PUNCH sees the noontime sky as you've never seen it before! ☀️🔭🛰️🧪

Here's a release that came out of @swri.org this morning. You'll want to click through and see our awesome movies of the inner solar system! We just presented them at the #AGU2025 meeting this morning. 🧪🛰️🔭☀️

This morning I had the singular pleasure of visiting the Lake Ponchartrain causeway (world's longest over-water causeway, I'm told) and examining it with binoculars. It was a cloudy, blustery day but I can confirm that, yes, the world is round.

This is one of many reasons we launched the PUNCH mission (punch.space.swri.edu), which is studying whether we can track "Stealth" CMEs across the void between planets. ☀️🔭🛰️🧪

Here's a little more info on the @swri.org team that tracked 3I/ATLAS using @punch-mission.bsky.social data! ☀️🔭🧪🛰️🚀

Here's a fun science nugget from @PUNCH-mission.bsky.social: a colorized polarimetric image of the extended solar corona, with bonus dust trails from a micrometeoroid impact! ☀️🛰️🔭

PUNCH @punch-mission.bsky.social found out we are good at comet tracking, even as we calibrate/refine our solar wind imaging pipeline. In the last 3 months, we've tracked 3 notable comets with images every 4 min, around the clock: SWAN, Atlas, and Lemmon. PUNCH data are free to get and use. ☀️🛰️🧪🔭

"There's something about the outside of a horse that's good for the inside of a man" -- discovering my inner #TeddyRoosevelt. (#horses, #trailriding)

Swiss Dawn from the 61C intercity Bern->Basel. Had a great week at ISSI, participating in the solar eclipse/middle-corona conference by day and PUNCH support by night.

Now it can (finally) be told. We've been tracking Comet 3I more or less continuously with PUNCH. Everything is fine. 3I is definitely very interesting – but it is most definitely *not* an alien spaceship undergoing maneuvers, no matter what that Boston guy says. ☀️🛰️🔭🧪 #3I #comet #not_aliens

Solar data analysis has changed so, so much since the late 1900s. We're working to calibrate out orbital-dependent variable stray light in PUNCH. I pulled 5 days of L0 data to play with, in my laptop, while traveling. The dataset includes 20,000 images, in 32 GB. ☀️ (punch.space.swri.edu)

Still going on! 10pm MST, 40°N, 105°W. Lots of dynamics and structure. #aurora ☀️🔭

From my backyard in the Colorado Rockies, a few minutes ago (about 2025-11-12T03:30Z; 11/11/25 8:30pm MST) #aurora 🔭🧪☀️

The Proba-3/ASPIICS paper just dropped on ArXiV! If you like heliophysics, the corona, or cool mission concepts, give it a read. ASPIICS is a coronagraph comprising two spacecraft in formation: a camera and a separate occulter. They're producing amazing images. ☀️🛰️🔭🚀 arxiv.org/abs/2511.01679

Kevin Marvel is leaving AAS. ☀️🧪🔭 aas.org/press/aas-an...

This is exactly the reason every mission and scientist should have a wide-open data policy! PUNCH has specific science objectives (looking at the solar wind) – but in the right hands the data can reveal amazing things NOT part of our original science. Giving those hands access is best for all. ☀️🔭🧪

Cluster is an amazing story: the initial flight build were all lost in the Ariane V launch – possibly from the most expensive one-line software bug ever (integer overflow in a guidance system, which caused the >$1B rocket to explode). Ultimately very successful despite that "little setback".

We will greatly miss Al Nagler, founder of Tele Vue Optics (@televueoptics.bsky.social), who left us Monday. I was honored to know him: a brilliant man with a gentle and joyful disposition. Among many other accomplishments, he designed the Wide Field Imager optics in use on the PUNCH mission. ☀️🔭

I'm delighted to see that @swri.org has joined us here! Southwest Research Institute does a ton of interesting things, but of course #heliophysics is one of them. The outreach/social-media team are really great, give 'em a follow! You won't be sorry. 🧪 (bsky.app/profile/swri...)

There's been a large uptick in the amount of AI slop lately on all topics in all venues, including #heliophysics here. I've been updating the feed regexps to remove certain keywords typical of "fake news" clickbait, so hopefully the news quality will remain high. Let me know if you see any issues. ☀️

Don't ever change, Apple Photos AI. You are very helpful. No, really. Without you, I might have confused this for a picture of a golden retriever.

Sometimes we all need a little boddhi satva in our lives. Or a big one.

Wow. It can be hard to remember: science in general and #NASA and #heliophysics in particular are still revered globally. This am in the security line in Delhi (coming home) I handed @punch-mission.bsky.social and NASA stickers to kids. They lit up so much at meeting a real live scientist. ☀️🛰️🧪

The Moon has a tenuous atmosphere — so tenuous that #spaceweather affects atmospheric #weather. Congratulations to ISRO and the Chandrayaan-2 team for measuring “high” pressure zones associated with CME impacts on the lunar atmosphere! ☀️🛰️🧪🆒

It was amazingly fun to give a public lecture for the Breakthrough Science Society in Kerala, India this week. Such a vibrant and interested audience, in a beautiful place! ☀️ #SciComm

Are you an undergrad or grad student nearing graduation? Find your next gig! Announcing: the AAS/SPD grad student & postdoc opportunity fair, Wed. 5-Nov. Hear about opportunities across the nation, meet potential advisors, & learn about your next career step. 🧪🔭☀️🎢⚛️ spd.aas.org/graduate-stu...

