (90 million km) on October 2025.

Source: Chuck's Astrophotography (@chucksastropho1 on Twitter), h/t @p-s-v.bsky.social

A flight in a 737 Max 8 full-motion simulator with SkyCommand is today's livestream...
www.twitch.tv/skycommand

https://x.com/Astro_Kimiya/status/1978935331429797895 Good morning! I'm sharing a collaborative photo of the zodiacal light right after sunset and the Milky Way. You can visually see the rotation plane of the galaxy and the rotation plane of the solar system, so it's one of my personal favorites. Is it too niche? lol The aurora is also appealing the beauty of the Earth in the corner of the photo, making sure not to get in the way of the zodiacal light.

One of the reasons to stay on the other place... photos like this by Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui.

"...the zodiacal light right after sunset and the Milky Way. You can see the rotation plane of the galaxy and of the solar system, so it's one of my personal favorites. Is it too niche? lol"

Tomorrow about a third of Perseverance rover staff will be laid off, despite the mission being the penultimate step in a decades long effort to bring samples back from mars.

Reckless, needless budget cuts intended to hinder the pursuit of knowledge.

YouTube video by Gil Scott-Heron - Topic Whitey on the Moon

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtSS...

Artemis II pilot Victor Glover wants to talk about "Whitey on the Moon" with his colleagues "Where we were in 1968, when humans first set out on this voyage, our country is in a very similar place now."

Gil Scott-Heron came up in trivia this week. I remembered this story about NASA astronaut Victor Glover who will be flying to the Moon next year. NASA has changed for the better.

"Artemis II pilot wants to talk about "Whitey on the Moon" with his colleagues"
www.axios.com/2023/04/18/n...

A picture of Mars taken during astronomical twilight (the sun was 13° below the horizon). It shows a dimly lit reddish landscape with some hills at the horizon. Deimos, Mars' smaller moon shines with a small halo in the pale sky above.

This photo from the Perseverance rover captured in early March, may be my favorite Mars image from this year.

It shows Mars' smaller moon Deimos over the hills of the Nili Planum region in the dark skies before dawn. 🔭

Full res: flic.kr/p/2rwUwV7

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Simeon Schmauß

NASA’s First-Ever Alien-Hunting Space Telescope Could Enlighten Our New Dark Age The Habitable Worlds Observatory is poised to tell us whether Earthlike planets are common—if it can get off the ground

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: NASA’s next-gen Habitable Worlds Observatory may be our best chance to find alien life. But can a nation busy ripping itself apart unite to launch a mission to solve life’s cosmic mysteries? By @nadiadrake.bsky.social (and me).

www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-...

“We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant… and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America. And we’re willing to die to protect it.”
General Mark Milley 9/29/23

Un panorama martien aux couleurs ocres photographié à contre-jour. Le ciel, nuageux, occupe une large partie de l'image, il est de couleur marron clair.

Après-midi nuageux sur Mars ☁️
Un panorama acquis par le rover Perseverance hier à 14h55 heure locale.
www.flickr.com/photos/thoma...

This mosaic of two wide angle photos from the Perseverance rover shows the Martian surface stretching into the distance beyond two foreground hills. The rover tracks can just be seen winding into the distance. In this view clouds are unusually well defined as they float well above the tan dust that eternally colors the Martian skies. In the original photos the area near the Sun is 'burned out' by the limitations of the camera sensor. I have addressed this by manually painting over the overexposed areas to reconstruct something of the brightness contours as they probably would have appeared to a human observer. I have also 'warped' the lower corners to fill the rectangular format. Artist's prerogative :-)

A recent vista from Mars obtained by the Perseverance Rover on its 1635th Martian day, or 'Sol', Clouds far above the eternal dust pall are unusually well shown in this afternoon view. This is a mosaic of two wide angle color Navcam images.

