David Wilson

Barddoniaeth ar gyfer Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Well, today is St David's Day so let me first offer a hearty "Dydd Gwŷl Dewi Sant hapus i chi gyd" (Happy St David's Day to you all). Here is a picture of some daffodils amid the undergrowth in my garden: Over the years, I seem to have established a tradition of posting a bit of poetry to mark this special day for Wales and the Welsh and given current events I chose this one which I have posted before, about 9 years ago.

Barddoniaeth ar gyfer Dydd Gŵyl Dewi

Well, today is St David's Day so let me first offer a hearty "Dydd Gwŷl Dewi Sant hapus i chi gyd" (Happy St David's Day to you all). Here is a picture of some daffodils amid the undergrowth in my garden: Over the years, I seem to have established a tradition…

Happy No Sleep Ever Again Day to all the transient astronomers out there! 🔭

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory launches real-time discovery machine for monitoring the night sky The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, has released its first alerts documenting…

"NSF-DOE Rubin issued 800,000 alerts the night of Feb. 24. The alerts called scientists' attention to new asteroids, exploding stars and other changes in the night sky. This milestone marks the launch of a system expected to eventually produce up to 7 million alerts per night."

🔭🧪

The attempted polarity reversal and evolving magnetic environment of AD Leo In the past two decades, the observed large-scale magnetic field of the active M dwarf star AD Leo has evolved from strongly to mildly negative, raising a suspicion that it might switch polarity. Alth...

Super proud of my brilliant Honours student @katelynsmith.bsky.social with her first-author debut on arXiv today: arxiv.org/abs/2602.18085

Europeans - look out for her starting her PhD in Amsterdam!

Didn't tighten the screws of the tripod enough... 🔭

A picture of Jupiter with lots of detail, the Great Red Spot and the bands are clearly visible. It's not a great image - think how hard it is to take a picture of the moon with your phone, it was similarly bright!

Picture of me in front of the 3.5m telescope at Apache Point Observatory

Saw Jupiter with my eyes through a 3.5 m telescope last night, was pretty good 🔭

A star filled sky. The Orion constellation is in the top left. In the bottom left is a tree

Orion over Apache Point Observatory 🔭

Mostly dark image with a stubbly telescope silhouetted against the sunset sky

Just saw the SDSS telescope in person! 🔭

Just a reminder that I'm hiring! Looking for an engineer/research for some fun projects (some building! some designing!)

Come build spectrographs at UW.

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

gradient.horse Draw a horse, watch it run!

omg everybody go draw a horse this is what the internet was made for

gradient.horse

Comic. [Over dark background, a five-pointed pentagram-style star orbits around a white circle with a smaller orbit.] [caption] Space news: Astronomers have found the first known system with a main-sequence star orbited by a five-pointed one.

Binary Star

xkcd.com/3203/

Proposed budget cuts a catastrophe for UK astronomy The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is gravely concerned at the drastic cuts to support for UK astronomy outlined by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (...

The Royal Astronomical Society is gravely concerned at the drastic cuts to support for UK astronomy outlined by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

Read our statement 👉 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

*cough* A little bit of extra info to add here:

There's only one transit, so the true period is unknown. It could be anywhere between 300 and 550 days.

This is an exciting candidate! But (a) we don't know if it's real, and (b) we don't know what its temperature is if it IS real.

Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin’s autobiography is just amazing. Every astronomer should read it.

Here she is talking about her memories of Annie Jump Cannon.

An annotated map of the solar system with hundreds of solar elements in beautiful rings

Beautiful graphic of the day (because that should be a thing: Our Solar System

By my data hero Eleanor Lutz

And we are up on arXiv! arxiv.org/abs/2601.01628 🔭

Yay go Pandora! 🔭

I'll share this again for 2026 and for any new influx--well over 100 planetary scientists here on Bluesky.

Given <waves hands around> they may not necessarily be posting much about planetary science, but that's how it goes.

If you're a planetary scientist and want to be on the list, DM me!

ok look

And we are up on arXiv! arxiv.org/abs/2601.01628 🔭

Thrill of having the first/last paper in a year vs. no one will ever read it

Four miniatures from Blood Bowl. Three large humans surround a much smaller snotling. The snotling has the ball and is sitting on a larger ball.

Three professional football players v. one enthusiastic space hopper owner, place your bets

I started an hour long family debate about how many Star Destroyers there were this Christmas, so yes I also think about this all the time

Looking around my childhood bookshelves, wondering if just one book can really be said to be my origin st- oh that's it, that's the one

Picture of the moon in daytime, faintly seen through a gap in some rocks

Moon rocks

Bracket for "BSky Planetary Science Image of 2025" contest, featuring small icons of 16 images grouped into four quarter-finals. Then there were two semi-finals and the filled in spots of the final with Uranus on the left and a lightning into the Earths atmosphere on the right. There are winner placeholders is still just a question mark. All is set on a lunar surface backdrop.

Final of ✨ #planetaryScience image of 2025 ✨ is here:

Uranus vs. Earth
or
outer vs. inner Solar System

🗳️ The vote link is 3 posts down. Voting ends on Tuesday, Dec. 30, at 3 p.m. UTC/4 p.m. CET/10 a.m. EST/7 a.m. PST/midnight JST. 🧪⚛️

Discworld QOTD, from Hogfather

Experiments with phone, telescope and cold fingers 🔭

Dear Dr. Wilson, I am happy to accept your paper for publication in The Astronomical Journal. The reviewer's final report is included below for your information. Minor corrections can still be made when you receive your proofs.

Oh heck, um, two plots showing a lot of spectra of stars. The top plot shows the entire spectral energy distribution (SED) of the stars from the X-ray to the infrared. On the right is a colourbar showing that the stars are coloured by temperature, with purple being the hottest and yellow the coolest. The stars are scaled to the Earth Equivalent Installation Distance, or the distance where a planet would receive the same amount of energy as the Earth from the Sun. The lower plot zooms in on the X-ray to ultraviolet range and is scaled to the distance of each star's actual planet. The Sun at Earth is shown in black on both plots. The immediate takeaway is that these stars are all brighter than the Sun in the X-ray and ultraviolet.

Yay early Christmas present!!! All these stars will soon be yours 🔭