Cormorant time! The many cormorants of Cape Point! (Betty's Bay, really 🤷) First up, the Crowned Cormorant 🪶🦉

@torontopearson.bsky.social wifi so bad, can't even post a picture while waiting 🤣 what year is this!?

The adorable Cape Bunting!! 🪶🦉

Karoo Prinia!! Very fun bird to watch as it goes inverted to feed. Shot down by the sea in Hermanus and way up in the Klein Karoo semi-desert. (Last spring). Prinia maculosa 🪶🦉 #birding #ukbirding #Southafrica

Next up, from Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, Cape Town, last spring, The African Dusky Flycatcher! Very playful fella hung around us under a tree. 🪶🦉 #Southafrica #birding #ukbirding Muscicapa adusta

All missions should have cartoon versions of their spacecraft, and these cartoons should be on all slides. These are the rules, as shown here by JAXA’s Go Murakami talking about BepiColombo.

So many South African birds left! This is the Cape Bulbul with its characteristic white wattle around the eye and its fancy crest! Pycnonotus capensis 🦉🪶 #birding #ukbirding #southafrica

A key part of the LightShip missions to Mars is the Marconi radios for Earth-Mars communication, named after Nobel prize winner Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of radio, and the first long distance communication systems. On display at the @bodleian.ox.ac.uk is this example of his impact: 🔭🧪 #planetsci

spacenews.com/nasa-loses-c... Trouble with one of the active missions at Mars.... Hope we hear from it soon.... 🔭🧪 #planetsci

Another throwback to South African birds. These are the absolutely adorable mousebirds with their long tails! We have the White-backed mousebirds, the Red-faced mousebirds, and Speckled mousebirds. These are the white-backed. 🪶🦉 #birds #birding

Pretty exciting news, a long-thought possibly - that dry dust storms produce enough static energy to create little lighting bolts - has been kind of observed on Mars!! 🧪🔭 #planetsci doi.org/10.1038/s415...

@esa.int @science.esa.int Sentinel 5A just released its first images. Extremely broad swaths of integrated column gas abundances. Very cool data!! 🔭🧪 #planetsci www.esa.int/Applications...

Took a team from @oxfordphysics.bsky.social AOPP to visit the Fellows Library in @jesusoxford.bsky.social where we saw Sir Isaac Newton's Principia!

This inner compass could help to explain how certain animals can achieve astonishing feats of long-distance navigation go.nature.com/4pn3KL9

Another #Oxfordpubreview A blue cheese bacon burger on special at the Old Bookbinders in Jericho. Super tasty, excellent fries, and a great bitter in the casks. This place is always so warm and cozy and just lovely inside. So inviting after a chilly autumn walk up the canal.

Another #oxfordpubreview In all my years here, I've never tried the Sunday roast offered by the Kings Arms. Until today. Roast was tasty, @mhairireid.bsky.social's dad was happy, cabbage was nice. Cozy place that we were lucky to find a spot in!

Blue Origin New Glenn 2 scrubbed due to weather. Keep your eyes peeled! It will carry ESCAPADE to Mars!! The 5th NASA SIMPLEX low-cost science mission. Let's go #ESCAPADE!! 🔭🧪 #planetsci www.blueorigin.com/missions/ng-2

Short comment on the move to advance Blue Origin for Artemis III. To the moon!!!! 🧪🔭🌕🌚🌛🌜 theconversation.com/whats-gone-w...

Radiofrequency accelerator cavity for the Large Electron-Position (LEP) Collider. Everyone knows about CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, but before this, LEP operated in 1989! This saved piece is on display outside the physics department at the University of Bern. @unibe.ch 🧪

The Stephen Wolfram lighting up Oxford Physics @stephenwolfram.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @oxfordphysics.bsky.social 🧪

Found at ESTEC, this is the IXV suborbital reentry vehicle! Dropped in 2015. 🧪 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interme...

Let's go Mars LightShip! 🧪🔭 #planetsci

We learned today that the slender billed curlew is confirmed extinct 😓. In honour of all curlews, we present the Whimbrel. Closely related to the Eurasian curlew, but smaller and maybe less threatened. These big, beautiful shorebirds roam widely and are long-lived, but disappearing from our world🪶🦉

Wow, our observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS with ExoMars TGO turned out better than expected! I have seen the dot observed with perseverance, and the weak signal in our spectrometer data, but the tracking and coma from CaSSIS are sure to impress! 🔬🧪 #planetsci www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

Years in the making, a new paper details organic molecules in Enceladus' plumes that were collected by Cassini when it flew through them! This keeps the icy moons at the forefront of interest and high priority targets!! Can't wait for Juice! 🔭🧪 #planetsci doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Red eyed dove, anyone? 🪶🦉

As summer ends and I contemplate a cozy morning of coffee, thick wool jumpers, and catching up on some photo editing..... Nothing like getting back into the birds of the Western Cape to remind us of sunshine!! These are blue cranes! Rare and huge, but found in the farmland of the Overberg region. 🪶🦉

Ethiopian beer in Oxford at Lula's #beersky #bskybeer

Lord Huron at the Apollo, London

Welcome, Ctrl Alt Deleaf! www.bbc.com/news/article...

