The first SPHEREx full-sky images are out! This is an awesome new mission that's super under-rated. It has a really interesting way to take data in 100 different colours 🔭☄️

Experiments in @solarcan.bsky.social (~Dec 2024 to ~June 2025, only just processed) ☀️🔭

Made the mistake of sending a parcel with Evri which has now got lost. Their customer service appears to only consist of AI, which gives up on trying to help me and closes the conversation without passing me onto a human. Any tips?

Sharing this again for US friends who are just waking up. I saw some posts saying that our 1996 gun law reforms failed, as evidenced by the horrors at Bondi Beach this weekend. This is not true. These incidents are rare for us. It *can* be done. It *must* be done, if you want a normal society.

Hi folks — quick question about undergraduate admission interviews. I’ve not done them myself, although I have done interviews as part of teaching (eg after lab experiments). I’ve offered to do a mock one for a family member who has an interview for Natsci at Cambridge. Any tips or resources?

Space weather isn’t just about lovely displays of the aurora. There is a very real impact on our technology too.

Scientist Lawrence Krauss had close ties to Epstein. This article has some of it, but look to @skepchick.org's feed for details.

I’m on a boat just south of Tromsø, Norway, and have just seen the most insane aurora!! It’s 4.30am for me now and I need to sleep but if it’s night for you right now, go outside and look!!

Hei from Ålesund! 🇳🇴 I’m currently working my way up the Norwegian coast on @fredolsencruise.bsky.social Bolette as one of the on-board @gostargazing.bsky.social astronomers. Keeping our fingers crossed for clear skies and Northern Lights! ✨☺️

Back visiting my old department @manchester.ac.uk today! Very happy to report that the guinea pig picture I left on my old office window 2 years ago is still in place 🐹

Took my phone in for a battery replacement today and the Apple person said my iPhone 13 mini was “cute” and she’d not seen one in ages. It only came out in 2021! Surely I’m not the only one who’s kept their phone for 3+ years?

Jews and Muslims in North Manchester: A personal story. Fantastic piece by @ophiraophira.bsky.social, who has covered the attack for @manchestermill.bsky.social like no other journalist. Read this alongside the other news coverage. manchestermill.co.uk/jews-and-mus...

STOP THE GENOCIDE

Iconic moment at the Downton Abbey premiere

Signed last night. It was pointed out that, even if you don't think petitions work, this will force the government to debate it and therefore they can later be held accountable for genocide if they do not act.

years of live-streamed genocide, & media refusing to call it a genocide. now footage of starving people in Gaza — horrifying resemblance to Holocaust photos — gunned down trying to get food, yet media *still* refuses to call it genocide. a moral depravity/failure that'll be a museum exhibit one day

I think it’s worth noting this piece generated the most unsubscribes I’ve seen in a while, and the newsletter version had the lowest open rate in many months. These horrors persist in part because too many people go to great pains to avoid them.

Absolutely dystopian juxtaposition from the Guardian front page. Difficult to understand how anyone of decency and conscience can defend this government at this point. Just sheer moral degeneracy to arm a state that does this and arrest people for objecting. Wtf are we doing as a country?

Meanwhile, we send weapons to Israel and fund illegal settlements in the West Bank. Pretty sure the Labour Government more closely meets any normal definition of 'support for terrorism' than those it arrested.

We are saddened to report the passing of Cyril Hazard (18 March 1928 – 14 June 2025). Cyril was a pioneering radio astronomer whose work on quasars helped transform our understanding of the Universe. www.ast.cam.ac.uk/news/cyril-h...

In 2024, the United States gave Israel a significant fraction of the annual NASA budget. There's no conflict between affording science and affording healthcare. There's a conflict between affording murdering people and affording healthcare.

We are over half way through #NAM2025 @royalastrosoc.bsky.social @durham-university.bsky.social 💫 Here is our incredible conference photo with 100s of the nearly 1000 attendees of NAM! Possibly one of the largest astronomy conference photos ever! We hope you’re having a great week 🪐

Amplifying the call from Marc Delcroix and co. over the weekend: the team are looking to verify/refute a potential impact on #Saturn on July 5th, 09:00-09:15UT. Videos taken by amateur observers at that time might hold the key. This 📸 credit: Mario Rana pvol2.ehu.eus/pvol2/news/v...

I’m in lovely Durham for @nam25-durham.bsky.social this week! ☺️

Hülkenpodium?? 🤞🤞🤞#F1

I’m a queer Palestinian. Stop using my identity as cover for the destruction of Gaza | Jad Salfiti

Beyond horrific, yet so many people continue to support Israel. apnews.com/article/isra...

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory! Can you guess these regions of sky? This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪 #RubinFirstLook ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

An absolutely fantastic textbook on statistics and machine learning by Prof. Yuan-Sen Ting came out this week - and it's free! #astromethods ☄️ I had a read and it's incredibly comprehensive and well-written - I expect this to become *the* foundation book on stats & ML basics in astro.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Hello from Görlitz! Looking forward to a week of #RadioAstronomy chats and catchups at #SKAO2025 ☺️📡🔭🌌

It’s been possibly the most stressful couple of weeks in my life, BUT we have finally moved house!! After months of commuting from Manchester to Leeds I’m very happy to be back living in Yorkshire. Will miss Manchester a lot — I was there for over a decade — but ready to start this new chapter. 🥰🏡

🔭 UK astronomers: an observing challenge for you THIS EVENING! A very thin (18h old) new crescent Moon will be to the North West just after sunset. Most of the UK will be clouded out, but if you are in Scotland (or anywhere else that has a clear view to the NW horizon) please do look out for it.

A day late posting but after a lot of hard work I give you the survey overview papers for the EMU & POSSUM ASKAP surveys #EMU survey arxiv.org/abs/2505.08271 and the #POSSUM survey arxiv.org/abs/2505.08272 🔭

For those of you who may have missed Louis Theroux: The Settlers on BBC Two last night. Or can't access the BBC iPlayer. Here is the full documentary on how Israeli occupiers view the Palestinian West Bank currently. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnCv...

If you are a feminist academic, you should sign this letter. forms.gle/oDYgnobrMiSc...

Happy #exoALMA day! www.exoalma.com

Hello internet hive-mind! My partner’s 9 year old little brother is really interested in science (yay!) — we love chatting to him about it but we live 4 hours away. Any recommendations for books and TV programmes for him? Activities in London we can do with him when we visit? 🧪🔭

Williams are the most wholesome team on the #F1 grid (and therefore my favourite) — always happy to see them have a good race 🥹

Manchester says Trans Rights are Human Rights ✊🏼🏳️‍⚧️❤️

An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪

My analysis of today's UK Supreme Court judgment. The UK Supreme Court Rules That Trans Women Aren't Women Under the Equality Act 2010 www.wearequeeraf.com/uk-supreme-c...

JKR funded the campaign group behind all this btw. This is why we beg you to stop engaging with Harry Potter media.

Having excluded all trans people from proceedings before it, the Supreme Court decides in favour of For Some Women Scotland.

I am so incredibly tired of this ongoing attack on trans people. Cis men are murdering women in plain sight. If gender-critical women turned their attention to dealing with men, women might be safe. I'm not worried about loos or changing rooms. I am worried about literally everything else.

It shouldn't have to be like this. An entire minority shouldn't be sitting, terrified, that the UK Supreme Court is going to remove their rights off the back of a decade-long hate campaign. It shouldn't have to be like this.

Taking an (unplanned) sabbatical from astronomy research last year to work in the Civil Service has actually been very helpful — today’s benefit was knowing how to write a Theory of Change document for an STFC public engagement grant application. 😃