Linn Boldt-Christmas

SNEWS

Love that you can't always tell whether a wacky scheme mentioned in @xkcd.com is actually real or not. SNEWS is real!

xkcd.com/3208/

A night‑time photo of the Sentinel‑3A satellite launch, showing the rocket rising from the pad amid bright orange flames and thick billowing smoke. The rocket and launch towers are illuminated against a dark sky.

Satellite view of Earth’s high northern latitudes, showing a vast expanse of snow‑covered and ice‑covered terrain in soft purple and blue tones. The left side of the image fades into darkness, marking the boundary between night and day. Cloud formations swirl above the icy landscape.

A false‑colour infrared satellite image of a large hurricane approaching Florida. The storm’s cold central clouds appear deep blue, surrounded by lighter blues and yellows, while the surrounding warm areas show as bright red. Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas are outlined with labelled cities including Tampa, Miami, and Havana.

A natural‑colour satellite image showing thick plumes of brown Saharan dust blowing westward from Africa over the deep‑blue Atlantic Ocean. Swirling white clouds sit above the water, while the coastline of northwest Africa and the bright desert interior are visible on the right.

Today we’re celebrating 52,600 orbits of Earth by the Sentinel‑3A satellite, together with @euspa.bsky.social and @eumetsat.int
For ten years, it has been delivering data on oceans, land, ice and atmosphere.
The constellation will grow with the launch of Sentinel‑3C in late 2026🚀

🧪🔭 The Terra Hunting Experiment is *so close* to first light — our instrument HARPS3 is looking sharp!

If you wanna know more about our upcoming decade-long hunt for an exoplanet Earth, @sciencenews.bsky.social recently did this great article on what we’re up to: www.sciencenews.org/article/eart...

YouTube video by 3Blue1Brown What's so special about Euler's number e? | Chapter 5, Essence of calculus

…is useful for describing the physical world around us that often sees continuous change proportional to itself. As always, there’s a great 3Blue1Brown video on how e is defined and why it’s really just a neat shorthand that pops out (which I would argue is ”all” π is too) youtu.be/m2MIpDrF7Es?...

I agree with @ravenonthill.bsky.social; it describes proportional/exponential change, which exists in biology to thermodynamics to nuclear physics. But e wouldn’t alter the environment; the environment would alter e, b/c e is defined by *us* from algebra. It’s the value where d/dt(e^t) = e^t, which…

View of Mars from orbit, showing a curved horizon against the blackness of space. The dusty tan surface is marked by scattered impact craters and rugged ridges. Along the horizon, a thin pale bluish atmospheric layer creates a misty glow, and a single distinct white cloud is visible near the upper layers of the atmosphere.

Mars - Cloud over Promethei Terra

Full size 5k image and more info: flic.kr/p/2rWMYkb 🔭🧪
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

@esa.int Mars Express 2025-05-24
ID: HR000_0000 (ND+RED+GR+BL)

Yep!

Excluding a few dinosaurs and traditional institutions that persist over on Twitter, I get all my science news, leads, and chats with scientists through here now.

The feeds also allow me to monitor all the topics I’m interested in so as soon as any new paper drops … it’s in my TL!

🔭🧪⚒️

Once again, humanity has been fooled by the classic prank ”this is surely a fixed value that we can use as a unit of measurement forever” on us by the natural world around us — first a foot, then a stone, now the radius of Jupiter. When will we learn?! 🧪🔭

Why do we do astrophysics? At time of writing, large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics. What implic...

Astronomers: highly recommend this thoughtful opinion piece by @hogg.bsky.social on how to think about our field in light of the development of large language models. whether you agree with him or not it’s vital to discuss the principles behind our science. 🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181

Earthquake-sensing network detects space debris as it falls to Earth – Physics World Proof-of-principle experiment resolved the shock waves produced by the Shenzhou-15 module when it re-entered the atmosphere

How do you track space debris as it makes its fiery descent through the Earth’s atmosphere? Geophysicists have come up with an intriguing new answer: use a network of earthquake sensors to follow the shock waves the debris creates. 🧪⚛️🔭 physicsworld.com/a/earthquake...

🔭🧪 Mark your calendars & pre-order this incredibly exciting new book all about astrobiology (!!) and #exoplanets and much much more by the amazingly talented @toomanyspectra.bsky.social! I CANNOT wait to enjoy this first for myself and then gift it to everyone I know 🤩

black background white text and white frame, around the edges are colorful things like galaxies, planets, leaves, and sea creatures

can’t believe it’s finally my turn to do this but:

COVER REVEAL!!

here is the long-awaited cover for CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF STARSHIPS by the incredibly talented Kamille Rodriguez

pre-order here: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cloudy-wit...

Close-up of liftoff.

New plot to make the default ”talk intro diagram”: moral alignment chart but for exoplanet types? Lawful evil: super-Earths; chaotic good: UHJ etc?

Women aren’t just reaching for the stars, they’re engineering the rockets that get us there. On International Day of Women and Girls in Science, these are some of the faces of @esa.int Space Transportation.

love it 🔭

Letter of concern to ESO *To co-sign the letter, please add a comment with your name and institution here or at the end. Concern regarding scientific balance in ESPRESSO allocations: the RV detection science case *In coordin...