Fun! EPSC press office covered my poster from #EPSCDPS #EPSC2025!! www.europlanet.org/epsc-dps2025...

Fabrizio Oliva. This is my co-author!!!🤘🤘🤘 #EPSCDPS #EPSC2025 !!🤘Neurosphere🤘!!

Colin Wilson, our ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter project scientist at @esa.int showing off Mars Express, TGO, and LightShip updates. First TGO science story was our chlorine work!! Over 11 publications and counting!! #EPSCDPS #EPSC2025 #planetsci #Mars 🔭🧪

Bethan Gregory showing off her hard work getting reactions on dust and ice surfaces for the chemistry of chlorine and ozone into the Planetary Climate Model!! #EPSCDPS #EPSC2025 #planetsci #Mars 🔭🧪

Daniel Mège going over the HCl detections I made in the Martian atmosphere in the non-dusty times with hypotheses about surface seeps from a dormant volcano!!! 🌋 These are strange, found 'em every year, same place! #EPSCDPS #EPSC2025 #planetsci #Mars 🔭🧪

Frank Montmessin giving a big overview of the very long lived and very successful SPICAM instrument on Mars Express. That's over twenty years of data!!! #EPSCDPS #EPSC2025 #planetsci

@mhairireid.bsky.social and I put together an article for @theconversation.com about yesterday's @nature.com paper on the detection of a 600 km radius solid core in the interior of #Mars! 🧪🔭 #planetsci Early InSight results didn't quite have the sensitivity for this! doi.org/10.64628/AB....

The new mission patch for Jeremy Hansen's Artemis II mission that will fly around the moon! 🔭🧪 The animals designed by Anishinaabe artist Henry Guimond represent seven sacred teachings www.supercluster.com/editorial/ca...

At last! The Southern double-collared sunbird from South Africa!!! The male is colourful, while the female is grey (last photo). The yellow pectoral tufts come out for presenting!! 🪶🦉 #bird #birding #SouthAfrica

Another #Oxfordpubreview. A punt up to the Victoria Arms is a dream, no matter the weather. The food is great and they serve Butcombe Breeding ale. The battered sausage is a work of art!

Huge congratulations to Dr Mhairi Reid @mhairireid.bsky.social for passing her viva! Monumental achievement! Special thanks to her examiners Luke Parry and Daniel Ksepka!

@aresluna.org I just read your article about the Gorton engraving fonts and have a historical question. (Absolutely loved it) aresluna.org/the-hardest-... You trace earlier origins to the lens maker Taylor, Taylor & Hobson, 1894. 🧵(Question in reply)

Brilliant history, typography needing, travel story, and photo essay all in one! What a journey!

@bsky.app In the UK, to protect kids from porn, instead of blocking adult content, @bsky.app have disabled chat features entirely! Only problem is that their age verification doesn't work! I do have a real face!

The Canadian Lunar Rover doesn't have a name yet, but it has a ride! Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 4! The rover will carry an instrument called LAFORGE with hardware from the @ox.ac.uk @oxfordphysics.bsky.social Space Instrumentation Lab!! 🧪🔭 #planetsci www.nasa.gov/news-release...

@oxfordcitycouncil.bsky.social The State of things. Can't get home.

@astromeganne.bsky.social teaching us all about the importance of the moon and the Lunar Gateway at @jesusoxford.bsky.social. dropped by the library after to check out Newton's Principia! 🔭🧪 #planetsci

The Space Store's Oxford Summer Space & AI Course wrapped up today with student presentations about a Martian mission plan (with budgets, launches, and instruments!!). @astromeganne.bsky.social and I gave presentations about the Moon and Mars and gave the students feedback. Blown away by them! 🔭🧪

The interstellar comet 3I-Atlas trajectory. We'll take a look with the cameras on ExoMars TGO!! 🧪🔭 #planetsci

Well, it's official, HiRIME is in a phase A study to be the high-res camera on ESA's next mission to Mars: Spotlight. Based on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's very successful HiRISE, it will be led by our colleagues at @openuniversity.bsky.social 🧪🔭 #planetsci www.open.ac.uk/blogs/news/s...