TIL about a memorial ceremony in Iceland in 2019 to mark the end of a glacier, changing the place name from Okjökull to Ok (jökull = glacier). Uncompromising wording on the bronze plaque: "This is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it".

What do you mean I saw PLATO with my own eyes today?? 🫢🫨 #ESAopenday #exoplanet

Oooh the Nobel Prize is out today, so it's time for my yearly round of ignoring that news and reading about many of the women who were snubbed of the prize in the past and who the Nobel Prize committee refuses to apologise for. 🧪🔭

imagine if a family of beavers randomly showed up right now and finished whatever thing you've been putting off

Welcome, Plato! 🤗 On 1 September, the spacecraft arrived in the Netherlands by boat from Germany via the Rhine River. In the coming weeks, engineers will add the sunshield & solar arrays and carry out tests to confirm Plato is ready for launch 🚀 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 #Exoplanets

Farewell, Gaia! 🥹 👏

This is what Firefly's Blue Ghost lander saw as the Sun set on Sunday. The Sun is the bright lightsource at the horizon. At top is Earth (you can't quite tell it's gibbous). And that bright star between the two is Venus. I have never seen a photo of Venus from the surface of the Moon before.

🌍 Happy #Equinox! On 20 March 2025 at 09:01 GMT/10:01 CET, just a few moments ago, the Sun appeared directly above Earth's equator - with our planet neither tilting towards nor away from the Sun! (pic: @eumetsat.int, processed by ESA/S. Proud) See flic.kr/p/2qT1ZUu

Pure passion for the topic, fuelled by the experience of knowing what living with endometriosis feels like. Meet our endo research team – first up: Rachel Hosking, PhD candidate at IMAGENDO. #EndometriosisAwarenessMonth

Continuing on with our #EndometriosisAwarenessMonth campaign, we asked three of our researchers to explain their research in 15 words or less. Find out more about their research on the EXPPECT website: www.exppectedinburgh.co.uk/

Open this image up fully. Look to the top right. That's Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. And that bright point of light? Earth.

Oh come ON now. This new JWST image is just ASTOUNDING. I feel like I’m falling looking into it, and that I would fall forever, and that I would enjoy it. NASA, ESA, CSA, K. McQuinn (STScI), J. DePasquale (STScI)

Look at that terminator! We have passed the winter solstice (9:21 UTC) for the northern hemisphere, gang!

🔭 A Year in Sunsets Image Credit & Copyright: Wael Omar apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap24122...

"Reliable Detections of Atmospheres on Rocky Exoplanets with Photometric JWST Phase Curves" by Hammond et al., incl. @xoplanets.bsky.social @nichollsh.bsky.social @astrochloe.bsky.social @tgmeier.bsky.social @astrojake.bsky.social @astrolisadang.bsky.social @johannateske.bsky.social today on arXiv!

WTF is it with so many movies and TV shows showing people smoking? They could just *not* do that.

For a talk I just made this transition plot of exoplanets with age, to show how little we know about planets in the early times. Starting with all exoplanets in the database... (1/5)

Applications are open for MPIA summer internships! this is a fully funded opportunity, open to bachelor's and master's students anywhere in the world: www.mpia.de/en/careers/i...

Cannot even do plane rides without being in pain. Looks like I’ll have to carry my own meals next trip 🥲 #endometriosis

I got to write in Scientific American about one of my all-time favorite cosmic objects: Barnard 68! It's like a hole in space, except… it isn't. www.scientificamerican.com/article/what... 🧪🔭

Very excited to be at the opening of the Dirleton Solar Walk today - a scale model of our Solar System in the East Lothian countryside, placed over 1.2km of the John Muir Way walking route! 🪐🔭 This was a really fun project to support and I highly recommend it for those local, esp. for kids/families!

I love when it's cold and I have to wear a full load of laundry to leave the house

Making my slides for the "25 Years of Science with Chandra" conference, and here's the supernova remnants imaged with Chandra in the first two years of the mission in the order they were observed! 🔭🧪 #SaveChandra

Time-lapse of altocumulus undulatus clouds at 30x speed. I happened to catch the formation's edge as it passed by.

The “Tiger Stripes” of southern Enceladus are deep ravines and connect to the subsurface ocean below. These contain the cryovolcanoes producing the water ice plumes.

Prompted by this and a need for distraction I Did Some Math. Turns out most extrasolar planets are quite cauliflower-compatible. A thread, with citations. And laboratory astrophysics. And footnotes.

