James Paul Mason

Happy National Postdoc Appreciation Week! 🧑‍🎓 🔭 🥳
LASP loves our postdocs! At our lab, they do everything from designing small satellites to building space instruments and analyzing data from other planets.
#nationalpostdocappreciationweek

@snowbikemike.bsky.social get well soon!!! So ready to see you the battlefield next couple weekends

@snowbikemike.bsky.social @kindafunnyvids.bsky.social interested in your thoughts on Delta Force after the KFGD today as a fellow Battlefield fan. I haven’t given Delta Force a shot but it looks like it might tick a lot of the same boxes.

Oh and for those interested, here's the graphic without all the PBR impacts. It's a nice complement to the Decadal (imho) and something I plan to maintain as a living document going forward.

It is really depressing that all of the excitement from the forward-looking Decadal -- a Congressionally-mandated major planning report we expend tremendous community effort preparing once per decade -- has been usurped by the decimation the administration is proposing.

The Heliophysics System Laboratory is a term that was coined less than a year ago with the release of our Heliophysics Decadal Survey, referring to the full complement of all of these observatories regardless of funding agency; it also includes major modeling efforts not depicted

There are similar graphics out already that focus on NASA, so I wanted to make a graphic that also includes the impacts at NOAA and NSF as well (the NSF observatories that appear safe in this graphic are actually just ones that don't have detail in the PBR so who knows...)

It will take us decades to build back to where we are right now. In the meantime, other countries (China in particular) are building their own space weather capabilities and at least in China's case, are unlikely to share information with us.

The first of these dedicated to solar observation launched in 1994. The most recent in March this year. They are all still running. If we just turn them off, we can't just turn them back on later if the political landscape changes.

Here's what the President's Budget Request does to the fleet of observations that has _literally taken us decades to build_ that monitors the explosive Sun and how solar storms impact Earth and other planetary bodies.

I kept waiting for it to turn to funny 1 star reviews, similar to the series of posters for national parks highlighting 1 star reviews like this one

This time around, we made little Teflon molds for our Arathane+cabosil (fancy curing space rubber basically) that make sure the solar panels can handle the chatter of a rocket launch and the day-to-day of being in the lab while we go through integration and testing for @suncetcubesat.bsky.social

Bunch of nerds (I mean students at CU Boulder) learning from the master how to build the solar panels that will fly on @suncetcubesat.bsky.social and other upcoming #cubesats.

With each iteration of solar panels we've flown over the past decade, we've made little improvements.

☀️🧪🔭🛰️🚀

To learn more about the award, eligibility, and see past awards, check out our webpage. (The new winners will be posted there soon).

spd.aas.org/prizes/popul...

Johannes Kepler and the Case of the Disappearing Sunspots Today’s paper uses Johannes Kepler’s pre-telescope sunspot drawings to re-examine irregular 17th century solar activity.

In the student category, Annelia Anderson for the article "Johannes Kepler and the Case of the Disappearing Sunspots”, published on @astrobites.bsky.social

@astroannelia.bsky.social

astrobites.org/2024/08/29/j...

In the scientist category, Ryan French for the corpus of work throughout the year on TikTok, YouTube, and other social media; as well as an article on @spacedotcom.bsky.social

@ryanjfrench.bsky.social

www.tiktok.com/@ryanjfrench

www.youtube.com/@Sun.Scientist

www.space.com/return-auror...

What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet Disturbances on the sun may have the potential to devastate our power grid and communication systems. When the next big storm arrives, will we be prepared for it?

In the journalist category, Kathryn Schulz for the article "What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Plane", published in @newyorker.com

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

This year's American Astronomical Society Solar Physics Division Popular Media Awards have been selected!
@aas.org.

These awards go each year to a journalist, a scientist, and a student for articles or other media focused on the sun or its effects on Earth.
☀️🧪🔭🛰️🚀

Me trying multiple browsers, multiple devices to login to Marriott wifi.

"Why the hell isn't this working?!"

🤦‍♂️

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

The cuts "would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with [Hubble & JWST] that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years." Would also apparently close NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Huge, HUGE loss for science.

NASA is something every American can be and should be proud of. And for every dollar spent on it, it returns more on that investment to the economy.
Example: Their 2023 budget was $25B, and they added over $75B to the economy that year.
This is a horrible decision.

How many spam texts/calls are our phones actually blocking? I feel like I get a ton of them but am I seeing 1% slip through or am I getting basically everything attempted? I always click the "junk" button but is that being aggregated to benefit everybody?

☀️ #PI_Daily incredible week for @suncetcubesat.bsky.social got our custom battery pack fit checked, telescope camera code tests started, x-band radio testing processed, solar panel Kapton tape laser cutting dialed in and started onboarding a couple of new PhD students.

☀️ #PI_Daily (from yesterday) talking to one engineer about radio stuff, two more pull me over to work on camera stuff, a PhD student working on battery beside us, and while standing in the lab talking with them all, get a call from NASA about budget transfer stuff. Exciting and scattered times!

Likewise! By this time next year we should have a good number of those overlays

#PI_Daily it's one of those (fun!) weeks that are all over the map.
So far today: preparing to play with space cameras, cut kapton tape with lasers, build solar panels, make X-band RF measurements, FCC licensing, and filling out documents for launch.
@suncetcubesat.bsky.social ☀️ is on track!

When I saw MMS in the GSFC clean rooms, they showed me that each of the 4 had a unique color for all documentation as well as unofficial names: John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Did you all do anything similar for disambiguation?

If you're a big fan, you can buy SunCET merch from our LandsEnd store.

In fact, several other missions and #heliophysics ☀️ related efforts also have storefronts and they're being collected here (including SunCET):

business.landsend.com/store/heliop...

That thing was so cool!!!