Slavko Bogdanov

The FCC has opened public comments for a couple of different proposed satellite systems, both of which have a high likelihood of significantly degrading our ability to experience the night sky. More details from @aas.org here: 🧪

Protecting Planet Earth’s Skies: A4E's Statement on Proposed Large Satellite Constellations - a4e.org Astronomers for Planet Earth (A4E) is an international grassroots movement of astronomy students, educators, amateurs and scientists, working to address the climate crisis from an astronomical perspec...

Astronomers for Planet Earth are submitting a statement about some of the proposed megaconstellations that would ruin ground-based astronomy to the FCC.

You can read the statement below: 🔭☄️

Ah, I see that your past self is your archenemy, too.

The entire lifetime cost of the NICER mission so far is $75M. So not even a whole F-15.

2026 Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics Pre-Doctoral Program How to Apply 2026 Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics Pre-Doctoral Program How to Apply on Simons Foundation

Applications are open for our visiting grad student pre-doctoral program at the CCA @flatironinstitute.org !

More info here:
www.simonsfoundation.org/2023-flatiro...

Fender® x Hello Kitty® White Stratocaster® Say hello to the vibrant world of Hello Kitty with the Fender x Hello Kitty collection, celebrating an iconic collaboration that transcends generations. This collection merges the bold and colorful ae...

Is it by any chance the most metal of all guitars, the Fender HelloKitty Stratocaster? www.fender.com/products/fen...

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets

Eastern Calligrapher syrphid fly on a black eyed Susan flower.

Sweat bee on an echinacea flower.

Bumblebee on a goldenrod flower.

Monarch butterfly on an echinacea flower.

We’ve been planting large patches of native flowers for the past couple of years to attract monarch butterflies and native bees. It’s paying off big time.

OPPORTUNITY: The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD, is searching for a Senior Full Stack Engineer to join the Web Application Services Branch, performing software development, support and maintenance of applications and processes to our NASA missions: https://bit.ly/4l9HF1Q

I went to rural Wales to bathe in starlight and the Milky Way blew me away I join two tourists in the mountains to immerse ourselves in the wonders of the night sky with a star guide.

BBC: I went to rural Wales to bathe in starlight and the Milky Way blew me away #Astronomy #Space www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Someone pointed out that at least some of the purported globular clusters may be foreground dwarf galaxies instead.

Thankfully, your proverbial Houston didn’t have a problem.

See also: in their original meaning, autocrat, tyrant, dictator, and despot bore no negative connotations.

Normal exoplanets can only dream of being bathed in gamma-rays and positrons.

The pulsar planets were the first and still the best, IMHO.

Astronomers spot a young sun blowing bubbles inside the Milky Way A baby sunlike star blowing a bubble of hot gas called an “astrosphere” was captured for the first time by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

It is a truth universally acknowledged that babies love bubbles 🔭🧪

A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a ‘crematorium for satellites’ Planned ‘megaconstellations’ of satellites could cause unforeseen harm to the ozone layer and climate systems. Global regulation is needed before it’s too late.

New article out about what a million satellites could do to our atmosphere. It's bad. https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366

a close up of a man 's face with the words `` it 's gone , it 's done '' ALT: a close up of a man 's face with the words `` it 's gone , it 's done ''

I bet it would have felt like casting off the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom.

Record-breaking natural laser discovered 11 billion light-years away Forget about the terawatt lasers we're making on Earth. The Universe makes natural ones thousands of times more powerful than the Sun.

Record-breaking natural laser discovered 11 billion light-years away

Lasers aren't just technological inventions here on Earth, but are also produced naturally in astrophysical environments.

We just found one 11 billion light-years away: a new record.

bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#physics #astro

Rubin Observatory has started paging astronomers 800,000 times a night Asteroids, exploding stars, and feasting black holes swarm in the first-ever batch of nightly alerts from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile

Rubin Observatory has started paging astronomers 800,000 times a night www.scientificamerican.com/article/rubi...

From the starcraft community on Reddit: San Antonio Spurs playing Starcraft after winning the 1999 NBA Finals Explore this post and more from the starcraft community

Nothing will beat Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Malik Rose, and Sean Elliott playing StarCraft together on the plane right after they won the 1999 championship
www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/...

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory launches real-time discovery machine for monitoring the night sky The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, has released its first alerts documenting…

"NSF-DOE Rubin issued 800,000 alerts the night of Feb. 24. The alerts called scientists' attention to new asteroids, exploding stars and other changes in the night sky. This milestone marks the launch of a system expected to eventually produce up to 7 million alerts per night."

🔭🧪

For an upcoming paper, I’m paying a homage to this famous figure with a similar plot of X-ray pulsations from the millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038.

Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source by A. HEWISH S. J. BELL J. D. H. PILKINGTON P. F. SCOTT R. A. COLLINS Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge Unusual signals from pulsating radio sources have been recorded at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. The radiation seems to come from local objects within the gala‹y, and may be associated with oscillations of white dwarf or neutron stars. In July 1967, a large radio telescope operating at a frequency of 81-5 MHz was brought into use at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. This instrument was designed to investigate the angular structure of compact radio sources by observing the scintillation caused by the irregular structure of the interplanetary medium'. The initial survey includes the whole sky in the declination range - 08° < 8<44° and this area is scanned once a week. A large fraction of the sky is thus under regular surveillance. Soon after the instrument was brought into operation it was noticed that signals which appeared at first to be weak sporadic interference were repeatedly observed at a fixed declination and right ascension; this result showed that the source could not be terrestrial in origin.

Jocelyn Bell and Anthony Hewish announced their discovery of a “rapidly pulsating radio source” — what we now refer to as a pulsar — with a paper in @nature.com #OTD in 1968. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️
www.nature.com/articles/217...

Open call to join NewAthena X-Ray Observatory 🌟 I'm a member of the Compact Objects working group & used to be ground support for Chandra and XMM-Newton X-Ray Observatories ✨I highly recommend scientists at any career stage to apply - not competitive!! Deadline 1 March! indico.ifca.es/event/3385/

Satellite proposals threaten the night sky In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency responsible for authorizing satellite launches and operations…

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan.
darksky.org/news/two-sat...

A Theorist's Job is to be Wrong: A Cosmologist Explains Astrophysics is so awash in experimental data that theorists are bound to often be fruitfully wrong about what it all means.

Really nice essay by @cosmolooney.bsky.social about the importance of pursuing scientific ideas that turn out to be wrong:

"This is not a reason for despair; being wrong is not the same as failing."

🧪🔭⚛️ #cosmology
www.firstprinciples.org/article/some...