David Rodriguez

This is now more than double the NASA budget, which the White House wants to slash.

JPL Workforce Decimated - Eos NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., laid off 550 people, a roughly 11% reduction of its workforce.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory laid off 11% of its staff today, including many people working on an active Mars rover mission. “There’s no whitewashing the ‘doomsday-eve’ feeling that's looming over all our heads,” wrote one JPL’er. eos.org/research-and...

The JWST image preview feature; seven images are displayed in a grid.

Feature update: we've added album previews to our JWST Search interface! Also included with our update is a Light/Dark mode toggle. archive.stsci.edu/contents/new...

Thousands of NASA employees to bid farewell to the NASA they knew As October begins, thousands of longtime NASA employees are leaving the agency. 4000+ will exit by January 9, 2026, changing NASA forever.

Thousands of NASA employees to bid farewell to the NASA they knew

Yes, NASA science is being destroyed, and the NASA we know is actively in the process of being gutted.

Here are the receipts.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #astro #nasa #usa

“The Destruction of NASA’s Mission” Whistleblowers reveal OMB’s Unconstitutional Plot to Gut the Agency

New from Committee on Commerce, Science, Transportation Ranking Member Maria Cantwell.

NOTE: This is indeed what I have seen going on inside NASA.
🧪🔭

www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...

When flagship programs are underfunded by Congress, NASA & NSF have to find that money elsewhere, which means cutting programs that are paying the salaries of researchers and people supporting research.

Bottom line - stop calling it "cutting waste" when the gov't cuts science. It's mass layoffs.

Title screen for a game called Penguin Sledding. The title is in bold blue letter, with the background a solid white. There are three buttons with the text Start, Credits, Quit. The Start button is blue while the others are grey. There are a few pixel art sprites in the screen, including green trees, grey clouds, a dark grey rock, and a penguin to the left.

Made a simple little #game with #Godot Engine over the past month, inspired by the old Ski Free. Just something to show off to my nieces when I visit them next.
You can play it at strakul.itch.io/penguin-sled...
Source code available at github.com/dr-rodriguez...

A pile of different-colored polyhedral dice

Oh no, I'm becoming a dice goblin. Send help.... or send dice.
Moar dice! #TTRPG

A collection of books, handouts, dice, and cards for a role-playing game. Some of the text reads Stormlight World Guide and Welcome to Roshar. They sit atop grey and black bedding.

Got my books and materials for the #Cosmere #RPG! I could have used this a few weeks ago when I ran a one-shot 🤣
Now I get to do a deep dive (I only skimmed the PDFs I got earlier).
#TTRPG

New Blog Post: A book review for Translation State by Ann Leckie
Another book in the Imperial Rach universe featuring 3 distinct characters exploring what it means to be human
strakul.blogspot.com/2025/09/book...
#Books 💙📚 #booksy

Folks (I believe all costumed cast members) open the festival with dancing around the pole

King Henry VIII inspects a "painting" of an eligible noblewoman to consider her for marriage. This was part of this year's storyline.

Jacques ze Whipper, internet sensation, with some opening remarks and whipping action. Alas, no Kpop Demon Hunter song requests were permitted this time.

Ses Carny on stage throwing knives at his assistant. Well, technically around the assistant- no one wanted to get hurt.

Fun day at the #Maryland Renaissance Festival with work friends. Very hot and crowded, but got to buy some dice and see music and shows, including Jacques ze Whipper's show, which pops up from time to time in my YouTube Shorts.
#RennFaire

Watched a few videos and tutorials on #Godot after seeing a developer talk about their process. It's quite interesting and after only a few hours I made something: a simple dice roller.
Not sure how far I'll take this- I've never done any game development, but now I have all sorts of ideas. 😅

Book Review: Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey Random thoughts from a book-loving Puerto Rican astronomer/data scientist in Baltimore.

New Blog Post: A book review for Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
strakul.blogspot.com/2025/08/book...
The first book of The Expanse series, a modern take on space opera in the solar system (with a really good TV show)
#Books #booksky 📚💙

A table set up with a white poster board and many tokens and dice ready for a role-playing session. Several sheets are in the foreground for player handouts. In the background are some blue cups filled with glowing marbles as props.

Getting all set up for tomorrow's #TTRPG session! We're trying out the #Cosmere rule set, which I've been excited to play in. 🗡⛈️🌟

As of July 2025, @mast-news.bsky.social contains nearly 300 million astronomical observations!

These new wallpaper images depict MAST’s View of the Sky. Download yours now: https://spacetelescope.github.io/mast-blog/mast-heatmap.html 🔭 🧪

The donuts here are my go-to whenever I offer to bring in food for work events. 🍩😋

A book open to show black pages with white text. The second page shows a color image of a woman obscured by a bookmark.

