Chara

I'm delighted to see that my @science.esa.int Mars Express VMC video is featured on today's #APOD 🔭

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap26030...

For all the talks about AIs and machines taking over the Earth, robots like this should really be humanity's successors.

Learning about the TRAPPIST-1 system—an environment composed of seven rocky planets orbiting a red dwarf star—has been an ongoing endeavor. And now #NASAWebb is expanding the scientific story in exciting and new ways: https://bit.ly/4kH9X3i

Ugh, this is so stupid. If we’re going to stop charging the clocks, we should switch to standard time. All of the evidence I have seen says standard time is better for your health. #BC #YVR @davidebybc.bsky.social @bcgovernment.bsky.social news.gov.bc.ca/releases/202...

#exoplanets

I think I know which paper you are referring to

An image of the speaker, Miki Nakajima. She is smiling and looking into the camera. She has long dark hair and is wearing earrings & a white striped shirt with a black blazer. She is stood outdoors, leaning against a fence, with some trees visible but blurred in the background.

A photo of... a magma ocean?! Not quite, because that would be a really difficult picture to take since we do not have any on hand. Instead, this is a photo that was taken in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, in May 1954 during the eruption of the Kilauea Volcano. The floor is literally lava, blackened and fragmented with what appears to be whirlpools of red and yellow lava in their centres. Close enough? Credit: Photo by J. P. Eaton, May 31, 1954

You've maybe heard of ocean planets 🌊🪐 but what about *electric magma* ocean planets?! 🔥⚡🌋

For our next #RockyWorldsDiscussion on Thu 5 March @ 14:00 UTC, Miki Nakajima will present exciting simulations on magma ocean dynamos in Earth and super-Earths

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...

🧪🔭

Ideally one could use these contributions to describe the philosophy of science and the demarcation problem, illuminate why mathematics is foundational and indispensable to the task, and turn these crackpots' enthusiasm and interest into a positive educational experience for everybody.

Image by the DESI imaging legacy surveys, showing the white dwarf in the middle.

I did fall down a rabbit hole and expanded the wiki article of LP 40-365. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LP_40-365

This "white dwarf" (if you can call it that) is likely the surviving remnant of a type Iax supernova.

Strange atmosphere dominated by neon (60% mass) and oxygen (30%) with some magnesium (8%).

I was born in an Iranian prison. My parents were held in their jails. My uncles lie in their mass graves. Nothing you can tell me about the crimes of the Iranian regime that I haven't lived in blood and bone. That doesn't mean I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins. If your vision of liberation comes only through the destruction of innocent lives, then it's not freedom you're after. Sahar Delijani, Iranian author

I am pro Iranian people. I stand with them against their own government’s repression AND against the imperial violence in the form of bombs dropped from the sky from Israel & the US who have already killed hundreds.

I support neither imperialism or dictatorship.

Sahar Delijani said it best:

This artwork depicts Epsilon Eridani b, or Ægir, as a Jupiter-like planet. It also features three fictional major satellites based on the Galilean moons, scaled correctly relative to the planet.

A thread to put my art on Ægir (Epsilon Eridani b), part of my project to build this planetary system.

#astronomy #space #art #exoplanet #EpsilonEridani

Worlds Next Door. III. Indirect Evidence for Enhanced Atmospheric Metallicity and/or the Presence of Water Clouds in the Nearest Jupiter-analog $ε$ Eri b We present the most sensitive direct imaging search for the nearest ($d = 3.2$ pc) Jupiter-analog exoplanet, $ε$ Eri b, with JWST/NIRCam coronagraphy between 4-5 $μ$m (F444W). We achieve a 5$σ$ contra...

Today's arXiv has a notable preprint: humanity's latest direct imaging attempt of the nearest Jupiter analogue exoplanet!

arxiv.org/abs/2602.23423

It's a non-detection. Which implies it may be similar to Jupiter (high-Z or water clouds)!

Also the star is expected to be older (1.1 ± 0.1 Ga) now.