With the help of some colleages, I have drafted a letter for the director of science of ESO about the situation of the latest time llocstion in ESPRESSO. I share It here in case someone supports its content and have comments or want to co-sign it. docs.google.com/document/d/1... 🔭#exoplanets

A better version of the plot with the biggest missing pieces. I truly cannot wrap my head around all this 🔭#exoplanets

🔭☄️ #exoplanets

Ad for the ESA Graduate Trainee Programme 2026. A person is standing in the middle of a road looking at a meteor in the sky. The person has a backpack and holds a mobile phone in the hand. The landscape looks desert-like. The Milky Way band is visible across the sky. An ESA logo is placed on the upper right-hand corner, whereas on the lower right-hand corner the name of the agency is written: European Space Agency.

The 2026 ESA Graduate Trainee positions are waiting for your applications!

Step into a unique role where you’ll contribute to inspiring space missions and work alongside leading professionals from across Europe.

Discover the available positions 👉 jobs.esa.int

#ESArecruits 🔭 🧪

I have student projects available for all levels!

Interested in simulating star formation and interactions with the star-forming cloud? Have a look at these!

I work with students to align the project to their skills, interests, and academic level. 🔭✨#Astronomy

rajikalk.github.io/html_pages/s...

Adding this PhD opportunity for those checking the astrofeed: 🔭

Big opportunity to work with a great cosmologist! ⚛️🧪

Super interesting 🧵 on darkness and how we conceive of it (both legally and culturally). 🔭🧪

📢 Less than 1 hour left until this talk begins!

14:00 UTC = 15:00 CET = 09:00 EST = 06:00 PST = 23:00 JST

If you haven't signed up to our mailing list to access the Zoom-link, you can also watch it live on our YouTube channel 🔭☄️🧪 Livestream: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t9B...

Comparison of synthetic and observed solar G-band intensity at wavelength 4306.8 ± 15 Å at different positions across the solar disc (different rows). The synthetic G band has been convolved with the SST photometric filter transmission function (M. Carlsson et al. 2004). The G-band observations were acquired with the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST; G. B. Scharmer et al. 2003a) on La Palma in 2003–2004 (T. E. Berger et al. 2004; Y. Lin et al. 2005; Van Der Voort private communication). For more detailed information on these observations we refer the reader to https://www.isf.astro.su.se/data1/gallery/. We show the disc centre µ = 1 at the bottom and two angles approaching the limb above. The black and white levels of the observations were adjusted to account for the different processing of the individual measurements.

Published in #MNRAS: "Solar carbon abundance from 3D non-LTE modelling of the diagnostic lines of the CH molecule", Hoppe et al. This is Fig. 2: please visit academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... to read the paper. @royalastrosoc.bsky.social @academic.oup.com

Postdoc position in my team at CAB CSIC-INTA, Spain. We are hiring in the Milgatz project 🔭 to do TolTEC science on dusty star forming galaxies eas.unige.ch/jobs.jsp?typ...
A description to be found also here (please make sure to use http instead of https): www.itziararetxaga.net/2025/06/atra...

An image of the speaker, Moa Persson. She is smiling and looking into the camera over her shoulder. She has light brown hair down to her shoulders, and is wearing a blue shirt with glasses. She is holding a hammer as she is completing her "thesis nailing", a tradition at many Swedish universities for finishing PhD students.

An artist illustration of Venus, and its atmosphere eroding against solar winds. Credit: ESA (Animation by C. Carreau) Longer caption attached to the image on ESAs website, posted November 2007: "Mars, Earth and Venus are immersed in a flow of plasma, an ionised and highly variable gas originating from the Sun, called the solar wind. While Earth has a planetary magnetic field, which can deviate the flow of solar wind, Venus (and Mars) don’t. Gases in the upper atmospheres of these planets are ionised and can thus interact with the solar wind. Venus is as large as Earth and it is difficult for its atmosphere to escape due to the planet’s gravity. The solar wind is the best source of energy to accelerate the upper atmosphere’s charged particles, giving them enough energy to escape. This is why Venus loses its atmosphere due to interaction with the solar wind. To understand this phenomenon, the key questions that the instruments studying plasma on Venus Express must answer are: what and how much of the atmosphere is lost, and where is it lost? Right now, solar activity is at its minimum in the 11-year cycle, making the solar wind weaker than average. The critical question now is how solar wind interacts with Venus when solar activity is low."

Would you dare to stand up against the wrath of a star?! Brave little Venus does... and still has an atmosphere! ☀️💨🪐🧲

Next #RockyWorldsDiscussion on Thu 5 Feb @ 14:00 UTC features Moa Persson on "Venus: Defying the Solar Wind Without a Magnetic Shield"

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...

🧪🔭

A HUGE thank you to all attendees of the #RockyWorlds4 conference in Groningen! We had an absolutely incredible time talking astronomy, geoscience, biology, and so much more 🚀🌋🌱🪐✨🔭🧪

Catch the recorded talks on www.youtube.com/@rockyworlds

And see you in Berlin in 2028! berlin2028.rockyworlds.org

NASA Conducts Artemis II Fuel Test, Eyes March for Launch Opportunity   - NASA NASA concluded a wet dress rehearsal for the agency’s Artemis II test flight early Tuesday morning, successfully loading cryogenic propellant into the SLS

So they will do another WDR after fixing the issues seen and move the launch the March

Full overview here:
www.nasa.gov/blogs/missio...

#ArtemisII