Aster Cowart

A rounded area of sandy pits are intersected by rocky ridges to form a peace sign shape on the Martian surface.

Peace and love from planet Mars (Curiosity NavCam imaging from the afternoon of Sol 4623, August 8, 2025)

(ii) Discretionary awards shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate: (A) racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination by the grant recipient, including activities where race or intentional proxies for race will be used as a selection criterion for employment or program participation; (B) denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic;

Would like to point out there's a section in the EO issued yesterday that might outright bar trans people from obtaining federal research grants.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

A monochrome photo of a rock. The rock contains several cross-bedded layers.

Spotted a cool rock on Mars on Wednesday

Argyre Basin and Thaumasia - Viking 1 11 frame color mosaic of the large impact basin Argyre and its surroundings, taken by Viking 1 during its 40th orbit of Mars, July 30, 1976. This image captures the area just after sunrise. Water condensate clouds are seen streaming over Thaumasia, while carbon dioxide hoarfrost fills the bottom of Argyre. Caption: Aster Cowart Image Credit: NASA / JPL / Viking Project / Aster Cowart

Today’s moment awe: this actual photograph of Mars. This one particularly moves me. Somehow, the atmosphere and play of light and shadow on the surface make it look *real*. Like a place I could go to. And stand on. Not an abstract concept seen only through the eyes of robots. An actual *place*.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Marketplace Integrity and Affordability This proposed rule would revise standards relating to past-due premium payments; exclude Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients from the definition of "lawfully present"; the evidentiary st...

HHS intends to remove trans health care from the Essential Health Benefits of the ACA/Obamacare; insurers will no longer be required to provide coverage.

The public comment period ends April 11th; please help by leaving a comment against this change?

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

The team at ESA mission control has initiated Gaia's final manoeuvre. The spacecraft is now moving away from the second Lagrange point to prevent it interfering with any current or future missions near this scientifically valuable point in space.

#NASA's #Mars #Perseverance rover

Mars Perseverance Sol 1457: Left Navigation Camera (Navcam)

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mul...

NASA/JPL-Caltech/j. Roger
🔭

Ahh, this turned out beautifully. I was kinda surprised when I heard it was going to be an 8x2 mosaic, but wow, I'm so happy they went for it!

Duna_Vista target (Mars) - 3D model by LPG-3D This is a high-resolution Digital Outcrop Model of the Duna Vista MAHLI “dog’s eye” target in the sulfate unit of Gale crater, Mars. This model is made using only 15 photos taken by...

I can never get tired of 3D outcrop models with the amazing MAHLI images onboard Curiosity! 😍
Here a small eroded surface revealing probable climbing ripples.
📸raw @NASAJPL archive
skfb.ly/puXww
@terrasabaea.bsky.social

The HHS rule banning trans care from many ACA plans is open for public comment now. Only 3 comments so far.

Embarrassing how the media is completely ignoring this. There's likely over 200,000 trans people on ACA plans (1% of 24 million)

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

This image shows the inner Zodiacal Light, a stable amorphous band of light brightest near the Sun. It is looming above the bright outlined Lunar horizon. This 'horizon glow' is still not settled in its origin. I think it is 'rim glow' from the barely hidden Sun shining through the 'fluffy' dust covering the surface. Some think it is actually levitated dust but I doubt that happens enough to look like this. The lighting I describe seems to me to be sufficient to explain what is seen.

Sunset on the Moon, from a photo released today in the NASA/Firefly Aerospace press conference. I have color balanced the original to get rid of the green hue near the center, which is a camera artifact. We see the overexposed inner Zodiacal Light looming above the bright horizon 'rim lighting'.

You won’t see this in the nyt… At least 12 peer-reviewed studies that support gender care as safe and beneficial, and support trans inclusion in sports have been ignored by the nyt over the past year

The Cass Review only exists because transphobic politicians were angry that all the actual scientific studies kept on contradicting their ideology and commissioned a report specifically to get the outcome they wanted. Needless to say, that renders it, among other things, invalid as a study.