A lot of things sort of suck right now. I was delighted to find out that, for under $40, you can now buy an instrument that will tell you, with digital precision, just how much things suck. Provided you can attach a hose to those things. www.amazon.com/Manometer-Pr...

What's all this fuss about solving for eigenmodes of mechanical systems? Gaussian elimination has been a solved problem since 1835. #math #dadjoke #illseemyselfoutnow

Quick update on the #heliophysics feed. We've had issues with AI spam coming from many related accounts, to prevent blocklisting. Fortunately, regexps work fine. I'm fixin' to transition us back from Skyfeed to the Graze servers. It should be pretty seamless. I'll post when it happens, though. ☀️

Great milestone from the PUNCH SOC team this week -- as we continue refining our data, we've rolled out preliminary Level 3 data, with most of the solar F corona removed. Current data are "v0g"; expect version "v0h" in about two weeks. We'll reprocess everything when we reach v1. ☀️

Reposting this with #spaceweather tag so the #heliophysics feed will pick it up.

David Hathaway and Lisa Upton just released an updated solar cycle prediction. In their words, it's "virtually unchanged since early 2022", an indicator that they're more or less getting it right with empirical prediction. Looks like we're *just* past maximum in the current cycle. ☀️🔭🧪🚀

PUNCH has tracked Comet 2025/SWAN continuously at 4 minute cadence since early Aug, and 3I/Atlas continuously since 21-Sep. With the U.S. govt. shut down, I've been asked not to publish PUNCH imagery of 3I/Atlas. Instead, here's a tracked image from just before it entered our FOV. ☀️🔭🛰️🚀

Today I was reminded of the Isle of Lesbos and their great contribution to the architecture of western civilization. For over 1,000 years the #Lesbian #Rule was part of every Mason's training. Now considered obsolete – but its descendants are still relevant today. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian...)

Comet 3I/Atlas is a fun challenge for PUNCH. We're very sensitive, though not a "telescope" (~2.5' resolution: basically naked-eye). At mag 12, the sky is *very* crowded. But we can see Atlas and SWAN in nearly-raw data. We're imaging at 4 minute cadence 24/7; FOV is 90° centered on the Sun. 🧪🔭🛰️☀️

Today I've been lucky to attend [remotely] the first Space Weather Observations summit, hosted by NOAA. Lots of great talks on how we (USA) are protecting ourselves from solar activity and "space storms". The SWFO launch yesterday is part of that activity. www.nesdis.noaa.gov/events/space... ☀️🛰️

Very nice to see ngGONG move forward! GONG is a decades-old global instrument on which the Sun never sets, to observe the Sun around the clock. It provides very important continuous monitoring of space weather and allows us to image the interior of the star itself. ☀️

In order to view the #solarwind, PUNCH also captures literally everything in the sky that is within 45° of the Sun. When Comet 2025 R2 (SWAN) was announced, we looked for it in the data, and there it was! Here's a blog post about it. ☀️🛰️🔭🧪 whtwnd.com/punch-missio...

It's surprisingly tricky to curate #heliophysics and keep spam at bay. Kudos to those who run the big/more-popular lists! I use regexps, a block list, and a little attention to keep heliophysics in and other things out. Please LMK if I'm getting the balance right, or if you'd like it tweaked! ☀️

Interesting #art #sculpture seen in the #Prague airport. "Pegasus", 2010.

It took years, but I digitized and ditched my wall of binders full of Xeroxed journal articles on paper. I love #Zotero. But I'm starting to have 2nd thoughts about going all-digital. This morning I opened up Gosling 1997 ("CMEs: an Overview") and was greeted with this. Yikes! ☀️🧪

Hey #Costco , it is September 13. September. It is not even the equinox yet. Why are your #Christmas decorations up?

More interesting vanishing points. This skybridge is in Manchester, UK. "Feels" like noir science fiction set from the 1990s.

What a coincidence! This is the meeting I left Prague to attend! Enroute now from Solar Polarization Workshop XII to UKSWSE III. ☀️

It’s easy to forget, in a world of humongous jetliners like the A380, just how huge and imposing even a “little” EJ commuter jet is when seen from up close. We lost something by switching to sanitized enclosed jetway chutes at most airports.

Pretty. I walked through here while adjusting to jet-lag yesterday, just before heading back to the hotel to crash and sleep.

I just climbed into the largest aircraft I have ever flown in. Lots of planetary scientists and other solar people in here too. The A380 is truly enormous.

Thanks, @ellecordova.bsky.social. We’re trying. 🧪

This cartoon is from 2006 but is still relevant today, 19 years later.

With another bright halo CME crossing the solar system and coming right at us, I'm feeling like a kid a couple of days before Christmas: when the PUNCH data turn up in the next day or two, it's going to be gorgeous! (@PUNCH-mission.bsky.social)