A successful encounter! #ESA #BepiColombo passed Mercury today, gathering valuable science data. 🛰️🌖 Here's an image taken at 10:46 UTC (11:46 CET) 1 December, from ~51000km from the surface. x.com/BepiColombo/... Congratulations to our amazing teams for this next milestone towards Mercury orbit.

In Summer 2021, I put a pinhole solar camera on the tower of St John's college in Cambridge, UK to image the Sun's path. This was the result! Each separate arc is a day, and over time you slowly reveal the pattern that the Sun follows over the course of a year 🌞🔭🧪

It’s been a very special few days because my first observational program as a PI had its first observation which was successful! We got the transit from space 🪐 !!! It’s been the most fulfilling feeling seeing the transit light curve after months of planning and rechecking the calculations 🥰

What's a Sidereal day? Earth completes one full rotation relative to distant stars in 23 hours 56 minutes—this is a Sidereal Day. But, because of Earth's orbital motion, the Sun appears to shift position each day. To align with the Sun again, Earth needs an extra 4 mins, making a Solar Day 24 hours:

The reasons why any illustration of the Solar System can only be partially accurate: this highlights the compromises an illustrator has to make to fit everything into view

🔭 Undulatus Clouds over Las Campanas Observatory - ©Yuri Beletsky apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap24111...

❗❗❗Reminder ❗❗❗ #Endometriosis is characterized by growth outside the uterus of tissue resembling the endometrium. It involves interacting endocrine, immunological, & proinflammatory processes. It is more than a 'gynecological condition' It is a full body disease.

I love it when colleagues leave treasures in my mailbox. Left: "Star sand" (mostly #foraminifera) from Hull Atoll. Right: A sample from "Off Honolulu" at 22fm with other tropical forams. Both labeled as collected by Resig in October 1982. #fossilfriday

There’s more to rainbows than the human eye can see: here’s how a rainbow extends into the infrared and ultraviolet. Photos: 1. Infrared 2. Visible (obviously) 3. Ultraviolet, and 4. A composite showing how UV is beyond the violet in a rainbow, and IR beyond the red end. 🧪 #photography

the new youngest transiting exoplanet has entered the villa 🧪🪐🌟 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Many days, when I can’t move for excruciating pain and crushing brain fog, I’m dumbfounded by the societal flaws that led to life-changing conditions like #endometriosis and #PCOS being dismissed as just “part of being a woman”.

Can I just say that attending just one conference this year gave me the opportunity to connect with these amazing people I get to call friends and that just warms my heart ❤️ academia is tough as is, so having a few people who understand you (especially as a woman in the field) has been fulfilling 💕

Check out the latest episode of Science Sisters! 🔭

I’m so mad, annoyed and irritated. Ugh why is housing such a pain (and expensive 🥲)

Looking for a weekend watch? Check out @irisvanzelst.bsky.social chat with Laura Lark about training for long-duration space flight, her adventures in the field, and running into goats 🐐👀 🔭 https://youtu.be/-adDvdF9fsA?si=r_AVYRLYDU5IdJR7

Peak festive season behaviour: eating sweets as a midnight snack

I sometimes wonder why we're so eager to look in space for aliens

Reading about women’s health and the number of times I’ve come across “we have no idea why this happens” and “we have no idea how what the cure is” and “here you go, here’s a list of things that we can do to manage xxxx” 🫠

Side effects of the upcoming JWST deadline: typing “plants” as “planets” in a conversation that has nothing to do with planets 😵‍💫

How time flies. A memory popped up that four years ago I was so happy to be giving the first set of astrophysics exam (after years of figuring out how to get into this field) and today I’m helping with JWST proposals. I’m so glad my past self didn’t give up.

Excited to share the 1st direct evidence of quartz clouds in the atmosphere of a transiting #exoplanet! With #JWST MIRI we found nanoparticles of quartz, SiO2, causing a spike in the planet's spectrum at 8.6 micron unveiling the Oxygen locked in the clouds doi.org/10.3847/2041...

Happy Galaxies Day! A century ago tonight, Edwin Hubble exposed a photograph at the 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson whose interpretation enlarged our mental Universe incomparably. Hubble recognized that a tiny brightening speck in what was then called the Andromeda Nebula had to be a Cepheid...

I've already commented on this a few times, but the community notes on this tweet by U Penn continue to be excellent. Penn demoted Dr. Karikó and cut her salary because they thought her Nobel-winning work wasn't good enough. The fact that they didn't just open with an apology speaks volumes. 🧪 👩‍🔬

Happy Equinox! It's the first day of fall here in the northern hemisphere and tbh this summer girlie is not okay with that 🥲