Mac McMullan

I paid sixty dollars for No Man's Sky nine years ago and they refuse to stop making the video game. I've begged them to go home to their families but they won't stop adding new kinds of weird little guys and like, optimizing the gentle patter of rain on an alien ocean. Please let me pay for a DLC

The Milky Way galaxy, showed edge on with a central bulge and warp

The Milky Way galaxy, shown with a bar, 5 messy arms.

My current best guess at what the Milky Way looks like, based in large part on Gaia Data.
See @esascience for more details! and @HdAstro for more Milky Way and other visualizations coming soon...

I have extended family in Australia and New Zealand that I should frankly care more about keeping up with on Facebook, but nobody posts there anymore. Nobody but Andrew.

The only thing giving me pause about deactivating my Facebook is the idea I would no-longer be able to see my old Supervisor's daily incomprehensible posts about Japanese cafes, weird birds, strange modern political stuff, etc. Andrew Blain move to Bluesky PLEASE

I'm pretty sure Dom's not going to start putting up adverts like "new theyfe wanted, minimum 20 years quantum mechanics experience", but it would qualify us as having the world's funniest divorce.

Don't worry guys I did do the diagram with the photons hitting the electron to try and explain Heisenburg's uncertainty theorem, but unfortunately had to then say "uuh the quantum people do say that it's not just that, and it's like, a more fundamental thing though. Idk what they mean." Humilliating

Dom: *long-winded, extremely strange question about quantum fuzziness*
Me: Hmm, I don't know
Dom: *points to book* it says here it takes years to learn QM and decades to understand it.
Me: yeah I don't really understand quantum
Dom: *waves me out of the room* what is even the point of you then?

Maybe theyve got one of these for an Oakley-wearing holding-a-fish white guy as well but holy shit is it horrifying to make an AI queer woman of color. "This way we can make a cool black friend who can never make white people uncomfortable by having real beliefs"

A densely packed series of arcs of light rotating around a point near the top of the image. These are star trails - an effect caused by the Earth's rotation on its axis. The trails cover 18:19 to 06:49 UT on 2-3 January 2025.

So last night was perfect for a long star trails run, with clear sky for most of the night, so that's what I did. I beat my previous time for this type of shot too - this image represents 12 hours 30 minutes of star trails! 😀 #Astronomy #Astrophotography #SciArt #Space

Update: Dom (husband) has started saying stuff like "I'm with Andrew Pontzen on this one, I've decided Dark Matter might be real" for the express purpose of annoying me

Being a redhead is officially a scam. You spend your childhood getting bullied for it, sticking out like a sore thumb, and everyone tells you "oh just wait until you're an adult, then people will love your hair!" Well guess what, IT TURNS BROWN WITH AGE!!!! I'M A BRUNETTE AT 25!!!

An M dwarf star with the text: "I am not a toy. I am not a Christmas present. I am a 10 trillion year commitment"

Think twice before gifting someone an M dwarf this holiday season

You in next week to sign them? 👀

And hopefully they'll stop asking when I'm going to get a "real job"

@apontzen.bsky.social this year, my family WILL understand my PhD

For #cosmology fans: The most up-to-date gravitational-wave measurement of the Hubble constant is
🎆 H0 = (70+19−8) km s^−1 Mpc^−1 assuming spins matching the observing population of binary neutron stars
🎆 H0 = (70+13−7) km s^−1 Mpc^−1 with a more agnostic spin prior...

i fucking HATE over-engineered podcast jingles. go back to hell where you belong.

I know, I've tried things like clearing cookies and not had it work, but it might work for you. It is super annoying to constantly have to switch browser.

the ADS is so great. You're looking for the first paper in a series so you sort by oldest first, and you end up seeing papers like "Are Mules Fertile?" from 1910. Incredible experience.

I've been having this for months. The only thing that solves it for me is looking at the webpage on private browsing mode.

I will, of course, be peppering the firehose comment into conversations at conferences going forward.

- AI host trying to make noises of extreme excitement, but the noises are somehow... wrong
- "oh you tease. We'll pick that back up after the break. We're back from the break, what were you saying?"
- AI hosts breathing, but it sounds weirdly... wrong.

Favourite bits from the AI podcast feature:
- the male voice constantly interrupting
- voice says "my mind is a little fuzzy on the details" and then the same voice proceeds to explain the whole thing in detail
_ "slow down! It's like I'm drinking from a firehose of cosmic knowledge!"
🔭

You know what, that might be it lol

It just looks like this forever (PLEASE IGNORE MY INTENSELY GRUBBY SCREEN I PROMISE IT'S JUST THE LIGHTING!!!)

Heya astrosky users, does anyone else have a problem with the NASA/ADS site where it won't finish loading? I've cleared my cookies but it still only works on incognito mode 🔭 :(

Oh no I have started watching this and now I am obsessed. The sound is amazing — hoofsteps and zebras snorting and the sound of jackals lapping up water. Even the (subscriber-only) comment stream is wholesome

This can only last until they find out there are no naked singularities...