Benny Trakhtenbrot

4MOST Captures First Light On October 18, 2025, the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) facility, installed on the VISTA telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile, obta

First Light for 4MOST - what an experience! Paranal Observatory is already a magic place on its own right - but getting a new facility on sky ... that's hard to top! www.aip.de/en/news/4mos...

מסתמן שהמוצרים של Boox אמורים לעבוד טוב. אבל טרם הספיקותי להתנסות בעצמי...

I think the common English spelling is "Shavit" (in any case, it means "comet" in Hebrew)

Glad the Apollo 13 movie is getting reruns lately.
This scene is even more moving today: right, Tom Hanks playing Jim Lovell; left, cameo appearance by actual Jim Lovell (1928 Mar 25 - 2025 Aug 7).

The figure is the banner from the SDSS website www.sdss.org. In the middle it has an image of the Milky Way, showing the bulge, disc and dust lanes. On the left we see an stylised version of the Hertzsprung Russel diagram, while on the right the image transforms into the cosmic web. This image showcases the range of science covered by the three mapper programs in SDSS-V.

Yesterday we released our nineteenth data release into the wild: www.sdss.org/dr19, let’s now take a closer look on what is in this data release. #DR19

So people can float along the magnetic flux tube? OMG

Radio astronomer Cyril Hazard (1928-2025), one of the discoverers of quasars, died on Jun 14. In 1963 Hazard got an accurate location for 3C48 and 3C273 using lunar occultation, allowing optical astronomers to find the optical counterparts and measure their redshift.

It's finally here! We've just released all of our COSMOS-Web images and catalogs, along with an interactive viewer where you can explore the data! Check it out at: cosmos2025.iap.fr

@vrooje.net no no I'm still young! Look at me I ask chatgpt what time it is and what is "George Bush"!
.
But seriously, see my point about students' papers. They don't have to suffer for our burning ideology.

I would also hesitate to have my students' papers going to the OAJ path until I'm convinced it's not going to harm their chances of getting a good postdoc down the line.
.
So basically this welcome change will have to be led by the senior faculty :)

A huge issue for postdocs and junior faculty is that many hiring and P&T processes require "Q1 journals", based on impact factors etc. And some of the committees have senior faculty from disciplines that are just now realizing that preprints exist and are legit. The change is going to take a while.

A huge subsystem of the Roman observatory in a thermal vacuum chamber. Seven technicians stand of the side of the observatory, as the bottom of the chamber.

A key portion of #NASARoman has cleared a thermal vacuum test. Tt was subjected to the hot and cold temperatures it will experience in space: go.nasa.gov/43cwDQL 🔭 🧪

TANK vs TESLA

"We've crushed fascism before and we'll crush it again"

- ⁠WW2 veteran Ken, 98, in the tank

Yes I've witnessed people struggling with these dilemmas for longer-than-expected periods, and they were paid for that! One nice thing I've seen done for social median and E/PO purposes is to create a gif animation that "scans" through wavelengths - one can see line emission regions "light up"

The on-target exposure was supposed to be done just before/after that background measurement. One could, in principle, "collapse" the integral field spectroscopic "cube" along the wavelength axis to get an "integrated" MIRI image, but I'm not sure how this can be done with your (fantastic) bot.

This off-target pointing was specifically designed to measure the multi-wavelength background emission separately from the main target. This allows to subtract the background from the signal obtained "on target" so to be certain that the interpretation is robust.
www.stsci.edu/jwst-program...

Just curious, as I have no experience with such a system: how "remote" are the leaders of something like the UW CAS from normal teaching/research faculty? how many years have typically passed since they had to submit or manage a grant? get reimbursed on a conference? hire a postdoc? etc...

Happy 80th anniversary of Hitler killing himself in his bunker to all who celebrate, which, as I now understand it, is not everybody

Trump Opens Up Nation’s Aquariums To Commercial Fishing WASHINGTON—Claiming that preservation efforts had impeded U.S. seafood production for far too long, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he had opened up the nation’s aquariums to commercial fishing. “Starting today, fishermen will finally be allowed to sail into America’s protected aquariums, drop a net in any marine exhibit they please, and begin trawling,” Trump […]

Trump Opens Up Nation’s Aquariums To Commercial Fishing
theonion.com/trump-o...

Should we just get a huge hair dryer to work over Ky? (I think I know how hair dryers work)

Now HAVE TO buy a real 5L container with this design!

half-jokingly...

עתיד החברה האנושית בסכנה כולנו נישאר בלי עבודה לא ברור מה תפקיד המחקר וההוראה במציאות של בינה מלאכותית

When even the neutral Swiss hate you...

Nice to see how some things are so similar, worldwide

We plan to spend a few weeks over the summer in Boston (July and August) and are looking for a place to stay (2 adults and 2 children). If you hear of anything please let me know. 🙏

some ways to generate electricity

A) use sunlight to drive photosynthesis in plants, let plants die, wait ~100 million years, dig up fossilized plants, burn plants, use heat to boil water, use steam to drive a rotating turbine, use generator to make electrons

B) use sunlight to make electrons

Human Altitude xkcd.com/3039