Jodie Foster: "Okay to go... okay to go.... okay to go..."

This is horrific.

Anti-immigration demonstration in the Netherlands escalates. This is exactly what happens when far-right ideas are tolerated and normalised over an extended period of time. The far right gains confidence and grows, both at the ballot box and in the streets. nos.nl/artikel/2583...

Let’s keep going

I have to keep this deliberately vague, but this is a total disaster for academic research. And imposing it so suddenly is just cruel. I’ve got friends scrambling to get back to the US before midnight tonight. Do you know how hard that is to do on 36 hours of notice?

Hair out of every toe #caturday

It's so interesting to see cancel culture now overtaking the right, I just saw someone refer to it as the "woke right" and that totally resonates. Guess people aren't that different from each other after all...no one likes to hear what they don't want to hear...🤷‍♀️

Ah the joys of Dutch weather. It's not actually raining, "het miezert" which means you are biking through a dense cloud of mist, and there's no raingear in the world that can keep your face from getting soaked...

An abandoned plan to visit another star highlights the perils of billionaire-funded science

But wait, there's more! Our @ehtelescope.bsky.social outreach folk made a fun explanatory movie of the new M87* #blackhole results, complete with Game of Thrones style soundtrack! 🧪🔭

This is our biggest result so far this year (IMHO)! 🔭🧪 The M87* #blackhole is clearly cocooned in a turbulent, magnetised plasma and we can now resolve it changing in real time (albeit slowly). Excitingly we plan to do the first 2 month "movie" campaign looking ever 3-4 days in spring 2026!

Check out our new results on the M87* #blackhole w/ @ehtelescope.bsky.social ! We now have 3 frames in a 4yr "movie", including polarisation ⇔ magnetic fields. It's like tracking extreme sunspots just outside a black hole, the brightness and fields flip, yet the shape stays the same bc...gravity!

Very proud to have won the @api.uva.nl 1 minute elevator pitch prize, from the last year of pizza lunches! Whomever our wheel randomly selects has to give a 1 min pitch about their work, and mine came in at 59s! I now get the trophy for the next year, complete with a picture of pizza on it! 💪🍕

As a member of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts & Sciences (KNAW) I support our statement on the war in Gaza. www.knaw.nl/en/news/stat...

Three days til registration opens. Watch this space! 🖖🤘

One of the awesome bits of supernova science I always love is when someone finds a new ancient record of a supernovae! In this case new Arabic records for SN1181 and SN1006 from poems! arxiv.org/abs/2509.04127

Self-care is overrated—helping others has the biggest benefits for everyone involved A new 2-week intervention finds that helping others improves well-being more than "self-kindness", with benefits for depressed mood, anxiety, and loneliness due to social connection psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

In 1949, Superman told schoolchildren “our country is made up of Americans of MANY different races, religions and national origins. So… “…if YOU hear anybody talk against anyone else because of his religion, race or national origin — don’t wait: tell him THAT KIND OF TALK IS UN-AMERICAN.”

The first time Charlie Chaplin used his voice in a film, he wielded it to forcefully condemn the rising forces of fascism around the globe. Will we listen to his words today?

My favourite ship from yesterday’s #SAIL festival sail-in parade. This one looks like it’s right out of #GameofThrones, about to attack Amsterdam central station!

Enjoying the chaos of #SAIL in Amsterdam after 10 years

This is probably my favourite title of anything I've read recently, and the abstract is hilarious too! For those of you who don't know @astrobites.bsky.social 🔭🧪 it's a great way to stay up on the field with short, approachable summaries of recent results! astrobites.org/2025/08/18/t...

I keep feeling like I woke up in an alternative timeline. The conservative/Republican mantra was always "small Fed gov't and power to the states". Now it's all about the Fed overruling states' rights, and Republican governors sending troops to DC?? Don't any "classic" Republicans find this alarming?

Cat on car camouflage (day after #Caturday)

Can we stop putting happy faces in news stories about temperature records and heat waves?