A black and gold hardcover book next to a bookmark, a pin in its wrapper, and a sticker. The book features a golden bird and reads Isles of the Emberdark, Brandon Sanderson, Illustrations by Esther Hi'Ilani Candari.

Got my goodie box for Sanderson's Secret Project #5- Isles of the Emberdark. Did not expect the book to be so cool- hardcover, color art, and a third of it in black pages! Very neat. Plus sticker, pin, and bookmark. 🙂
#Books 💙📚

The Space Telescope Science Institute's MAST archive contains 300 million astronomical observations from over 23 different missions.

Here is an animation showing how the archive has built up over time.

Credit: Julie Imig, STScI

MAST background in "standard" sky projection, in hues of blue. Lighter blue areas mark lots of observations, while darker areas are less. Numerous patterns are visible, like the continuous viewing zones as ovals in the lower-left and upper right, patterns from overlapping TESS FFIs, or the Kepler footprint shapes stamped along the ecliptic and in the original Kepler field in the upper-right.

A grid of 16 images, 4x4, showing the sky background only for specific missions to get a sense of where in the sky and how much of it each mission observed to at least some depth.

Ever wondered what the "MAST Sky" looks like, from our ~6 PB of data spanning 3 decades...check this out! spacetelescope.github.io/mast-blog/ma...

Really fun project led by the very talented Julie Imig at MAST, showing mission coverage sky-projected! They make VERY good video backgrounds, btw. 🔭

Release day for the #Cosmere #TTRPG! I did not expect the email to come so early, now I'll be distracted all day at work. 🤣
The World Guide alone has so much cool art and nearly 300 pages long.

A companion star …. Inside Betelgeuse’s atmosphere…. You think you know some stuff about the Universe but there’s always more surprises! 🙃🔭✨

A section of the Cat’s Paw Nebula, a local star-forming region composed of gas, dust, and young stars. Four roughly circular areas are toward the center of the frame: a small oval toward the top left, a large circle in the top center, and two ovals at bottom left and right. Each circular area has a luminous blue glow, with the top center and bottom left areas the brightest. Brown-orange filaments of dust, which vary in density, surround these four bluish patches and stretch toward the frame’s edges. Small zones, such as to the left and right of the top-center blue circular area, appear darker and seemingly vacant of stars. Toward the center are small, fiery red clumps scattered among the brown dust. Many small, yellow-white stars are spread across the scene, some with eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of Webb. A few larger blue-white stars with diffraction spikes are scattered throughout, mostly toward the top left and bottom right.

Hooray for three years of paw-sitively amazing #NASAWebb science! To celebrate, the telescope examined a singular “toe bean” of the Cat’s Paw Nebula, a massive star-forming region. Webb reveals gas, dust, and massive young stars: webbtelescope.pub/4khJK9T 🔭

Reply with an image of your pet’s paws! 🐾

Book Review: Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson Random thoughts from a book-loving Puerto Rican astronomer/data scientist in Baltimore.

New Blog Post: A book review for Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
strakul.blogspot.com/2025/07/book...
A fast-paced standalone novel set in the Cosmere with tropical islands, magical birds, and futuristic spaceships.
#Books #booksky 📚💙

The work our talented team does to ensure the public learns about discoveries made with NASA telescopes, and our place in the Universe, risks being lost without at least keeping NASA’s funding flat. The current budget plan removes almost all of it. If this matters to you, make sure your reps know.

Book Review: Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson Random thoughts from a book-loving Puerto Rican astronomer/data scientist in Baltimore.

New Blog Post: A book review for Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
strakul.blogspot.com/2025/06/book...
A great epic fantasy novel with an interesting premise- what is the world like 1,000 years after the hero failed?
#Books #booksky 📚💙

And there's a cool sonification if you click "Listen" on the skyviewer app
skyviewer.app/skysynth
Seems like every galaxy/star is getting a note and you can drag around to listen to the image (or let it animate and scan through it). Very neat!

Skyviewer

Want to see NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's Cosmic Treasure Chest for yourself?

Explore using Rubin's Skyviewer! There are billions of pixels to explore, and you might be the the first to lay eyes on a small, distant galaxy! #RubinFirstLook #CaptureTheCosmos

skyviewer.app

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

I remember watching that as a kid! At least, I think it's the one with the main character being from the modern times? And using science to defeat or nullify magic near the end? Good times, but also sad if you're a fan of both science and magic.

Ha, I've been watching The Expanse series recently (and enjoying it) and now I hear Owlcat is making a game set in it?! It's such a great universe. I've enjoyed Owlcat's Pathfinder and Warhammer CRPGs, though this one is an action RPG which I don't play as often.