TsIV

A photo of a snowy egret. Taken in Southern California.

Snowy egret from a few days ago.

#wildlife
#birds

6 Otherworldly Deep-Sea Images from 2025 From the first sighting of a colossal squid in the wild to a seriously goofy octopus, 2025 delivered some astounding photos from the ocean’s depths

From the first sighting of a colossal squid in the wild to a seriously goofy octopus, 2025 delivered some astounding photos from the ocean’s depths

jw12487-o002_t001_miri_f1800w_i2d.jpg LRN2025abao CEE it happen: Common-Envelope Evolution in action with early JWST observations of a stellar merger in M31

New #JWST 🔭 data release for target names: LRN2025abao.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.
Take a look at news_by_date.html

A photograph of a leopard lily in the woods

Trailside Leopard Lily
Shasta, California
#flowers
#art
#photography

IC-1805 -The Soul Nebula. HOO process
40 mins from 10th November 2025.
ZS61, ASI 585MC, L-eXtreme filter.

#astronomy #astrophotography

Science Note
If you look closely at tide tables, the day-to-day variations are pretty strange.

four giant azhdarchids: Cryodrakon boreas, Hatzegopteryx thambema, Arambourgiania philadelphiae, and Quetzalcoatlus northropi. Original art by Kyra Zhuravel

Of course the big paper on Azhdarchoid phylogeny comes out while I'm at a museum on a research visit (looking at Azhdarchoid cervicals, obviously) but now I'm back at the hotel so it's time to write a proper thread! 1/28

Today's #Nudivember took a ridiculously long time to paint considering how simple it is.

#TradArt

A drawing of a grey sea slug with multiple brown and white striped cerata.

Today's #Nudivember is Cerberilla tanna. I try to approach each species as they come, but I am a fan of Cerberilla species. Their striped cerata are very cute.

Nudivember 2025 prompt list 1. Cuthona anulata 2. Cerberilla tanna 3. Halgerda theobroma 4. Glossodoris electra 5. Tambja affinis 6. Diaphorodoris mitsuii 7. Hypselodoris obscura 8. Cerberilla ambonensis 9. Tritonia myrakeenae 10. Chromodoris luteorosea 11. Dendrodoris behrensi 12. Melibe pilosa 13. Doto greenamyeri 14. Cadlinella ornatissima 15. Flabellina ischitana 16. Polycera tricolor 17. Jorunna rubescens 18. Nembrotha cristata 19. Tenellia caerulea 20. Phyllidiopsis sphingis 21. Gymnodoris rubropapulosa 22. Aegires citrinus 23. Okenia mediterranea 24. Mexichromis macropus 25. Hallaxa cryptica 26. Acanthodoris lutea 27. Notodoris minor 28. Favorinus tsuruganus 29. Halgerda brycei 30. Hallaxa fuscescens

Welcome to the 2025 #Nudivember art challenge!

Like last year, here is a list of some lesser known, yet always fabulous, nudibranch species.

Participate as much or as little as you want in any art form you like.

Make sure to use #Nudivember and use alt text!

Stolen from the Internet, a cartoon: A "normal distribution" showing the standard bell-shaped curve with x-axis ticks. Then below it a ghost-in-a-sheet hovers above a ticked x-axis below which is labeled "paranormal distribution" The joke is that this kind of ghost is vaguely bell-shaped.

A reminder to all scientists & data viz people 🧪:

It's Spooky Science Time.

Adjust your models to use the paranormal distribution 👻from now until November 1st.

Your moments of calm are all otters.
1-Monterey Aquarium rescue otter
2-Wild otter meal coveted by sea gull
3-Wild otter mom with baby

You're welcome... 1/3

A long exposure photograph of a starry twilight sky with the blurred silhouettes of a treeline forming the foreground along the bottom of the frame. Above on the left hand side are the bright star Cor Caroli (shining through thin cloud giving it a misty appearance) and just above it Comet Lemmon. The comet has a bright greenish coma at its head and there is a faint, white, misty tail extending far across the frame up and to the right.

Lucky to get some brief glimpses of Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) from Dartmoor this evening around the end of astronomical twilight. This is a single 13s shot taken with a tracking mount at 135mm focal length.
Looked great in binoculars too with a grey-green coma and short section of the tail visible.

