Dr. Caitlin Ahrens

Potential Artemis II launch dates in April include April 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 30.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman says rollback to Vehicle Assembly Building to repair helium flow problem on Artemis II rocket will take March launch window for Moon mission out of consideration. Here are the potential launch dates in April.

Cartoon of Godzilla sitting on all fours, facing away from the viewer, with a small cloud in front of his snoot, clearly from a grouchy snort. Text: NO TALK ME I ANGY.

Grumpzilla.

i procrastinated work to ask @echinoblog.bsky.social questions about that "smiling rock" fossil and ended up with this after everyone's verbal explanation.

lots of people seemed confused so maybe this helps. (see the entire thread for context)

#NASAWebb provided the first vertical view of Uranus's ionosphere, revealing auroras shaped by its tilted magnetic field: https://esawebb.org/news/weic2602

STScI is opening its doors for a celebration of creativity at the intersection of art, science, and community on May 6 at 6 p.m.!

The evening will feature an art exhibit of works by local artists inspired by space and astronomy.

More information: https://www.facebook.com/share/17HoRP1ZxM/

5 Oval shaped pins with gold outlines with an oval cutout in the middle with a yellow slideable star: Spoons: Lavender background Hunger Scale: Red background Migraine Scale: Blue background Speaking vs Non Speaking: Green background The first one has SHE, THEY, HE on top. At the bottom there's HER, THEM, HIM. White background.

Mushroom and Cat Compression Gloves

Galaxy and Moon Bunny Artist Glove

Galaxy, Cat and Mushroom Wrist Braces

Happy Black History Month!

It costs 0$ to Repost a Black disabled queer small business! It could lead to my next sale.

I sell pins, compression gloves, artist gloves, back braces, knee braces, wrist braces, compression socks, cute bags & more!

Store: Bibipins.com

'Smiling' fossil discovered in Northumberland The unusual looking fossil is estimated to be a few hundred million years old dating to the Carboniferous period.

[Lindisfarne]

Me: (chanting) teeth, teeth-

Other fossil hunters: teeth, TEETH

British Geological Society: [pounding its clipboard] TEETH, TEETH, TEETH!

4 physicists standing along a berm and in the tall grasses of the Everglades wetlands, conducting GPR surveys as a collaboration between Xavier Comas's research group & USGS.

📸 Do you work in near-surface geophysics? I'm looking for a few community photos (fieldwork, lab, classes, conferences) to include in a photo gallery in the upcoming issue of the EEGS magazine. Focus is environmental & engineering near-surface geophysics.

⚒️🧪 #WomenInSTEM #QueerInSTEM #TransInSTEM

NASA hopes to avoid more hydrogen leaks during 2nd Artemis 2 rocket fueling test today: Watch live Today's (Feb. 19) wet dress rehearsal will determine if SLS is ready to fly.

NASA hopes to avoid more hydrogen leaks during 2nd Artemis 2 rocket fueling test today: Watch live www.space.com/space-explor...

Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my Hyundaaaaiiii

Great stuff for the fans of Venus I know are out there!

🧪🔭

Slow build cosmic horror 🤌 ‘twas amazing to watch

Black and white dataset of the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter slope data at the Moon showing craters and some geologic features

Working on some lunar LOLA stuff and listening to the Iron Lung soundtrack. It then occurred to me that the LOLA data looks eerily similar to the X-ray ocean (also a moon!!!) images from Iron Lung game and film #IronLung #markiplier

This sounds like a very fun read! Adding it to my reading list! 📚

#ITeachPhysics another relative velocity video for you

calcite grain in thin section

Ultra-thin sections of marbles are another story!

Strongly deformed calcite grain with deformation twins and recrystallized new grains forming all around.

FOV 3 mm
Ortano Marble, Elba

⚒️ #geology

Pink petarasite crystal group at center with an unspecified black mineral attached to upper left. The golden brown mineral is aegirine, mostly on the left side and lower right. The Poudrette Quarry is the type locality for petarasite.

Petarasite Na₅Zr₂Si₆O₁₈(Cl,OH)·2H₂O
Poudrette quarry, Mont Saint-Hilaire, La Vallée-du-Richelieu RCM, Montérégie, Québec, Canada
FOV = 1.22 mm
#4019
NFS

This seems like a great moment to talk about the importance of science communication!

Science communication matters because it connects scientific research with people, giving folks information they need to make informed decisions about everything from health to hazards.

Not enough people know that in order to be considered for an Eisner Award... you have to SEND YOUR SHIT IN!!!!

The ONLY works considered are those that are submitted. And ANYONE can submit.

Hello bluesky, I'm a theoretical chemist at University of Bayreuth. My group works on atomistic modeling of energy materials with electronic structure methods and ML. I'm hoping to connect to other #compchem and #materials folks!

Taken from NASA website "This illustration shows the distribution of permanently shadowed regions (in blue) on the Moon poleward of 80 degrees South latitude. They are superimposed on a digital elevation map of the lunar surface (grey) from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument on board NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. NASA/GSFC/Timothy P. McClanahan"

1/3🧪⚒️What if the 🌔is hiding #history frozen in places #sunlight has never touched?

