Thank you to everyone who called us out on the lunar eclipse video used in our solar eclipse post. You managed to notice what the five of us who created, edited, and posted that video completely missed. I think we're all tired.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are precisely aligned. It's one of nature's rarest and most beautiful spectacles. Learn why this happens in the SETI Institute's free Solar Eclipse eBook. Download it at connect.seti.org/solar-eclips... 🧪 🔭

Our Director of Education, Becca Robinson, who is also the outreach director for NASA’s Multi-slit Solar Explorer, recently chatted with Kathleen Toohill about Becca's "typical-atypical career journey" and what it means to be the outreach director for a NASA mission. 🧪 👩‍🔬 Learn more:

#PPOD: Taken on 26 May 2026 by the HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, this observation within the Kasei Valles outflow channel shows a distinct flood-eroded surface marked by a series of linear ridges and grooves, which are also present on an infilled impact crater. 🧪 🔭

Are you ready for it? Our virtual conference, that is! Registration is now open and you don't want to miss our five programming tracks, opening night event, prestigious speaker lineup, and celebrating 250 years of astronomy in the United States and beyond. 🚀🌎 1/3

How would humanity react if we learned of intelligent aliens? @scifri.bsky.social host Ira Flatow sat down with @notnotrocketscience.com and Chelsea Haramia, co-directors of our Discovery and Futures Lab, to discuss research aimed at answering that question. 🧪 👩‍🔬 Listen here:

What if we've been looking for aliens the wrong way? Join us LIVE at 2:30 PM PDT as Dr. Lauren Sgro talks with UCLA astronomer Dr. Ben Zuckerman about a new strategy for finding nearby technological civilizations. 🧪 👩‍🔬 👽 Bring your questions:

#PPOD: As of June 23, 2026, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has spent an incredible 17 years orbiting the Moon, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) has been hard at work ever since. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬 #planetaryscience

Are we the only intelligent civilization in the universe? 🧠 🧪 There are many fascinating possibilities why we have yet to hear from any cosmological neighbors. Take our Fermi Paradox Quiz and discover which cosmic theory matches your perspective. ☑️ Find the quiz at our #linkinbio 🔗

PRESS RELEASE On July 16, 2024, a daytime meteor shook New York City with a sonic boom as it passed just south of the Statue of Liberty. Now, an international team of researchers reports in the journal Science Advances that a short time later, a more than two-pound meteorite crashed... 🧪 🔭

#PPOD: Before NASA sends its DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) descent probe down through Venus’s thick atmosphere, scientists need to confirm that its cameras and instruments can do the job. 🧪

Machine learning is making an impact in space exploration. But how does AI play a role in astronomical discoveries? How are astronomers using AI? And honestly… is AI really useful without the human astronomers themselves? Isabel Angelo has some thoughts here: buff.ly/lwurJfW 🧪 👩‍🔬

#PPOD: NASA's Juno mission provides new maps of the giant planet Jupiter. This is a cylindrical composite map from Juno's 9th close pass by Jupiter. Juno is in a highly elliptical, near-polar orbit, so on each orbit JunoCam takes well-resolved images... 🧪 🔭

Our First Quarter 2026 Activity Report captures the discoveries, collaborations, educational initiatives, and public outreach that are advancing our mission to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence—and to share that knowledge with the world. 🧪 👩‍🔬 Read more:

A new study suggests that the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS may be as old as 12 billion years. This result is especially remarkable because 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object ever discovered, meaning it came from another planetary system. Learn more:

#PPOD: This image is quite extraordinary, and it's not the big disk that's attracting the most attention. Although the large planet-forming disk around the star PDS 70 is clearly imaged and quite interesting in its own right. 🧪 🔭

#ICYMI: On this week's #SETILive, @goastromo.bsky.social and her guests discussed the effects of UV radiation on an exoplanet's atmosphere, using both observations and lab testing, and why this work is important for the search for life. Watch the full interview: youtube.com/live/_Rnj_C7... 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

Dr. B. Sargent studies the evolution of protoplanetary and debris disks into planetary systems, as well as mass loss from evolved stars, learning how mass is produced by evolved stars and other sources and consumed during star formation. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬 #Space #SETI #NotJustAliens

