Riding With Robots

Excited

Sandstone bluffs and spires in a desert landscape under a perfectly clear blue sky. Photo: Bill Dunford

Dark silhouettes of sandstone bluffs and spires in a desert landscape under a clear, starry sky crossed by the Milky Way and illuminated with a band of green airglow. Photo: Bill Dunford

Day and night are both illusions. The Sun is always shining. So are the stars.

Good night

Ida Gulch, Utah on Sunday and in May 2023.

YouTube video by NASA Goddard Introducing NASA's Roman Space Telescope

Introducing NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcju...

Close-up of colorful Psyche Mission socks showing the spacecraft approaching the asteroid on an orange background

Close-up of the same socks showing the asteroid and spacecraft on a purple and magenta background

Just found out the Mars gravity assist of the #Psyche spacecraft is only 2 months away! 🛰️

Perfect time to plug these totally metal socks featuring Psyche's journey to a metal #asteroid 😎🧦

🔗 sciencesocks.co/prod...

🔭🐡🧪🎨

A painting of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope surrounded by colourful exoplanets. The background is dark blue with silver dust scattered to represent the stars.

The Nancy Grace Roman
Space Telescope by me. Watercolour, gouache, marker, ink, and aluminium pigment on paper.
#SciArt 🔭🎨

Yeah, the home canning company diversified into aerospace and had a lot of hardware in space exploration. They later sold that division though.

We still get comments about it on social media every time Pluto is mentioned. And sometimes even when it isn't.

I liked it back when Ball Aerospace and the jar company were one and the same.

Er, double dwarf planet. If you want. I genuinely do not care.

One of the reasons I get tired of the Pluto planethood debate is that it obscures all the other cool stuff about Pluto, such as the fact that it's actually a double planet.

Colorful auroral glow in a starry sky over a line of sandstone natural monuments. Photo: Bill Dunford

We'll have to settle for this 2023 shot of auroras over the Park Avenue trail.

We don't talk enough about the risks of geomagnetic storms.

Earlier this year, an Aussie power company said that some of their network might have been knocked out by the Jan solar storm.

So I chatted to our leading space weather scientists about the origin and risk mitigation of these events.

🔭🧪

Trump in the last couple of hours has said the US effort in Iran is “almost complete,” a “short-term excision,” and also, “we will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.”

As an IR professor, it's depressing that this is outperforming all others as the best theory of US foreign policy

this guy loves making down payments on future 9/11s with other people's money

Red sandstone rock formations, including a natural skylight in the roof of an alcove.

Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park, Utah. I reaallly want to shoot the night sky from this spot, but this section of the park is off limits after sunset.

I say this every year, but:

The uni students I'm teaching are thoughtful, intelligent, will make everything they encounter better.

With a new addition for 2026:

They deeply hate AI.

Maybe they relied on AI to pick targets. But they bombed the school twice, hitting it again 40 minutes after the initial strike, in order to kill survivors and first responders. The mere *existence* of AI means no one has to be held responsible for this crime against humanity

How Congress can restore the independence of US science Members must go beyond reinstating US government research spending and re-establish decentralized governance at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.

How Congress can restore the independence of US science. Members must go beyond reinstating US government research spending and re-establish decentralized governance at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies. By Natalie B. Aviles www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Except that I want to keep my job… :)

Reddish sand and rock. Two animal paw prints mark the sand. Rabbit?

This picture I took today in the Fiery Furnace section of Arches National Park is almost indistinguishable from something sent by a rover. But there’s just something about it. Can’t quite put my finger on it.

Layered, red sandstone buttes, with snow capped mountains behind. Photo: Bill Dunford.

Sometimes I have to explain to people who know me: I don’t love Utah because it reminds me of Mars. I love Mars because it reminds me of Utah.

A rough, rubbly looking terrain that looks like that weird lint crap that builds up in crawlspaces.

This photo was taken on the surface of an asteroid.

Thinking about you and all your family.

Here it is from a slightly different vantage point.

“the thinker of tender thoughts” by shel silverstein [an illustration depicting a boy growing into a man. as he grows, his hair grows out as flowers. people laugh at him for it and he becomes sad. he starts trimming off the flowers, but as he reaches the last one he stops. he is then depicted with a smile and a flower in his buttonhole on his jacket.]

“the thinker of tender thoughts”
by shel silverstein

A snow-capped mountain peak surrounded by clouds. Photo: Bill Dunford

Mount Tukuhnikivatz, Utah

Hegseth needs to stand trial after this as a war criminal. Between this attack and the girls' school, there's no ambiguity. He is responsible for mass murder and must be held accountable.

More info and guides in this thread. SpaceX comment period closes today!

bsky.app/profile/phil...