S2E11 @ahrensscience.bsky.social joins the pod & we talk about #lunar permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) — cold polar craters that may store H2O ice, ancient chemistry, and influence future missions on the #Moon.

Activity Summary:  Episode 42 of the ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption began around 1:50 p.m. HST on February 15, 2026, and is still continuing. Precursory activity for this episode took place over the preceding day (1:05 pm HST February 14), and included over 10 overflows in a range of sizes as well as in-vent spattering. In the hours leading up to the episode onset, significantly larger overflows issued from both north and south vent. Continuous overflows began at 1:08 pm HST from the south vent with overflows from the north vent starting later. As of 2:45 p.m. HST, both vents are fountaining, with fountain heights of approximately 1000-1200 feet high (300-350 meters) and about 800-100 feet high (250-300 meters) from north and south vent, respectively. The episode is producing ash and tephra, most of which appears to be dispersing to the southwest under the influence of relatively strong ground-level winds from the northeast. The plume top has reached over 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) above sea level and may potentially spread fine ash and Pele's hair in other directions depending on the ultimate height reached. No tephra fall has been reported in public areas at this time.

HAWAIIAN VOLCANO OBSERVATORY STATUS REPORT
U.S. Geological Survey
Sunday, February 15, 2026, 2:58 PM HST (Monday, February 16, 2026, 00:58 UTC)

LAAAAVVVAAAAAAAA

Kīlauea is doing its thing again

Watch live:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk0t...

Franzi Schimmer captured this Grizzly bear in Brooks Falls, Alaska just floating along, tippy-tapping down the river, browsing the salmon.

Prior to hibernation, up to 40% of a bear's body mass is fat, which is less dense than water (~0.9 g/cm^2), so the murder-monster is also a floaty-boaty.

Europeans: Americans don’t know any geography outside of the United States
Americans: We don’t know any geography INSIDE the United States either!

Photo of an Ancient Egyptian artists’s small, naturalistic painting of a standing hippopotamus on a flake of white limestone, dated c. 1479–1425. The hippo is painted in profile with head lowered and to the right. The body is outlined with black paint and painted brown. The belly, eyes, and ears are painted red. Although the ancient Egyptians were well aware of the danger and destructive power of hippos, this painted hippo has rather a friendly face! Dimensions: H. 10.8 cm (4 1/4 in); W. 12 cm (4 3/4 in); Th. 1.7 cm (11/16 in) Egyptian artists made practice sketches on flakes of limestone, sometimes for use as templates when transferring an image to the wall of a tomb or a temple. Limestone flakes were readily available because of the constant construction of temples and rock-cut tombs. A number of such sketches were recovered at Deir el-Bahri during the 1922-23 MMA excavations. This painting was acquired by the museum in the division of finds.

Happy #WorldHippoDay! 🦛❤️

To celebrate here’s a lovely naturalistic painting of a hippo on a small flake of limestone. Painted by an Egyptian artist some 3,500 years ago!

📷 The Met www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

#Archaeology

NASA chief vows to solve SLS rocket fueling issues before Artemis III - UFO FEED John Honeycutt, chair of NASA’s Artemis II mission management team, said the decision to relax the safety limit between Artemis I and Artemis II was grounded

NASA chief vows to solve SLS rocket fueling issues before Artemis III

https://www.ufofeed.com/209833/nasa-chief-vows-to-solve-sls-rocket-fueling-issues-before-artemis-iii/

John Honeycutt, chair of NASA’s Artemis II mission management team, said the decision to relax the safety limit between …

Toilets in Space - Escape Velocity Space News In case you haven’t noticed, we’re tracking the number of toilets in space (again)! While some might think it’s a waste of time to track such a crappy stat, it brings the team’s inner 12 year olds joy...

With the successful launch of crew 12, there are now 9 toilets in space.

International Space Station: 4
Crew Dragon Docked at ISS: 1
Soyuz Docked at ISS: 1
Tiangong Space Station: 2
Shenzhou Docked at TSS: 1

cosmoquest.org/x/evsn/toile...

Crew-12 inside the International Space Station

🚀 Docking success!

#Crew12 arrived at the International Space Station on 14 February at 20:15 GMT/21:15 CET, with Sophie Adenot on board, officially starting mission #εpsilon.

esa.int//Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Official_start_of_ESA_astronaut_Sophie_Adenot_s_epsilon_mission

Whimsical Wavelengths: Chemical love letters of black widow spiders - Freshet News Chemical signalling predates vision and sound, writers Burnaby scientist Jeffrey Zurek in his Whimsical Wavelengths column

For today I ,the host of the #podcast, published a new 🧪column in the #FreshetNews (my local paper). Foreshadowing to a future podcast episode?

Whimsical Wavelengths: Chemical love letters of black widow spiders

www.freshetnews.ca/whimsical-wa...