Great article about the importance of software engineering and open source code in astrophysics 🔭🧪 (and if anyone is keen to work with me on #BlackHoles lmk, I am planning to hire a software engineer soon!) 😊 www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/12/a...

We just heard that there's a #BurningMan art installation that looks a lot like our polarised #BlackHole images w/ the @ehtelescope.bsky.social🧪🔭. I wish I could have a (smaller) version for my office, this is super cool! If someone sees it IRL pls post a pic! 🙏 burningman.org/event/2025-a...

I'm very excited to be taking part in the Mayo Dark Sky Festival again this autumn! Early bird tickets are on sale already, the full program's not yet up but I can vouch that it's an amazingly special, upbeat, grassroots festival in a beautiful part of Ireland, where astronomy and nature meet! 🔭 🧪

The only thing better than having a boat in Amsterdam is having friends with a boat in Amsterdam 😁🛥️

The 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellowship is now accepting applications! Carnegie Science is one of the hosts and applicants can work at the Earth and Planets Laboratory in DC (where I am) and/or the Observatories in Pasadena. Applications are due on Oct 3rd! www.hsfoundation.org/programs/sci...

Bandida’s contemplating her long week this #caturday

Huzzah!! 🎆 Every year we (the @ehtelescope.bsky.social) write proposals to compete for time on the component telescopes 🔭 we use to make our #BlackHole images🧪. Since our first results from 2017 we've taken one snapshot per year. We just heard that our 1st MOVIE 🎥campaign in 2026 is going ahead!! /1

This is amazing news! 🎉 🎊 Michele's science contributions 🔭🧪 include space missions llike NASA's Cassini, and being astronomer royal places her in an ideal position to educate and inspire the public about astronomy!

Ozzy going out after raising $190 million for sick kids and a Parkinson’s cure is metal AF.

In his own words: “Ozzy Osbourne, born 1948. Died, whenever. He bit the head off a bat.” 🤘🪦

Someone's having fun with their hotspot name 😂

OMG I had no idea you could pitch and upvote LEGO designs: someone has made an amazing model based on our @ehtelescope.bsky.social black hole image! 🧪🔭 Want! Please vote for this so I, I mean, all of you can get one!! 😇🙏💕🙏 beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

So excited to see that the amazing Prof. Jessica Dempsey, current ASTRON director, will be the new DG of the Square Kilometer Array Obsevatory! 🧪🔭🎊 www.skao.int/en/news/654/...

"Adolf Hitler, pursuing a ruthless campaign for a 'Nasified' and loyal Germany, armed himself today with the power to cancel citizenships and and confiscate the property of critical or hostile citizens, including Germans living abroad." United Press July 16, 1933

This was the vibe for #caterdau today

Guest book from our team meeting at @issibern.ch on the #BlackHole in our galaxy’s centre, Sgr A*🔭🧪. PhD student Nicole Ford reimagined the river flowing through Bern as a magnetic flux tube in the accretion disk interacting with a current sheet, a potential site of high-energy flaring!

I just discovered this website and am LOL, I think I’m totally heading in this direction 🧪 www.proforhobo.com

I mean, holy shit, @vrubinobs.bsky.social discovered 1000s of asteroids in just a few nights of data 🧪🔭! Including near earth orbitsm none known before!! #RubinFirstLook

Watching with awe the first images from @vrubinobs.bsky.social 🧪🔭 Congratulations to the team, it's an amazing achievement and going to be so exciting to see what new things we learn about the universe! Here are a couple screen shots from the broadcast that don't do it justice! 10M galaxies/image!

Yesterday my PhD student successfully defended his thesis, but even more amazing was that they had a mini version of the traditional professorial robes for his son (which is possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen that isn’t a cat)! Here he is super proud of his dad, with the doctoral committee! 🧪

Check out my colleague Prof. James Chibueze's very cool contribution in Nature Astronomy for #BlackSpaceWeek 🧪🔭 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really great outreach event for kids by University of Amsterdam where profs jump on bikes and go to classrooms! This year included the amazing @profannawatts.bsky.social! www.uva.nl/en/content/n...