Michael Busch

🌓🌎🌞 <-- lunar eclipse

🌎🌓🌞 <-- solar eclipse

🌎🌞🌗 <-- apocalypse

2027 IPAC Visiting Graduate Student Research Fellowship IPAC at Caltech partners with NASA, NSF, JPL and the world-wide research community to advance exploration of our Universe.

Big news drop on a Friday afternoon. 😅

@caltechipac.bsky.social 2027 Visiting Graduate Student Research Fellowship applications are open! The VGSRF is a 6-month predoc at Caltech working with IPAC scientists.

www.ipac.caltech.edu/page/graduat...

(1/2)

A new tektite strewn field in Australia ejected from a volcanic arc impact crater 11 Myr ago This study re-evaluates the anomalous subgroup of australites known as high Na/K (HNa/K) tektites (Chapman and Scheiber, 1969). Although previous comp…

There are many impact craters on the ocean floor.

But this particular set of tektites has a different possibility for concealing the crater:

The impact was 10.76 million years ago on an active volcanic arc. The crater may have been buried under newer rocks.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thermophysical Modeling of Asteroid (15) Eunomia from Spatially Resolved ALMA and VLA Data Thermophysical Modeling of Asteroid (15) Eunomia from Spatially Resolved ALMA and VLA Data, Phua, Yu Yu, de Kleer, Katherine, Butler, Bryan, Cambioni, Saverio, Shepard, Michael

Phua et al. 2026, "Thermophysical Modeling of Asteroid (15) Eunomia from Spatially Resolved ALMA and VLA Data" with millimeter imaging: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Linear Polarization Variations and Circular Polarization are Common Among Airless Bodies Using the POLISH2 polarimeter at the Lick Observatory Shane 3-m and Nickel 1-m telescopes, we discover rotation phase-locked variations in linear polarization to be common among asteroids and a NEO in...

Wiktorowicz et al. 2026, "Linear Polarization Variations and Circular Polarization are Common Among Airless Bodies" with optical polarimetry: arxiv.org/abs/2602.24196

There are a couple of new asteroid science papers out today.

Satellite photo of the Namib Desert. The top two-thirds are covered in red, undulated sand dunes, leading down to a dry river bed, seen in bands of blue and white. Along the river bed, black dots of vegetation curl around the pointed tips of dunes.

#PPOD: Korea’s Kompsat-2 satellite captured this image over the sand seas of the Namib Desert on 7 January 2012. The blue-and-white area is the dry riverbed of the Tsauchab. Black dots of vegetation are concentrated close to the river’s main route, while salt deposits appear bright white. 🧪

Yet again, USA:

Require that Congress ensure that NASA operate as it has ordered.

Instead of things like this.

555 people have been killed in US and Israeli attacks across #Iran, the country's Red Crescent Society said.
100,000+ paramedics are responding to attacks that have so far impacted 131 of Iran's 491 counties, said the society - part of global network of national Red Cross/Red Crescent societies.

The featured image shows a dusty starfield with intricate dust filaments all over. Red, blue, and brown nebulas will the field. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

🔭 The Dusty Surroundings of Orion and the Pleiades

Image Credit & Copyright: Ignacio Fernández

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

Oppose Nomination of Casey Means for Surgeon General The Senate HELP Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the nomination of Casey Means to serve as U.S. Surgeon General on Wednesday, February 25th. While we were hoping this nomination was dead, i...

It's Monday morning and Casey Means still doesn't have the votes to become Surgeon General. Let's keep it that way. Send a letter to your Senators now. If you have friends, famiy, colleagues who can do so, urge them on to act now. actionnetwork.org/letters/oppo...

I fear for people I know with family in Isfahan.

#Maine :

Get yourselves different Democratic candidates for Senate.

Since I just got fundraising spam for Graham Platner, whose campaign I told to immediately suspend itself.

There exists no circumstance where he should be in the Senate.

There’s a total #LunarEclipse coming tomorrow evening and the east coast of Australia, NZ and the Pacific Islands are in a grand position for it!

Looks like we have a bit of cloud in Sydney but it may be patchy.

Best part of the show is between 10-11pm. Max eclipse at 10:33pm.

📸 timeanddate

🔭

I can recommend Nigerian pepper soup.

Trump Is Attacking Climate Science. Scientists Are Fighting Back. It’s easy, looking at the past year, to see the damage the administration has done. But researchers are also stepping up, trying to fill the gaps.

One year in the federal assault on climate science — a review and prospective

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of STEM Education.

8/10

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

6/10

Either that or he has been so misinformed by AI hype that he fails to understand "people who do not come to our hospitals do not make us any money".

The day after this story, my local newspaper unconscionably ran an OpEd by a for-profit hospital CEO promoting ChatGPT and other text generators in place of health care.

Yet again:

The next "AI winter" really cannot come soon enough.

NGC 1637 (Hubble WFC3 and Webb NIRCam images)

Unfolding MetOp-SG-B1’s solar wing

Orbital plumbing maintenance aboard the International Space Station

Earth from Space: Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica

📸 This was our #WeekInImages 23-27 February 2026.

🔗 www.esa.int/About_Us/Wee...

Trump Official Who Helped Kill USAID Now Using Its Funds for Himself Russ Vought, White House Office of Management and Budget director, has decided what is happening with USAID funds.

Russell Vought stole money from USAID to give himself a personal entourage larger than that of some cabinet secretaries.

newrepublic.com/post/206559/...

We may not have unchecked power, but we still have power bsky.app/profile/chan...

It's very hard for the public to learn who is behind these accounts, but if any prosecutors did want to take up this case, it would likely be trivially easy to subpoena all the evidence they need.

Woman who attended SOTU to highlight her arrest without cause arrested without cause at SOTU.
““I just stood up. I stood silently, with no signs. I was not blocking anyone’s view of the hall. And then I was arrested.”

Raises interesting questions about evolutionary history!

90% of evictions in MN are for nonpayment of rent. I did a sample a week ago and found the avg nonpayment eviction in Hennepin County would take $5,122 to stop. Studies (before the high inflation of the past few years) suggest stopping an eviction saves $6,832 in public costs. It just makes sense

This seems like part of what @rr4idic.bsky.social did for her book.

Just with different twinned cities.

#CloseTheCamps and #AbolishICE.

I did not like having to fill out those forms when Bush 43 was allowed to do a previous version of this atrocity.

And both that and military recruiters who refuse to take "No" for an answer continue to be problems decades later.