Dr. Alysa Orbits (Obertas)

How did I beat this game on survivor+??????

(I died a lot - often intentionally)

I think I hate the part I’m currently at the most, though (hotel basement RIP)

Me booting up the Last of Us: I love this game! This will be fun!

Me playing the Last of Us: Ahhhhhh I hate this part!

My questions for NASA HQ at this conference mostly boil down to - are you trying to protect the scientific community? are you taking risks to help us not collapse from the inside? What is the future of planetary science worth?

Would you watch a stream of me playing video games and chatting about astronomy? Like, viewers can ask questions and I’ll answer them or just chat about cool space stuff? 🔭🎮

As a warm-up

I should just do this in random spots in downtown Toronto

I need to get back into this stuff because it brought me so much joy and I’m feeling a bit envious right now!

Omg I miss going to cons (went to so many in my teens). I would’ve been so happy if I saw a rad astronomer at one!!! I hope you have a blast :)

“I understand there is a risk”

Do you?

“But the potential reward”

What reward? Subjecting marginalized mathematicians to a session of gross “debate” so that someone maybe sees that it’s not the end of the world if they get an email (which they can delete) about Black mathematicians in February?

Tumblr screenshot intactics-deactivated20211231 and i don’t necessarily believe any of this i’m just saying words recreationally 166,386 notes

I picked a great year to cut back on my alcohol consumption (turns out it’s not good for you) because every time I check the news I want to pound back some shots and pretend this isn’t happening.

Buy Canadian!

(booze)

Oh nevermind, it's just junk that a tabloid made up and other tabloids are running with.

Wait what?

Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point March 4, 2025 photograph of Doug Ford speaking at a press conference

I think I just need to own being evil and killing everyone. Maybe?

How bad will things get if I go full Embrace route?

Be yourself! Think dirty thoughts!

:(

Next stop for Europa Clipper: Mars??? That’s right, we are doing a rare Mars gravity assist on March 1st to help pick up speed on our journey out to the Jupiter system. More info and cool animations below!

Poster of two binary stars orbiting each other, it has elements that come from the merge of the two stars coming out, like Au,Ag,Th,Rh,Gd,Pu,Pd,Eu art deco style, minimalistic #Sciart

"The team predicts that the two neutron stars will spiral slowly toward each other in a cosmic dance, ultimately colliding in a kilonova explosion." Inspired by @skuthunur.bsky.social article & thanks to @astro-jje.bsky.social for patiently answering all my silly binary star questions! #Sciart

What movement? I’m confused. I’m asking about the altitude of the NCP for a local observer. It should be L, but this figure depicts it as 90-L. It’s just geometry of triangles. There’s no motion involved.

Whose idea was it to make right ascension increase to the east but hour angle increase to the west? I would like to yell at them :)

I actually remember our final exam had a question about when/where something was up in the sky, but it explicitly said we could use reasoning to provide a general explanation (so I said something along the lines of, “since the Sun sets in the south west during winter, which I’ve verified by eye”)

Yeah, we touched on this in my observational astronomy exam. The textbook (which I still have) doesn’t cover it in great detail, though. It gives some coordinate conversion formulae, and basically just says “how you get this should be immediately obvious from these 2 diagrams, go!”

Non-linear dynamics and chaos theory? Cool. Super fun. Love it.

Basic geometry? Screaming and crying and throwing up.

If you held a gun to my head and asked me to compute (by hand) the exact date of the year based on the Sun’s azimuth at sunset plus the observer’s latitude, I would simply take the bullet

It’s the angle (altitude) between the NCP and the local horizon. So it should be L. If you’re at the equator, the NCP is at the horizon whereas it’s at zenith for someone at the north pole