Co-fly or just watch, chat, and listen to Grateful Dead together. PlanetNeutral channel is on now with the Sunday stream of Sava River run flying Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 edition. Meet in chat www.twitch.tv/planetneutral with all the dancing bear emoji #MSFS2024 @planetneutral.bsky.social

Glass House - Veil, 2014 by Richard Barnes
www.artspace.com/richard-barn...

ROVE: “.. Using Charlie’s murder to justify retaliation against political rivals is wrong and dangerous. It will further divide and embitter our country. No good thing will come of it.”

@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/opinion/they...

'The Mind-Body Problem' by Roz Chast

The morning sun shines it's first rays over the Nili Planum region on Mars revealing small hills with sand ripples in between. The wall of Jezero crater behind the camera casts a long shadow that stretches over the foreground and the rover itself.

The sun was just 10 degrees above the horizon when NASA's Perseverance rover captured this morning view of Nili Planum yesterday. The rim of Jezero crater is casting a long shadow over the rover and foreground landscape. 🔭

Full res: flic.kr/p/2rt54pJ

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Simeon Schmauß

A cartoon by Asher Perlman in this week's New Yorker...
#JeopardyNightmares

Why Are Everyone’s Bra Straps Showing These Days?

The New York Times... "All the News That's Fit to Print"
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/f...

How I Fixed My Fear of Flying — By Embracing Something Worse The airlines know we’re terrified. Is this their best solution?

A nicely written, humorous account of the experience of a person attending a fear of flying class from New York magazine...
"Flight Risk I fixed my fear of flying by embracing something worse."
www.thecut.com/article/how-...

Max Q Live In space no one can hear you sing.

There's a band with a rotating line-up of astronauts called Max Q (maximum dynamic pressure)
www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-ma...

Un paysage martien de couleur ocre avec au premier plan le rover Perseverance. Les traces laissées par les roues sont plus sombres. Des collines s'élèvent en arrière-plan. Le ciel est de couleur grise. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Thomas Appéré

Et voici le panorama complet, avec un très beau "lens flare" sur la gauche de l'image.
Le soleil paraît très grand dans le ciel; on le verrait en réalité ~40% plus petit que sur Terre. L'homogénéisation de l'exposition sur l'ensemble de la mosaïque donne ce rendu pour les images en contre-jour.
🧵3/4

Un paysage martien de couleur ocre avec au premier plan le rover Perseverance. Les traces laissées par les roues sont plus sombres. Des collines s'élèvent en arrière-plan. Le ciel est de couleur grise. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Thomas Appéré

Carte postale envoyée par Perseverance alors qu'il gravit la pente externe du rempart de Jezero.
Le regard, en suivant les traces laissées par le rover, rejoint un affleurement à environ 200m nommé Soroya.
L'atmosphère particulièrement claire permet de contempler les reliefs au loin.
🧵 1/4

YouTube video by Shoegazer Grateful Dead - Dark Star (Live/Dead) 1969

Tonight's music is "Dark Star" by the Grateful Dead. The original jam by the original jam band, one of the first of many, many versions. A classic.

"Shall we go, you and I while we can?"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xic...

What a view from that ridge!

#Mars 🧪 #PlanetSci

Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.

NEW from @kashhill.bsky.social and me:

Over three weeks in May, a man became convinced by ChatGPT that the fate of the world rested on his shoulders.

Otherwise perfectly sane, Allan Brooks is part of a growing number of people getting into chatbot-induced delusional spirals. This is his story.

At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery | Quanta Magazine After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at Berkeley, where she ended up disproving a 40-year-old conjecture.

This story makes me think there is a glimmer of hope for humanity...
www.quantamagazine.org/at-17-hannah...

Clearly this is fossilized droppings from a Martian dinosaur...

Clearly it is a coprolite, fossilized Martian dinosaur droppings.

Posted a few days ago by Takuya Onishi a Japanese astronaut on the International Space Station...

"The African continent at night and Soyuz"

'Soyuz, so cool...
Shutter speed is 10 seconds.'

x.com/Astro_Onishi...