I so want to see this mission go. I mean JFC the damn thing is going to fly around from place to place on, like, Titan. What can possibly top that?

Experts found that the White House budget request for the upcoming fiscal year could defund 54 NASA science missions, including a spacecraft currently studying Jupiter and two planned Venus missions: www.scientificamerican.com/article/whit...

Dear G!  How are you?  Nice story about J. E. in New York mag, you look great on the picture. I know you are very busy flying all over the world. How was Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down. Give me a call when you are back in NY. Have a great time! Love, Melania

Satire from 2016 - yes this is real... www.npr.org/sections/the...

A little discarded snakeskin that I found by our pool today. The head and tail portions are missing, and hey the snake outgrew it, so where ever he or she is, I know they're considerably bigger than this.

Monday of course is Moon Day

Can anyone explain this abstract, which is first in line on the arXiv tonight: arxiv.org/abs/2604.02366

Some thoughts on the eve of the Artemis return to the Moon: medium.com/@tod.lauer/d...

Late night image processing tricks. Look for dust in an HST WFPC2 image of elliptical galaxy NGC 5846 by subtracting off a model of the galaxy. It's not GALFIT, but you do what you can.

Every now and then, I advertise my compilation of astronomical eponyms for you enjoyment. New additions are always welcome, but please read the rules on the page first. staff.noirlab.edu/tod.lauer/ep...

Tracy Kidder, the author of "The Soul of a New Machine." has passed away. I remember the book vividly, which I read in grad school. It was 1981 and Lick observatory was eagerly awaiting the arrival of its VAX 11/780, a revolutionary machine at the time. 1/n. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/b...

A little poking around ADS turned up this paper from 1975:

So it starts... (The woman is a US citizen(

This is for you @lukemeister.bsky.social

Weaknesses: Didn't say to open the shutter. Why 9 objects instead of 7? No broad interest in Ho. Why couldn't this be done with HWO? Didn't demonstrate having a paper ready to go. Only explained sample selection once instead of 5x and in bold. Everyone knows that the target is not a real galaxy.

Happy Blacker Friday! So how does a Cyc 4 proposal that got 1st quintile, but no data, get triaged out in Cyc 5 and chucked out in the 5th quintile?

The Catalinas as seen at various times from my home in Tucson.

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public. I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are. 1/ Here's what I can share:

This will be an instant classic. I'm wondering what paper I can throw together as an excuse to cite it. Although the Arp Atlas was published in the ApJ Supplement in the 60s, you really had to get the book atlas itself, comprising bound photographic prints. 1/n iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Electric Vehicles xkcd.com/3214/

This remains one of my all time favorite Onion articles. theonion.com/nasa-announc...

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed

Does anyone know of real scientists commandeering aircraft? In 2001, Heywood Floyd snags two spaceliners to get to Clavius Base (no Zoom for him), and in The Andromeda Strain, Wildfire director Jeremy Stone snags an airliner to get to the lab. Other examples? Did either get peanuts and a drink?

A horrifically senseless death. I knew Carl as a colleague on the HST/WFPC1 and then Nuker teams. We were co-authors on some 30 papers. With his laconic wit, and calm presence he was a pleasure to work with. Words fail me...

And a nice New Horizons image of Pluto, just because:

A song I came across a few years ago in a post by @astrokatie.com - Perfect music for New Horizons as it drifts ever farther into interstellar space to whatever fate awaits it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp8U...

Roses are red, But that's not quite true, They absorb every wavelength of the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, *Except* for that hue.

It’s so funny to think about the fact that there’s people out there deferring every life decision to this

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

Nearly 50 years ago, Martin Schwarzschild as a retirement project took up the problem of how to construct realistic dynamical models of elliptical galaxies. "Schwarzschild's Method" is now THE tool for stellar dynamical detection of SMBH in galaxy centers. Note the citation history.

can we please not repeatedly shoot ourselves in the foot www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

You know, J. S. Bach didn't write anything in English. I really wonder why we teach his music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdLC...

This is literally what CURRENT LAW requires. It’s in the Constitution! www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

There is no bottom to how low they will go: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/u...

And that's that for the Kennedy Center.

4 federal agents pull over an elderly US citizen for the suspected crime of being brown, break her car window, throw her to the ground, then drive off after they find her US Passport in her purse. The Salem Police, when called, say there’s nothing they can do. www.salemreporter.com/2026/01/31/u...

the White House's official X account gloats over the arrest of Don Lemon with a chains emoji

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

Well, now that we know that Renee Good's parents were Trump supporters, gosh that makes her death unfortunate then.

I am really, really looking forward to this!

Even when there’s no accountability, the record matters. Credit to the Wikipedia editors maintaining this page.

@lickobservatory.bsky.social update: the dome is now sealed! Thanks to the summit staff, contractors, and main-campus staff for an amazing amount of work over the past four months. Now we can catch our breath and plan how to checkout/repair the telescope and the dome.

When I was doing my PhD, I would often walk over to this vista on the UC Santa Cruz campus to clear my head. The space and scale gave me place to breath, and better yet to imagine.

As New Horizons heads out of the Solar System into interstellar space: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp8U...