AkaSci

Enjoy this well-crafted and thoroughly enjoyable article by Steve Desch cutting pseudo-science and its peddlers down to size using science, humor and a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Brilliant!
🤔 🤣
#Astronomy

A stunning image of Rubin observing the night sky over Earth as it conducts the 10-year LSST, a groundbreaking astronomical survey (Image credit: NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory/AURA/B. Quint)

Vera Rubin: "In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of 10. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance-to-knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about 3rd grade"

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is named in her honor.
#Astronomy
2/n

Portrait pic of Vera C. Rubin surrounded by globes of different planets. Image courtesy of Mark Godfrey (photographer).

Happy belated Birthday to Vera Rubin (July 23, 1928 – Dec 25, 2016), whose work revolutionized our understanding of the universe by confirming the existence of dark matter.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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#Astronomy
1/n

Hubble Space Telescope images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS are out! These were taken 5 hours ago. Plenty of cosmic rays peppering the images, but the comet's coma looks very nice and puffy. Best of luck to the researchers trying to write up papers for this... archive.stsci.edu/proposal_sea... 🔭

1. Graphic of the Juno spacecraft and an image of JunoCam attached to the spacecraft during ground testing 2. Pic of the two JunoCam assemblies - the camera head (CH) and the electronics unit (JDEA) 3. Diagram of the components in the two units Source: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/pub/e/downloads/JunoCam_Junos_Outreach_Camera.pdf The NASA article refers to the voltage regulator as the damaged part but describes the annealing process as applied to the camera head unit, which is located on the outside of the spacecraft body;

In an IEEE conference last week, NASA engineers explained how they fixed the Juno spacecraft’s failing JunoCam imager in late 2023 by heating and slow-cooling (annealing) its electronics.
👏
www.nasa.gov/missions/jun...
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#PlanetSci

As Jay said, many of the #BethesdaDeclaration signers will meet with him on Monday. And oh boy are we prepared!

While not every signer was invited, we worked together and with our colleagues across #NIH to bring our concerns—and evidence to back them up.

Buckle up, this will be a long thread. 🧵

AkaSci 🛰️ (@AkaSci@fosstodon.org) Attached: 1 image The many talents of Sir Brian May, PhD. Check out the long list of his books at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Brian+May+books&crid=22RZ12GRQBYST&sprefix=brian+may+books%2Caps%2C146 H...

Check out fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/1148... for some info on Dr. Brian May and his many contributions.

1. Stereo image of Dr. Brian May from his website https://brianmay.com/. View crossed-eyed or by staring at infinity. May has created stereo images for NASA, ESA and JAXA for various asteroids and other celestial objects. 2. A pair of stereoscopic images of the asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite, Selam, created using data collected by the L’LORRI camera on the NASA Lucy spacecraft in the minutes around closest approach on Nov. 1, 2023. To use this image pair to get a better sense of the 3D structure of the asteroids, either relax the axes of your eyes, as if staring through the screen to infinity (so that you are looking at the left image with your left eye and the right image with your right eye), or use a stereoscope. Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab for the original images/Brian May/Claudia Manzoni for stereo processing of the images 

Happy Birthday to Sir Brian May, born 19 July 1947, virtuoso musician and astrophysicist with a PhD from Imperial College London 😎.

Dr. May has collaborated with NASA on the New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx and DART missions, with JAXA on Hayabusa2 and with ESA on the Hera mission.

🎸🪐 🔭
#planetSci

Gemini North Observes Comet 3I/ATLAS - Gemini North telescope in Hawai‘i captures image of the third interstellar object ever discovered Interstellar objects are visitors from solar systems beyond our own, and the third ever such object, known as 3I/ATLAS, has just been discovered. Using the Gemini North telescope, astronomers have cap...

From NOIRLab: Interstellar visitor alert! Gemini
North in Hawai‘i captured Comet 3I/ATLAS, only the third known object from outside our solar system. #astronomy

Gemini/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/K. Meech (IfA/U. Hawaii)
Image Processing:Jen Miller & Mahdi Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)
🔗 noirlab.edu/public/news/...

Enhanced color global view of Pluto, taken when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 kilometers) away. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

10 years ago OTD at 11:50 UTC, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto, passing within 12,500 km at a speed of 13.78 km/s. It provided us with spectacular close-up images in multiple wavelengths and data on its atmosphere and geology.

More at fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/1148...

Happy Flyby Anniversary, New Horizons! Scientists are gathering in Laurel, MD this week, where @jhuapl.bsky.social is hosting a conference on Progress in Understanding the Pluto System to mark the occasion www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/plu...