Think you know solar eclipses? Here are five incredible facts that might surprise you. From disappearing daylight to Einstein's groundbreaking discovery, there's far more to eclipses than meets the eye. 🧪 🔭

Join Dr. Lauren Sgro and UCLA astronomer Dr. Ben Zuckerman as they discuss a new SETI strategy that could change how we search for extraterrestrial technology—and what existing observations already tell us about nearby civilizations. buff.ly/a03PkKQ 📅 July 16 ⏰ 2:30 PM PDT #SETILive #SETI 🧪 👩‍🔬 🔭

#PPOD: Vertical structures, among the tallest seen in Saturn's main rings, rise abruptly from the edge of Saturn's B ring, casting long shadows on the ring in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft two weeks before the planet's August 2009 equinox. 🧪 🔭 🪐

Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is making some wonder: will we have real disclosure soon? 👽️ 🛸 The short answer is that there’s nothing to disclose. But that doesn’t mean we won’t make contact with extraterrestrial life. 🧪 Learn more: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Packed room in North Beach, SF for @allplanets.bsky.social’s Lectures on Tap talk: “From Exoplanets to E.T.: The Hunt for Cosmic Company.” From @setiinstitute.bsky.social and AI to Laser SETI, UAPs, and citizen science networks like @unistellar.bsky.social and SkyMapper.

☀️ We're live in 2 hours! buff.ly/fomdFTh Can stellar flares change what we see when we observe alien worlds? Join Moiya McTier, Lori Huseby, and Sarah Moran as they discuss how UV radiation affects exoplanet atmospheres and what that means for the search for habitable planets. ⏰ 2:00 PM PDT 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

#PPOD: This is asteroid (98943) Torifune, as imaged by JAXA's Hayabusa2. The spacecraft successfully conducted a flyby of the nearly 500-meter rock, the first asteroid exploration of the Hayabusa2 Extended Mission, on 5 July at 18:35 JST. Credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) 🧪 🔭

We have some awesome #SETILive shows coming up this month! Lighting exoplanet skies on fire with UV radiation, updating the searches for ETI to be more broadband, and a celebration of Mars rovers past, present, and future. Come watch live! www.youtube.com/@SETIInstitute 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

The universe contains an estimated 200 billion trillion stars. ✨️ With numbers like that... where is everybody? Take our interactive Fermi Paradox Quiz to discover which theory best matches your view of the universe. Start the quiz: seti.outgrow.us/what-is-your... #FermiParadox #AreWeAlone 🧪

#PPOD: China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft has arrived at Kamoʻoalewa, a tiny asteroid that travels alongside Earth as one of only a handful of known quasi-satellites.Researchers suspect this unusual object may be a fragment blasted from the Moon, and Tianwen-2 is now poised to help solve the mystery. 🧪 🔭

🚀 At the SETI Institute, we aren’t just looking at the stars—we are actively trying to understand our place among them. Our mission brings together a brilliant, passionate community of researchers, scientists, and innovators. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

Alien signals… how would we know it’s aliens? Is it straightforward? *Hint*: there are A LOT of checkpoints before confirming an odd signal from space is coming from ET! Athena explains in the latest episode of Listening to the Universe:

#PPOD: The aurora australis arcs over Earth during an active solar event in this photograph taken on June 5, 2026, from the International Space Station as it orbited 271 miles above the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, Australia. Credit: NASA/Jessica Meir 🧪 👩‍🔬

#PPOD: Mars' Argyre Basin, an 1800 km-wide impact crater in the southern hemisphere, is probably the best-preserved large impact basin in the Solar System. This oblique image, taken looking northeast across the crater, was taken by Viking Orbiter 1 on July 25, 1976. Credit: NASA 🧪 🔭

Could stellar flares change what we know about alien worlds? 🧪 👩‍🔬 New research shows UV radiation can alter the hazes in exoplanet atmospheres, affecting how we interpret these distant planets. Join @goastromo.bsky.social with Lori Huseby and @offallingstars.bsky.social on July 9 at 2:00 PM PDT.