An orchid planter with white, yellow, and red orchids set against a white wall. Gulal powder coats the plants.

Had a wonderful time at the orchid exhibition last night! Super vibrant colors everywhere

Hmm, this seems like one of the darker lunar eclipses I've seen

love paying 75% of the in-person registration to get like 20% of the networking benefits

I'm not really sure what happened. Really sucks though - there are myriad issues with the virtual poster session, and it's frustrating to see barriers put up against people trying to communicate their science where the eyeballs are in any way they can.

lol sounds like my attempt to present at my poster via livestream got shut down :(

I'd definitely be interested to chat at some point, but unfortunately already have plans for tomorrow night (got tickets to an orchid show at the botanical gardens)

I believe the setup on his end is a tablet connected to a hotspot set up on a stand in the poster hall, and I'll do a video call in through google meet. Not sure if it'll work, but we thought it was worth giving it a shot

Misson: #HERA
12 March 2025 gravity-assist
Target: #DEIMOS #MARS

www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

ESA/JAXA/j. Roger

I couldn't write an #LPSCHaiku I was happy with within the 5/7/5 structure. So I borrowed the related tanka form (5/7/5/7/7) for a little more room to work.

In ancient rock slide: // Sulfur, in element form // encases rubble // and spreading atoms yonder, // clothes rocks in myriad forms.

“My ability to feed email text into LLMs is why I earn $6 million a year while adjuncts earn $35,000”

A scientific poster titled 'Examining Martian Cloud Properties with TGO/CaSSIS'. The poster has several labeled CaSSIS images of clouds.

If you need your cloud fix, you can head on over to my #LPSC2025 poster and hear about the newest addition to the Alex family of projects

False colour Asteroid Framing Camera image of Deimos ahead of Mars

What would Deimos look like to an astronaut in space around Mars? None of Hera's instruments are equivalent to the naked human eye, but here is the science team's first attempt. The 'saddle' between two peaks of Deimos shows up as a shadow

Ooh, this is a really neat presentation! It's mind-boggling to think there's a population of asteroids that are actually boulders blown off the Moon by impacts!

Carlos and I worked out this approach last month, so we didn't plan for this, but his poster is *literally* right next door (I'm at 145, he's at 146). Be sure to check out his work on using new clustering algorithms to identify geochemically distinctive terrains on Mars from gamma ray spectroscopy!

A poster in the LPSC hall. The poster is titled "Textural Relationships Associated with a Martian Native Sulfur Deposit in Gale Crater". A context map shows the location of the deposit in Gediz Vallis. A large photo shows a zoned block with a tan interior and a gray, crusty rim. It is surrounded by MAHLI photos from the deposit, showing rock textures at micron to millimeter scales. The interior of the block has granular textures resembling typical Gale Crater bedrock. The outer zone has grayish and whitish coatings. Elemental sulfur stones scattered around the block have a smooth, light appearance. A wider view of a crushed elemental sulfur rock shows internal voids and possible crystal growths. Photos from various locations on the outcrop show a vertical drop-off in sulfur stone abundance and sulfur-rich alteration textures. Some observations also suggest that the elemental sulfur was emplaced within porosity existing within the upper Gediz Vallis ridge deposit. These suggest sulfur was emplaced primarily near the base of the channel, likely through a "bottom-up" mechanism.

Interested in elemental sulfur on Mars? Check out my #LPSC2025 poster this evening, where I look at the deposit from scales small to big! I am not actually in person, but with the help of my friend Carlos Gary-Bicas, I'm hoping to have a virtual presence! Stop by and say hi if you get a chance!

Sorry I didn't get to Zoom, but I wanted to say Mt. Mercou looked fantastic. I spent like half an hour looking around the sketchfab model

Just in! 📸 The first images from yesterday’s #HeraMission flyby of Mars and its moon Deimos. 👇 www.esa.int/Space_Safety...