Protecting pilgrims from infectious disease without diminishing their faith Over 660 million pilgrims gathered at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, India, this past February, and I'm now seeing the downstream consequences in my

"Over 660 million pilgrims gathered at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, India, this past February, and I’m now seeing the downstream consequences in my California clinic."

New piece I wrote. Big thanks to @thekibosch.bsky.social and @statnews.com.

www.statnews.com/2025/07/03/m...

4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.

Among all the big bad things happening on our planet, there's one Big Good Thing, the sudden, startling rise of solar energy.
It changes the power dynamic, in every sense of the word 'power.'
www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...

Graphic of the Comet Interceptor mission. ESA’s Comet Interceptor will be the first mission to visit a comet coming directly from the outer reaches of the Sun's realm, carrying material untouched since the dawn of the Solar System. Such objects are difficult to get close to because we can only detect them when they fly near the Sun, leaving little time to plan and launch a mission. That’s why, after launch, Comet Interceptor will first be 'parked' in space. While waiting, the spacecraft will orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, a stable gravitational point located 1.5 million kilometres directly 'behind' the Earth as viewed from the Sun. When a suitable pristine comet is detected by Earth-based telescopes, Comet Interceptor will travel to meet it. Once at the intercept location, the main spacecraft will release two probes to observe the comet from multiple directions at the same time. Comet Interceptor is an ESA-led mission in collaboration with JAXA. CREDIT: ESA

Too bad we do not yet have a mission like ESA’s Comet Interceptor, planned for launch in 2029, that can linger at the L2 Lagrange point and then race to meet a suitable comet or interstellar object for close study on demand.

www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
#Astronomy #PlanetSci
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Map of the inner solar system with trajectory of object 3I/ATLAS and its location on Jul 3, Sep 24, Oct 29 and Dec 19. https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=C%2F2025%20N1&view=VOP with overlays by me.

3I/ATLAS (aka C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and A11pl3Z) is an interstellar visitor, similar to ʻOumuamua in 2017.

The object will not pass close to Earth; perihelion will be around Oct 29, just inside the orbit of Mars. See map below.

More at fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/1147...
#Astronomy #PlanetSci

It’s not easy to navigate the maelstrom of misinformation. Grateful to @megtirrell.bsky.social & @drboulware.bsky.social.

This week, slides prepared for ACIP by former CHD leader Lyn Redwood cited a 2008 Neurotoxicology study on thimerosal and “long-term brain harm.” But the study doesn’t exist. 🧵

"In what is now basically a monthly tradition, SpaceX’s Starship once again went up in a glorious, cinematic explosion Wednesday night in Texas, providing another multimillion-dollar fireworks show for Musk’s legion of Twitter/X followers."
🤣
nickanderson.substack.com/p/just-a-scr...

1. Photograph of Escher making a reprint of Horseman, his ink roller in his left hand. 2. M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands, lithograph, January 1948

Happy Birthday to M. C. Escher, born OTD in 1898.

Like other famous artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Picasso, Escher was left-handed. Escher was forced at school to become ‘double-handed’, which was beneficial for his artform.

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1. Image of the Sun during an artificial solar eclipse. Against a black background, the Sun’s bright body is covered by a black disc, and light green hair-like tendrils extend from the black disc in all directions. Brighter green light peeks from behind the black disc’s edge, slowly fading towards the outer edges of the image. This image, captured in the visible light spectrum, shows the solar corona similarly to how a human eye would see it during an eclipse through a green filter. The hair-like structures were revealed using a specialised image processing algorithm. CREDIT: ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS/WOW algorithm 2. Image of the Sun taken during an artificial solar eclipse. Against a black background, the Sun’s bright body is covered by a black disc, and blue-green hair-like tendrils extend from the black disc in all directions. Brighter green light peeks from behind the black disc’s edge, slowly fading towards the outer edges of the image. This image shows observations in the coronal green line – a spectral line emitted by iron atoms that lost half of their electrons due to extremely high temperatures. This allows us to see the hottest contents of the corona, at up to 2 million degrees. On the upper left side, a hot loop can be seen extending from the Sun’s surface into the corona, a structure which generally appears following a solar flare. CREDIT: ESA/Proba-3/ASPIICS

Here are the first test images of the Sun’s Corona taken by the ESA Proba-3 mission.

The images were taken by the twin Proba-3 spacecraft, flying 150 m apart to create artificial total solar eclipses using the 1.4 m disc on the Occulter spacecraft.
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#Astronomy

RFK Jr. spouted dangerous vaccine falsehoods on national TV. As a parent and infectious diseases doctor, I couldn't stay silent. Here's what the data actually shows. 🧵

Graphic of a doughnut-shaped Universe from the article, with an image of Homer with a doughnut on hand added by me.