Dr. Ethan Schaefer specializes in geospatial technology, software, and algorithm development, with a focus on planetary and geological applications. He has extensive experience with NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) 4 standard... 🧪 #Geosciences #Space #Science #SETI #NotJustAliens

The fascinating science around the biological mechanisms of sleep and wakefulness, what circadian rhythms have in common with your grandfather’s clock, and why scientists no longer think that blue light causes nighttime restlessness on @bipisci.bsky.social: bigpicturescience.org/episodes/ske... 🧪

Did you know the Sun’s diameter is about 400 times larger than the Moon’s... and almost exactly 400 times farther away from Earth? ☀️🌑 That incredible cosmic coincidence is what makes total solar eclipses possible, creating one of the most breathtaking sights in our solar system. 🧪 🔭

#PPOD: This image shows satellites crossing the night sky above the northern Atacama Desert in Chile over just one hour. It is a stack of a time-lapse video taken on 15 October 2025, about two hours after sunset. 🧪 🔭

#ICYMI: Lauren asked Dr. Mukherjee to explain the difference between aerosols, clouds, and hazes. Aerosols are the broader term! Clouds and hazes... well, that depends on how they were formed. Watch the full interview: youtube.com/live/Zl4ue8h... 🧪 👩‍🔬

What do we mean when we say NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory will scan the sky? This visualization shows what a typical week of the 10-year survey looks like. The survey runs via a smart algorithm called a scheduler that dynamically determines where Rubin points next. 🔭🧪

During a recent #SETILive conversation, SETI Institute research scientist Dr. Lauren Sgro sat down with Arizona State University postdoctoral fellow Dr. Sagnick Mukherjee to discuss a problem that has frustrated exoplanet astronomers for years: clouds. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬 Learn more: www.seti.org/news/how-clo...

#PPOD: This stunning false-color view of Saturn's moon Hyperion reveals crisp details across the strange, tumbling moon's surface. Color differences could indicate variations in the composition of surface materials. The view was obtained during Cassini's close flyby on Sept. 26, 2005. 🧪 🔭

Once thought to be little green men (a reference to LGM 1, the first pulsar ever discovered), pulsars can actually do way more for us than simply be some cool space object we observe. In fact, astronomers like Sofia Sheikh use pulsars to measure distance in space and more! buff.ly/tmeFWKt 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

#PPOD: Taken by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa during its close approach in 2005, this very detailed view shows the strange peanut-shaped asteroid Itokawa. The 500-meter "rubble pile" asteroid features distinct smooth surface regions, such as the MUSES Sea. 🧪 🔭

Live now!! Asteroid Day charity stream for The Planetary Society! twitch.tv/moohoodles

Indigenizing The Drake Equation: How Indigenous Methods Can Help Us Understand Life In The Milky Way Galaxy astrobiology.com/2026/06/30/i... #astrobiology #interstellar #Sociology #SETI @setiinstitute.bsky.social

#PPOD: In a remote part of northern Mauritania, on the Adrar Plateau, lies a desert landscape that appears to be shaped primarily by natural forces. The region's most eye-catching feature when seen from above is the Richat Structure—a large geologic formation made of concentric ridges... 🧪

Recently, the International Academy of Astronautics published an updated version of the SETI post-detection protocols. To discuss these updates, Dr. Lauren Sgro hosted a special SETI Live with @notnotrocketscience.com and Dr. Chelsea Haramia. 🧪 👩‍🔬 Learn more:

Got the blues from lack of sleep? For years, scientists have singled out blue light from our devices as the culprit behind our insomnia, but that idea no longer has scientific consensus. Find out why on the latest Skeptic Check from @bipisci.bsky.social: bigpicturescience.org/episodes/ske... 🧪

#PPOD: NASA’s Perseverance rover appears as a green speck on the Martian surface on June 13, 2026, a day before the robotic explorer marked a distance milestone, having traveled a full marathon (26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers) on the Red Planet. 🧪 🔭 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

When co-founder Jill Tarter visited SkyMapper, she captured exactly why they are building SkySphere: To watch the sky continuously, globally, and openly — and discover what we did not know to look for. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬 The unexpected is where astronomy gets exciting. Watch the preview: youtu.be/S7mjb-UnvlY