2D digital illustration. On the left is a person with black hair tied into a ponytail wearing orange glasses, a brown t-shirtm, and black shorts. They're sat cross-legged with their head resting in their hands. They look disinterested. Behind them is a brain interface AR halo. In the middle is a large ceramic pot decorated with many tiny blue/indigo five-pointed stars. In the pot is a bizarre bulbous greyish growth resembling small spherical blobs sprouting off of larger spheres, down into the pot. Long strands dangle from the smallest blobs. On the right a gloved hand is holding one of these smaller blobs which has had a corner cut out of it, revealing its fairly featureless interior.

Bulb Coral (actually a type of fungus) is a medicinal GMO found throughout the Solar System, its main produce is one of the key ingredients in space osteoporosis medicine, which allows folks to spend long periods of time in zero or partial gravity without suffering irreversible skeletal damage.
#art

Starting this Friday, four separate #JWST programmes will be exploring physical processes in Jupiter's atmosphere and ionosphere. We're asking amateur astronomers to help provide context imaging over the next few weeks to understand how the atmosphere is changing with time. #planetaryscience

An electrical room I built in my game.
#ScreenshotSaturday #GameDev

I think I've seen this talk on youtube before, really interesting to see how sub-neptune abundances fall around fully-convective stars.

TESS Planet Occurrence Rates Reveal the Disappearance of the Radius Valley Around Mid-to-Late M Dwarfs We present the deepest systematic search for planets around mid-to-late M dwarfs to date. We have surveyed 8134 mid-to-late M dwarfs observed by TESS with a custom built pipeline and recover 77 vetted...

Interesting new M dwarf #exoplanet occurrence rates paper! I'm glad to see that the new TESS result (with much lower uncertainties) is consistent with our Kepler result!

arxiv.org/abs/2602.23364

We have a hidden column on the NASA Exoplanet Archive called 'Number of exomoons' and I AM SO READY TO BUST IT OUT WHEN NEEDED.

2 new JWST exoplanet transmission spectroscopy, a new transiting exoplanet catalogue is out, a sim showing subneptunes’ eccentricities hint at their compositions, dearth of subneptunes around fully convective stars, a paper in GJ 504, asteroseismic work, Pleiades binary ecc/rotation, and η Car!

Today’s #arXiv day is another STACKED day!

oh by the way I got a new true colour for Ganymede's aurora, and it's just...red.

Doing some research on the history of Mars

I sure hope it'd be a more productive 25 years than the last.

#Celestia #CelestiaProject

The secret to higher birth rates? Vigorously opposing authoritarianism

misgendered by the machine 🚫👩‍🔬🚫

It's actually quite depressing that LLMs will replace women scientists with the name of men - especially when these tools are being pushed *so* hard (even by universities!) as tools that should be the primary way to look things up...

MORE underrated astro Youtubers! Subscribe to them please! (1)
* Geo Girl (geology/planetary) youtube.com/@geogirl
* Dr. Fatima (academia/politics) www.youtube.com/@dr.fatima
* Oge Okoronkwo (PhD vlogs) www.youtube.com/@ogeokoronkwo
* Syzygy "Z" Altair (Vtuber) www.youtube.com/@SyzygyAltai...

This artwork depicts a personification of Mars, with a notable difference: the north polar cap is much more extensive than it is today. Mars is tilted by 35 degrees, and has a relaxed expression. The tiny moon Phobos is visible in this image.

Mars's axial tilt oscillates with time due to gravitational interactions with other planets. When the tilt was higher than today, the polar ice sheets may have reached the mid-latitudes. Today, it is buried underground.

#ACelestialJournal #art #gijinka #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #Mars

I ask my students to imagine sending a robot that looks like them to gym class to do their pushups or laps or whatever. They understand practice in the context of physical work, and somehow the analogy to mental work makes it click.

(This also explains why it's not OK to resubmit old assignments!)

Stay tuned to Radio YZ Ceti: Isn’t that a magnetic conversation between star and planet? Astronomers have tuned their radio telescopes to YZ Ceti, and it might be crackling with a magnetic conversation of a star and its planet. Is this a breakthrough detection, or just stellar noise playi...

From Elise Koo: Astronomers have tuned their radio telescopes to YZ Ceti, and it might be crackling with a magnetic conversation of a star and its planet. Is this a breakthrough detection, or just stellar noise playing tricks on us? ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪
astrobites.org/2026/02/24/radio_yz_ceti/