Coalition of science, education, and space organizations urges… A coalition of science, education, labor, and space advocacy organizations today sent a joint letter to congressional appropriations leaders urging them…

[BREAKING] The Planetary Society and 14 partner organizations released a joint letter calling for explicit NASA science protections in Congress's stopgap spending bill.

Read it here:

www.planetary.org/press-releas...

The same rock before and after lapidary polishing. It's held in a human hand in both instances. On the left, a plain looking white limestone lump, roughly triangular. It has a few pits. On the right, a polished and shiny lump of coral in very roughly hexagonal pattern, a darker grey-brown, with lighter divisions and radiating pattern in each cell.

In parts of Michigan, you can pick up a fairly ordinary chunk of limestone & with some polishing, reveal a coral formation that was laid down when this area was a tropical sea in the Devonian, 350 MYA.

These are Petoskey stones, the state stone of Michigan.

The fossil

reconstruction hanging from a finger

A tiny Jurassic pterosaur, Bellubrunnus, wingspan, less than a foot (its head is the size of my fingernail)

Jormungandr walhallaensis

An aetosaur osteoderm (armour plate) fossil with a large spike sticking out from the centre. Specimen from the collections of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

Given recent interest in the ankylosaur, Spicomellus & its extreme armour, I thought l'd share this photo of an #aetosaur spike for this #FossilFriday. Highlights how wonderfully weird #Triassic reptiles pioneered many striking traits once thought limited to dinosaurs.

#Paleontology #Science

🧵 1/

A collage of my Universal Monsters posters including Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from Black Lagoon, wolf man, bride of Frankenstein

Having a MONSTROUS September!
(And I’m leaving it at that 😜)

A photo of Jupiter and one of its moons. Taken using a Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope and a ZWO camera.

A photo I took a couple years ago of Jupiter. The little yellow spot next to it is its moon Io.
#astrophotography
#photography

Photo of ESA deep space antenna in Spain with Venus and Jupiter labelled in the night sky

Flyby success! ESA's Juice spacecraft passed Venus at 07:28 CEST on 31 August.

This photo shows our deep-space antenna in Spain in communication with Juice during the flyby.

Juice’s current location, Venus, and its destination, Jupiter, are both visible in the sky ❤️

A Mountain Short-horned Lizards standing on exposed rocky substrate in the dying evening light.

This is likely the last blazing hot week at the northern edge of lizard-dom. The Mountain Short-horned Lizard will be soaking up the late summer sun before their long idle winter season. #herps

Clarification: when I say “X animal make terrible pets for most people”, what I really mean is that most people are terrible and wouldn’t be able to do right by that animal, not that the animal is terrible.

Brackish marsh and stream habitat diagram. The diagram is based on the Lord Cove area along the Connecticut River in Old Lyme, CT.

Habitat overview: Coastal tidal streams and brackish marshes. For a forthcoming book STREAMS: An Illustrated Guide, Yale University Press, later in 2026.
🧪🌿🌎🪶🐡 #wildlife #scicomm #sciviz #wildlifeart #illustration #scientificillustration #natureart #visualscicomm #sciviz #scicomm

I have a semi-leucistic Black-capped Chickadee that comes to my backyard fountain once or so a year, and I saw that one a few weeks ago, but this BCCH that appeared yesterday is the real deal for Leucism. #birding

Liftoff of Ariane 6 flight #VA264 launching Metop-SG-A1 and Copernicus Sentinel-5A to orbit!

At the center is a comet that appears as a teardrop-shaped bluish cocoon of dust coming off the comet’s solid, icy nucleus, which is almost white, all against a black background. The comet appears to be heading to the bottom left corner. About a dozen short, light blue diagonal streaks are scattered across the view, which are from background stars that appeared to move during the exposure because the telescope was tracking the moving comet.

Hubble observations of interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS show that it looks like a comet. It has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off a solid icy nucleus. The nucleus is roughly no wider than 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers): go.nasa.gov/3UenJhD 🔭 🧪

I had an awesome time talking about the Cincinnatian Series and my attendance to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference. There was a big turn out!

Photo of a watercolour sketchbook Watercolour/ink sketch of Opabina holding pink eggs.

Day 2 - (parent) Opabinia
#AugArthroAwe

My first try at arthropod #paleoart

#kleinekunstklasse 🐡

Very mature Saguaro on a cloudy morning

Saguaro’s last stand 🌵⛅️