Is the Universe doughnut-shaped?
Was Homer Simpson right?

Happy (belated) National Donut Day 🍩

The universe may have a complex geometry — like a doughnut - www.sciencenews.org/article/univ...
Promise of Future Searches for Cosmic Topology - journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
#Astronomy

Table of summary of lunar landing missions in the 21st century

After the failure of the iscale HAKUTO-R M2 lander yesterday, here is an updated table of lunar landing missions in the 21st century.

Of 16 robotic missions, only 6 have succeeded in landing and completing their missions on the moon, 4 of them are from the Chinese Space Agency.
#Space #PlanetSci

It's Not Politics, It's Principle There are strong reasons to believe that motivated Americans will overcome this hateful regime

“Let’s keep the faith that the majority that rejects tyranny will prevail. There are days that it can be hard to see, but there are genuine reasons for optimism as the ideals and principles that built our nation continue to motivate the resistance.”

www.americaamerica.news/p/its-not-po...

Graph from the preprint paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.13407 comparing results with and without DMS/DMDS and with ethane.

Another study pours cold water on reports of the "detection" of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and possible life on planet K2-18b.

Authors of the study conclude other molecules besides DMS and DMDS such as ethane provide an equally good fit to the data.

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Plan view of orbits of 96 of 109 known distant minor planets and extreme trans-Neptunian objects (eTNOs) with aphelion distances Q > 200 AU as of January 2021 (JD 2459215.5). Orbits are from JPL's Small Body Database based on the epoch 31 May 2020 (JD 2459000.5). The remaining 13 minor planets are excluded from this diagram as their orbits are too uncertain, having uncertainty parameters U > 7. Orbits colored red are eTNOs with longitudes of pericenter aligned with the hypothetical Planet Nine while those colored blue are eTNOs anti-aligned with Planet Nine. Orbits colored pink are the three known sednoids (Sedna, 2012 VP113, Leleakuhonua) and orbits colored brown are scattered centaurs and damocloids with perihelion distances within Neptune's orbit (q < 29.9). For comparison, the predicted orbit of Planet Nine (a~500, e~0.25, i~20) is shown and labeled. Credit: Nrco0e Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_trans-Neptunian_object Approx. orbit of 2017 OF201 added by me.

Discovery of new extreme trans-Neptunian (TNO) object 2017 OF201.

Large enough at 700 km diameter to qualify as a dwarf planet. Orbit with aphelion of 1,632 AU extends to the inner Oort cloud and covers a region where few extreme TNOs have been detected.

arxiv.org/pdf/2505.15806
#Astronomy

JWST imaging and spectroscopy of MoM-z14. Top: 1 × 1′′ NIRCam images spanning 0.9-5μm show a compact source detected at ≳ 2μm that is entirely absent in bluer bands. Inset: NIRCam RGB image with NIRSpec MSA slitlets overlaid from our “Mirage or Miracle” survey. The source is well-centered and slit losses are modest such that the recovered spectral flux is fully consistent with the NIRCam imaging (see Appendix). Bottom: The prism spectrum (2D SNR spectrum on top, 1D spectrum with 1σ errors on the bottom) reveals that the disappearance of the source below 2μm in the imaging is due to an abrupt break whose sharpness implies it is a Lyman-α break. Furthermore, an array of emission lines (dashed lines) supporting the Lyman-α break interpretation is evident. The most prominent among these lines (N iv]λ1487˚A, C ivλ1548, 1551˚A, C iii]λ1907, 1909˚A) are typically the strong

A new title holder of the most distant galaxy - MoM-z14, which existed a mere 280 million years after the Big Bang, with a redshift value z = 14.44.

The redshift was confirmed with JWST NIRSpec/prism spectroscopy.

arxiv.org/pdf/2505.11263
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#Astronomy

A color photo of Nancy Grace Roman. She is standing next to a bank of analog instruments, which she is looking at while writing on a stack of papers held in her left hand. She has on a grey-blue top with an intricate design, and is wearing glasses. Her short, grey hair is wavy. The bank of instruments features several needle readouts, clustered in groups of two, three, or four.

Astronomer Nancy Grace Roman was born #OTD in 1925.

After early work in spectral classification and galactic evolution, she became NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy and did foundational work planning and overseeing the development of the Hubble Space Telescope. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

Image: NASA

5/11/2025- Family Separation www.timesfreepress.com/news/2025/ma...

The post by Roscosmos says "According to calculations by specialists from TsNIIMash (part of Roscosmos), the spacecraft entered the dense layers of the atmosphere at 9:24 Moscow time, 560 km west of Middle Andaman Island, and fell into the Indian Ocean west of Jakarta."
t.me/s/roscosmos_gk