Michele Bannister

We see your cozy island and raise you four seasons

Partial lunar eclipse

11:20pm

#LunaEclipse

#Nikon Z7ii 28-300mm (f-mount) ISO200 F/11 1/800th

*I have exposure bracketed my pics +/- 3 stops, but will exposure blend & process them later, these are the single middle exposure ones, lightly processed.

Go well! May the spoons be ever in your favour!

You really get the feel of the projection of our shadow into space, and the Moon gliding into it. Sudden snap into 3D.
Bit cold here to watch for long tho!

Nice and clear - go look!

Complete lack of severe weather warning...

It is freezing here now, so glad people had better festival weather yesterday

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

And heeeere’s March. Sunrise, Sunday 1March from Okitu Beach, Aotearoa / New Zealand.

Ata mārie / Good Morning ☀️

From our Aotearoa (U Canterbury) 🇳🇿 team of Laura Revell, myself @astrokiwi.bsky.social and currently visiting Erskine Fellow @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy. Cross-disciplinary partnership at work 🚀

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed

*waves*

The boot-shaped Rubin Observatory with open dome beneath a dazzling night sky. Arching overhead is the dense glowing band of the Milky Way. To to the upper left of the observatory, the small smudges of the Milky Way's two largest companion galaxies appear prominently against the starry sky.

Detecting a cosmic change is only the start 👀

So what happens next? 🔭🧪

1️⃣ Once NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory detects a change in the cosmos, it generates an alert: a packet of information with when & where it happened, how bright it was, reference images, and other observations.

🧵

A white, glowing egg-shaped object lies in the centre of the black-and-white image, on a dark, starry background. Glowing streaks spread upwards from the object. In the top left, a yellow arrow marked ‘Sun’ points straight down, and a blue arrow marked ‘Velocity’ points towards the 7 o’clock direction. In the bottom left, an inset shows the same object on a lighter grey starry background, filled with ragged-edged, concentric egg shapes gradiented black-to-white.

Our first glimpse of comet 3I/ATLAS from Juice's science camera 😍☄️

The precious data from the mission's November observations of the interstellar comet arrived on Earth last week. Teams are now digging in to discover what they reveal.

Stay tuned for updates!

More 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...
🔭 🧪

Never thought I'd be writing about our planet having on the order of one BILLION kilograms of burnt aluminum deliberately sprinkled on top

this would be a Bad Idea, by the way

Laura Revell, me & @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy:
"a million satellites could mean that a teragram of alumina accumulates in the upper atmosphere – enough, alongside launch emissions, to significantly alter atmospheric chemistry and heating in dramatic ways we do not yet understand."

A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a ‘crematorium for satellites’ Planned ‘megaconstellations’ of satellites could cause unforeseen harm to the ozone layer and climate systems. Global regulation is needed before it’s too late.

"Rocket launches already contribute to climate change and ozone depletion. Scaling them up to deploy a million aircraft-sized satellites would push upper-atmosphere heating and ozone loss far beyond previous estimates, with the steady burn-up of dead satellites compounding the impacts." 🧪🛰️🚀

A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a ‘crematorium for satellites’ Planned ‘megaconstellations’ of satellites could cause unforeseen harm to the ozone layer and climate systems. Global regulation is needed before it’s too late.

Excellent piece from @astrokiwi.bsky.social @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy & Laura Revell.

This one sentence is the crux of it all 👇

"There is no public mandate for a single company in one country to make changes on that scale to the planet’s atmosphere."

Highly recommended.

🔭🧪

Our first-year astro undergrads are lucky to have @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy the first six weeks!

A slightly washed-out sky (from light pollution) with the Milky Way and Large Magellanic Cloud clearly visible. There's part of a tree and part of a house in the lower part of the image

Last night @astrokiwi.bsky.social showed me that you can actually see the Milky Way from inside the city of Christchurch! I did not expect that, and actually wasn't even planning get outside and look up, because I'm in a city. (Yes this is a […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]

Hundreds of pupfish at Salt Creek in Death Valley! The flood damaged boardwalk has been replaced and is a nice walk. The fish have survived here since the ice ages in water that at times is three times as salty as the sea and sometimes as much as 100° (1/2)

Yeah, the booms were quite loud

I remain fond of our tsunami training slogan

Dark oystercatcher chick facing the camera, spread down against the rock, as a watchful parent with bright orange bill and red eye-circle looks over it.

NZ shorebird and seabird thread.

I'm going to go ahead and post some shots before carefully editing and sorting; I'm already falling hopelessly behind.

Let's start with a variable oystercatcher chick and parent. 🪶

Advancing gender equality in STEM education: Inspiring girls to pursue Women and girls remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), often due to persistent stereotypes and limited access to opportunities. Through education

Today is International Day of Girls and Women in Science. UNESCO show that women represent only 35% of STEM graduates around the world. We must stop losing so much talent that could improve the world for all www.unesco.org/en/articles/...

1/ Happy International Day of #WomenAndGirlsInScience!

To mark the occasion, women from across the @eiroforum.org organisations, including ESO, shared one piece of advice that helped them in their professional journeys 👇

Discover more: www.eiroforum.org/news/eirofor...

Yup. I think it was good a decade ago, but now the emphasis needs to be on communicating what is understood of debiased populations

Yup. The N American window is 6-9 am. The European window is 7-9 pm. Some weeks...both! *whimper*

Looking up at the Milky Way stretching across the sky, with the Magellenic Clouds appearing as two easily visible cloudy spots nearby. The sky is ringed by silhouetted trees.

Looking up at the Milky Way with the Magellenic Clouds nearby, and a couple of very bright satellite streaks passing over everything.

Looking toward the northern part of the Milky Way, Orion is buried in there if you look carefully, though it's hard to see because there are so many stars (and it's upside down from how I'm used to see it in the Northern hemisphere). There are a whole lot of faint satellite streaks across the lower part of the sky, and there are silhouetted trees all around the edges of the photo.

The two Magellenic clouds, with silhouetted trees on either side of the photo, and an obnoxiously bright satellite streak.

There are lots of satellites here in the southern skies too. But the stars behind the satellites are absolutely incredible! The Milky Way was absurdly bright! The Magellenic Clouds were so easy to see! WOOOOWWWWW

Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand The Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand encourages interest in astronomy.It is an association of observers and others for mutual help and advancement of s

Here goes the really intense week:

Tomorrow I speak here in Napier

Wednesday is in New Plymouth

Thursday in Wairarapa

Friday in Wellington

https://www.rasnz.org.nz/rasnz-info/rasnz-lecture-trust-bht-1

#ProfSamLectureTour